Victorian digression: 19th century Infomania

posted by Nathan Zeldes on November 01, 2006

I’m off to a hectic two week business trip to the USA, so expect short posts for a while (in fact I’m writing this one above the Atlantic, having lost hope of a decent sleep). Let me share with you the earliest mention I could find of Information Overload. This is quoted by Tom Standage in “The Victorian Internet”, his excellent book on the history of the telegraph. It’s all there – the interruptions, the pressure and anxiety, the damaged Work/Life Balance…

The quote is from a speech made in 1868 by one W.E. Dodge, a New York businessman. In earlier times, Dodge explains, merchants had it easy: they basically sent out their ships and spent quiet months waiting for their return, or for snail-mailed news from their remote customers. He then contrasts the new work mode enabled by the telegraph, confessing to “doubts whether the telegraph has been so good a friend to the merchant as many have supposed”. Telegraphy has enabled a rapid pace that keeps the merchant “in continual excitement, without time for quiet and rest”. He goes on to describe how the poor chap “goes home after a day of hard work… to a late dinner, trying amid the family circle to forget business, when he is interrupted by a telegram from London… and the poor man must dispatch his dinner as hurriedly as possible in order to send off [a] message to California”.

A pity they didn’t have blogs… I’d sure have loved to read Mr. Dodge’s!

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tagged: infoglut, infomania, information overload, victorian technology