It was an edifying experience when I came across this concept, this term in historiography–this very peculiar word which seems like something straight out of a teenagers journal. Dark Ages
But–Before we move into that–story time!
Colin Morgan, who’s playing Merlin in BBC’s show with the same name, walks into a room with his charming ebullience and for a minute I got distracted–distracted by what he was wearing. The scarf? The well tailored dresses? and the shoes!
I am no costume designer, let alone a historian, but something about that made me wonder what are the chances that–the outfits would have even existed during the 5th and 6th century (period when Arthur was supposedly the King of Camalot)
I did what I do–googled it away.
Turns out, we don’t know! Well, maybe we do. Before I could dive deep into it, I came across the term “Dark Ages” and was thrown off my trail. Now I had something else to obsess over.
Dark Ages : Period after the decline of Roman Empire. One Italian Scholar Petrach referred to this time as “Dark Age” because of the lack of records which contrasted with the previous Roman settings [1]. I flipped my shit over this, you gotta be kidding me right?
My roommate was in my room with me, so I tried to keep my reactions impassive, though every single bit of me was trying to grasp this news. For someone who’s seen the age of information overload and a generation obsessed with documenting every bit of their life, this concept was absolutely mind boggling.
There was a period in human history that we have no surety about. We aren’t aware about the events that took place. Historians and Archaeologist are still trying to figure out more stuff so that the pieces can be put in place. It is also referred as intellectual depression. INTELLECTUAL DEPRESSION. I have no idea how this information is something I am learning now. NOW.
Dark Ages Reimagined.
Not sure if every generation thinks this, but we certainly have gotten our fair share of tortuous socio-political timeline. Humanitarian too in-fact, but let’s look over that lately. The stygian word which can be re-contextualised in so many ways, though, for some reason I am at a loss of words right now.
Ever since I heard the term information overload, I have been terrified of it, which is pretty strange for someone working in Machine Learning because this excessive data is the reason the field is progressing at the lightning rates that we can see now. I am talking more on a personal level though. We have sooo much information at our disposal, that it just somehow feels like it’s not enough. Recently, I got five kindle books because I though I wasn’t reading enough, but realised I have some thousands of unread books that I should be finishing first. There are studies that work on mitigating information overload in social media and send alerts [2].
The information is so much, and it’s so confusing to figure out the right statergy to consume the content that sometimes, this might be overwhelming. Are we facing the problem of over-documenting?
In information overload situations, a decision-maker faces what Herbert Simon called “a wealth of information [which] creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it”
Information overload in the information age: a review of the literature from business administration, business psychology, and related disciplines with a bibliometric approach and framework development [3]
Information and decision-making performance[3]
Where to go?
I don’t speak about this with asperity, but there are times when I wonder why do we have to consume everything that’s out there. I mean dark ages are a mess for historians but for someone who fantasises about the idea of having an essentialist lifestyle but spectacularly fails at it–having little, but only essential information at your disposal sounds comforting.
I don’t think I am going to starve myself of information, in-fact, I want to consume more, but the only difference is that now I want to be slightly more careful about the things I consume as they affect my life and thoughts closely.
References
- Thompson, Bard (1996). Humanists and Reformers: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation. Grand Rapids, MI: Erdmans. p. 13. ISBN978-0-8028-6348-5. Petrarch was the very first to speak of the Middle Ages as a ‘dark age’, one that separated him from the riches and pleasures of classical antiquity and that broke the connection between his own age and the civilization of the Greeks and the Romans.
- Marc-André Kaufhold, Nicola Rupp, Christian Reuter & Matthias Habdank (2019) Mitigating information overload in social media during conflicts and crises: design and evaluation of a cross-platform alerting system, Behaviour & Information Technology, DOI: 10.1080/0144929X.2019.1620334
- Roetzel, P.G. Bus Res (2019) 12: 479. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40685-018-0069-z
Word Prompt
Generate Random words with meaning that have to be used in the article that I write. Helps with my shitty vocabulary, takes away the decision fatigue of selecting the word. You can check out the implementation and read more about it here
More on Not helpful Writing and Self Improvement? You can also check out more about things I do with python !
– Edifying Enlightening
– Ebullience The Quality Of Lively Or Enthusiastic Expression Of Thoughts And Feelings
– Comportment Behavior; Bearing
– Flip Sarcastic, Impertinent, As In Flippant: A Flip Remark
– Impassive Revealing No Emotion
– Asperity Harshness Of Tone Or Manner
– Stygian Gloomy; Dark
H (x) = Sum (P log p) 