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The Other Greek Philosophers

Ataraxia in the Age of Too Much Information

Eric Scheske considers the link between Pyrrho of Elis and internet culture.

Everyone knows about the mammoth caverns of information at everyone’s door: hundreds of millions of websites; thousands of must-read new books every year; tons of magazines and newspapers; network television; cable television; AM, FM, digital and satellite radio; entire libraries digitized and online. It’s become so bad that a group at King’s College London studying the effects of ‘informational overload’ concluded that it harms concentration more than marijuana. We call this the ‘Information Age’, but that doesn’t do justice to the endless proliferation of data. It’s better called the ‘Too Much Information Age’. And if the TMI Age had a pagan saint, it might be Pyrrho of Elis (c.

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