issue23

sacrabUID: 140880

"Contemporary technology makes available many small pieces of factual information. As a result, people have become so preoccupied with bits of fragmented information that they pay too little attention to the larger issues and overall perspectives."

Thanks to the advancing science and technology, we are now living in an information society which greatly facilitates our life. When football fans want to know the time and place of a league mathc, they only need to log onto a website, say Yahoo, then a fixture in full detail is available. When ladies want to realize the most up-to-date world fashion, a single click of a link will lead them to a drizzling shopping paradise online. However, ultimate convenience and quickness brought by our technology blind our penetrating eyes. Information, though easily accessible and always timely, is becoming too much and increasingly fragmental thus hindering people’s attention to the larger issues and overall perspectives.

The most conspicuous feature of nowadays information is its amount, which is too great to be true. As is known to all, final decision is based on a large amount of evidence and logical reasoning, but the question is that people now have so much evidence that its endless processing takes up too much of our precious time. Our secretaries are typing more documents. Our intellects are making more calls, going through more materials and doing more surfing on the internet. We can always heard manager or official saying that I had better view another document or consult another expert to reinforce a project. Yet, the flashing opportunity is missed because of their narrow focus on trivialities and inability to master the overview.

Apart from its “abundance”, there forms a tendency that information are becoming more specified and fragmented. Average internet users, when using a online search engine, can have easy access to websites discribing a single book, author, theory, etc. while search results become very much limited when interdisciplinary information is required. As a result, people has to spend extra time working on various information and combining them together. Then people are naturally bogged in the quagmire of information and consequently, there is no more time and energy and desire left for them to concentrate on general issues and macro-designing.

To make matters worse, all of these multitude of information is actually worth doubting, for they are, on a large scale, irrelevant, repeatitive or even faulty. I used to have a horrible experience when doing the preparation of my research paper. I sat before the screen for more 10 hours and this torment last a week. Ironically, I have visited more thousands of websites and downloaded bundles of data only to find that the actual useful information I have collected came from several sites while all the rest are merely their duplications, derivatives or distortions. So how can people make insightful analysis with these misleading information? How can people make constructive deicisions with these unreliable evidence? People are now sailing aimlessly in the sea of information and hope is lost before destination is reached. They then become incredulous and only believe in complicated verification of information and its source which, in fact, precludes the possibility of any overall perspectives.

Moreover, the overflow of information makes it unneccessary and unwise for people to think critically. Since most of information needed is available everywhere, especially online, people turn to the internet for help rather than doing the work himself. The advent of paritcipatory websites, where many interactions are made, worsen the situation, for they increase the searchers’ sources of information. Under such circumstances, people are proned to be lazy. When certain research is required, they may think, “Let me just log onto the internet and directly find out its result. So why bother?” Gone are their originality and creativity, both of which are vital in making decisions, especially those important and overall ones.

Too much information is as detrimental to people as too little information. Living under the overwhelming pressure of massive information, we must not confine ourselves to those fragments of factual information. Rather, we should take advantage of our critical mind to dig deep and to analyze the superficialities. Only by this means can we get a concrete view of a larger and broader issue. Only by this means can we make meaningul decisions.

suyimeUID: 139750

写的不错，我觉得
但有一些小错误啦，估计是笔误
不过是不是可以写一点点好的方面？
我还有一个问题，为什么正文一段比一段短？

sacrabUID: 140880

感谢看的那么仔细，主要是第二段讲了信息的两个方面（过多和缺乏连续性）同时使人们没有更多的精力去认识宏观问题，后面两段都是只就一个方面发表议论，要不我把那段拆开，可能好一点？

blake_wangUID: 9871

1, the development of the main idea of thies essay is susceptible to digression to some extent. Take the second paragraph, for example, the author fail to point out what conerns the topic most but something irrelavant to the topic sentence such as, the quatities and abundance of the information.
2,a good style and coordination of sentence stucture.
3,

sacrabUID: 140880

我认为没有偏题，我想题干的意思是人们过于重视零碎的信息，以至于无法对问题有一个宏观的认识。然后我的提纲就是：
1.信息太多，而人们总想多知道一点
2.信息太杂，人们就要花时间把已知信息联系起来
1，2说明人们要先研究众多零碎信息，没多余时间精力来做宏观决策
3.人们接受的信息可能是重复的，无关的，甚至错误的，说明信息的可靠程度不佳，使人们不能直接得出总体看法，只能先逐个审查可靠程度
4.人们对信息的需求被many small pieces of factual information满足，而且获得方法简单，他们自然会沉溺于其中，人们会逐渐失去自己寻求答案的能动性和创新性，那些需要高度概括高度抽象的全局认识当然成为不可能的了

blake_wangUID: 9871

to sacrab,
1, it is not what you have written, but the way of your reasoning. For examle, your view is confusing that answers why people lose the time and power to govern the whole because of preocupation into small pieces of factual information, as your way of expressing such a view is totally upsidedown that more relationship should given before your particular reasons and concrete example follow.
2, it is not necessary to infer such effect from the cause, yet reader may doubt that inverse conclusion may be drawn without additional evidence.
3,

amy80UID: 4523

就是觉得你考试的时候能打出这么多的字来？