Data Obesitas

The amount of data created by people and machines increases on a daily bases. The world generates 1.7 billion bytes of data every minute. We receive this data consciously and unconsciously. For example while reading a newspaper during your train journey, thoughtless scrolling of your social media feed and looking at the unwanted four commercials when you are watching a video and so on. Long story short, we receive a lot of unsolicited information while we don’t want it or need it. This continuous flow of data is up for discussion and therefore I call it “Data Obesity”.

Data Obesity is a form of tension caused by too much flow of information. Because the brain has a limited capacity to process data, a person gets confused when they get too much information. This causes troubles in concentrating on a subject for a long time. If someone suffers from this overload and there is almost continuous confusion, the diagnoses: burn-out results.

As a starting “creative” I experience the presence of the term data obesity. I get formed to who I am today by all the stimuli and data around us. My way of life, the way I approach things and how I work depends a lot on stimuli that I receive from the outside world. I especially noticed this after young students in my immediate environment literally toppled because of the enormous pressure that data (burn-out) unconsciously puts on them. A person whom I experienced this is my former fellow student and good friend Nick. From up close I, unfortunately, have seen how this process works and how Nick struggled with himself. This event made me think and I realized that as a young advertiser I might be complicit in Nick’s information overload. With my project “data-obesity” I call this continuatiom of data availability up for discussion. Should we continue with this influx and continue to gather more data or take a step back and filter selectively?

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