And it’s even worse at work. Now we have voicemail for when we’re on the other line, and email to con-tact our coworkers who are right down the hall, and the internet for research, research, research. It’s more than obvious – our technically advanced society is in a state of information overload.

“There are certain inventions in history that have unquestionably altered the direction of civilization,” says Bill Truex (’68). "The printing press brought about the ability to disseminate information in a new way and to a larger audience than ever before. The computer is proving to be a tool of equal impact to information management, but along with this progress comes a new set of problems.”

That problem is information overload, says Truex, who served as Union’s first computer center director for ten years before making the switch to Hewlett Packard. As a self-described functional manager at the company, he leads a “swat team” of technical gurus ready to help with a client’s emergency at a moment’s notice.

“Every day we are faced with more data than we can use,” says Truex, and more decisions to make on what to do with the data – choosing which information we will use and what we will ignore. “Also, it’s not always easy to evaluate the quality of our information – whether it’s stock tips from a chat room or a medical decision based on some new but unproven procedure,” Truex points out.

Advances in technology have affected all of us at some point. In business, it’s how efficiently we can now do our jobs, how accessible we can be to our clients and supervisors, and how fast we can complete a project. We now have to make decisions on how much technology we will allow around our family – whether it’s the new DVD player, or the open portal of the Internet. Health has also been affected by technology and we will have to make choices accordingly – do we want to know whether our unborn child has a genetic disposition toward a disease or are we willing to replace our decaying heart with a mechanical one? Even in our worship services, technology looms before us in the form of Power Point projected song lyrics and online Bible studies.

“The computer offers us a vehicle to help solve the very problem [of information overload] that it has created,” adds Truex. “In the years to come, we will see the computer prove to be a tool that will over-come geographic boundaries, personal skill limitations, and help us make more sense of the knowledge around us.”