The Perils of Organized Life

Voices

Sam McNerney '07 is a researcher at Flamingo Group, an agency that lives at the intersection of insights, culture and strategy. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today and The Washington Post.

In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges published a short story about an infinite library comprised of hexagonal rooms. The library contains every book ever written and every book that could be written. One book contains a detailed history of the future. Another describes the true story of your death. There’s commentary on the gospel of Basilides, and commentary on the commentary.

Initially, the residents of the library are filled with unbounded joy. But time passes and enthusiasm turns to despair. Because the books are filled with every possible sequence of characters—one has the letters M C V repeated for 410 pages—nearly every book is nonsense. How could they distinguish the faithful catalog from the innumerable false ones?

The Library of Babel is an eerie illustration of what we encounter every day: information overload. We live in an era where information has become a commodity. And while access to information is a good thing, it often comes at the expense of sorting through heaps of gibberish. In a way, we’re all living in the Library of Babel.

Or are we?

If you trace history you’ll notice that each time we invent something that spews more information into the world, we ingeniously respond by creating a system that organizes it. Contemporary critics rightfully complain about information overload, but we’re simultaneously living in an era of extreme organization.

This might be costly. History is also filled with instances of accidental discovery, from Darwin stumbling on Malthus’ essay on population to Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin.

So, in an era in which everything is tracked and stored, a suggestion: Live life like an open-minded tourist; don’t be the prisoner of a plan; welcome a degree of haphazardness; be able to make revisions.

Don’t be organized. Be messy.