— Ralph Hexter, Dean of Arts & Humanities and
Executive Dean of the College

Dealing with the Information Overload

By Daniel M. Karlin, April 29, 2004

The life of an 18-unit student, or rather 22 units until sanity regained control, is fraught with frustrations. Time slips away like sand, sleeping hours dwindle to Macbeth-like schedules, and headaches throw wrenches into the gears of thought. Free time is a laughable idea, and socialization feels obsolete. Yet in spite of all these annoyances, my time in Berkeley has imparted something special to me. After two semesters of six classes each, a large mass of knowledge has been imparted to me from my classes, ranging from old-time radio shows to organic chemistry to the Peloponnesian War. Studying all these subjects has been truly edifying, but it has not fully satiated that lust for new material to absorb, but only whetted the appetite to drink in as much literature and as many texts as possible.

The end result? I am a Doe Library Junkie, a ghost of the stacks, wafting in and out between the shelves, ascending and descending the spiral staircase silently so as not to wake the sleepers in their armchairs, scanning the stacks for any and all books that pique my interest, surfing the orange-lit screens of the Library Server terminals for listing after listing, falling asleep between the shelves with a book in my lap, jostled awake by another student squeezing me between two rolling stacks, checking out multiple books at once and reading them during lectures only to return them and check out more books: such is the life I now lead. After two semesters, I have demolished Dostoevsky (Perhaps the longest and most intimate relationship I have had at Berkeley has been the two months spent with The Brothers Karamazov), ploughed through Plato, careened through Calvino, and traipsed through Trollope, bathing in the cascade of words crashing out of all these books, spilling off the shelves and foaming in my mind.

But it does not stop there. In conjunction with the Doe Library, the Media Resource Center has seen fit to monopolize all my breaks between classes. Woody Allen sneaks into my schedule right between Chemistry and French, and Humphrey Bogart is served as an aperitif at the end of the day. The Pantheon of great films calls upon me to watch each and every one, to imbibe every black and white gangster flick or dreamlike Fellini film or excessively subtitled foreign film. Unsurprisingly, the Doe addiction and MRC yen intertwine: oftentimes a book is consumed so its movie can be subsequently absorbed. Image after image floats into my mind ceaselessly, and the grand parade of motion picture streams forth with full lights and blaring sound.

So rarely does one finagle the opportunity of quoting an obscure Sanskrit poem that I do so now with considerable relish. As in the poem Black Marigolds, "Even now, I have savored the hot taste of life, lifting green cups and gold at the great feast," and devoured the steaming tomes and garnished volumes and platters of pamphlets, drunk myself positively silly on the honeyed drops of knowledge, experienced with dragging fingertips the utter availability and magnitude of the ocean of information that belongs to mankind. This is what makes Berkeley the institution that it is: the incredible wealth of the arts, science, and culture are only a spiral staircase away, and they await your perusal with eagerness.

Yet we cannot ignore the darker side to this vast wealth of information. After a book or movie or lecture floods the consciousness, the information does not leave without a fight. Like some arachnid fiend sensing removal, it entrenches itself deep in the mind, sending out connecting wires and latching itself to anything until it is ensconced in an impenetrable web of association. Cross-references abound in the vine-thick jungle of consciousness, tendrils of allusions wrapped upon trees of printed material whose roots intertwine with the closely-packed shrubs of ideas gathered on the forest floor. Everything that I have learned so far at Berkeley can be referenced to other subjects, and these references accumulate infinitely.

The process of this cross-referencing is impressed upon every student in a Rhetoric1A or any writing course, and soon every college student can invoke associations at will. After a few papers though, making associations is no longer an act of volition; cross-referencing has supplanted breathing. Images and text are called up ceaselessly from various subjects and linked together with tight threads on and on throughout every waking second. A larger and larger quilt of information is perpetually growing in a mind that can no longer keep from knitting. By the end of each day, I am left with weary shoulders, an exhausted consciousness, and some new books to read.

One such day, as I was wending my way home from the depths of the Valley Life Science Building, as Calvino mixed with Thucydides who spilled over into Political Science intertwined with Psychology, I found myself on Memorial Glade, surrounded by sun bathing students and whizzing Frisbees on the iridescent green grass. Underneath the foaming and stirring of subjects in my mind, I shrugged off my backpack, knelt, and lay down on a patch of grass. Looking up at the cloudless sky, and the overwhelming brightness, I closed my eyes and slept.

And all the webs and connections and references simply drifted away.