Information Overload ..??

I remember a time when I was doing my graduation, almost twenty three years back, 1983, British Council Library at Trivandrum, Kerala used to be my favourite haunt in the evenings. It had very valid reasons too. The British Council Library had lot of quality reading material, magazines and books, both reference and stack room ones, to refer and read.

For the first time in my life I was introduced to the Economist magazine in this Library. Earlier at home we were getting the Life, Time, Newsweek etc, besides the National Geographic and other Indian Magazines and journals which my brother used to get from family friends. We all uused to enjoy reading those magazines at home. After leaving Trivandrum in 1986 after the engineering, it was very difficult to get hold of the Economist to read as the next twenty I spent in Goa and Bombay. Goa was a bit far from civilization. IIT Bombay had all these magazines, but very less time to read them, so it was as good as not having them at all.

At Peermade I made some futile efforts to get the college authorities to subscribe to some of these good magazines, but had to give up finally, it was very difficult to get them to differentiate the good from the bad, the need to stimulate the minds and imagination of students thru such good high quality reading. A sad state !!

Now that I am in XIME, Bangalore, I was taken aback when the first day I joined, on my table was a copy of the latest Economist mag, besides the daily newspapers and Indian business magazines. To this add the Newsweek and Outlook magazines which I have subscribed myself lately. It is an Information Overload phenomenon being experienced, as by the middle of the week, the next batch of magazines keep coming. It is a race to catch up with reading and being up-to-date with the developments. Most of the days I stay back to catch up on some of the pending reading and of course some blogging too..

Time is not a problem here as I stay in the hostel and have all the time in the world. With the willingness too, it is really a paradise for reading and keeping oneself up-to-date. This is besides the information available over the Internet !!

george..