Wiktionary
n. The inability to process everything one hears and sees; the availability or supply of too much information, or a state of stress which results.
Wikipedia
Information overload (also known as infobesity or infoxication ) refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information. The term is popularized by Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book Future Shock, but is mentioned in a 1964 book by Bertram Gross, The Managing of Organizations. Speier et al. (1999) stated:
Information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system exceeds its processing capacity. Decision makers have fairly limited cognitive processing capacity. Consequently, when information overload occurs, it is likely that a reduction in decision quality will occur.
In recent years, the term "information overload" has evolved into phrases such as "information glut" and "data smog" (Shenk, 1997). What was once a term grounded in cognitive psychology has evolved into a rich metaphor used outside the world of academia. In many ways, the advent of information technology has increased the focus on information overload: information technology may be a primary reason for information overload due to its ability to produce more information more quickly and to disseminate this information to a wider audience than ever before.
Usage examples of "information overload".
Whether we are submitting masses of men to information overload or not, we are affecting their behavior negatively by imposing on them still a third form of overstimulation--decision stress.
So let's stammer and stutter and repeat ourselves, spam the terminals, jam the channels, and otherwise revel in information overload.
This was too much to assimilate all at once, it was information overload.
A tac room of this caliber could cause information overload and mind-lock, if you let it.
He had decidedhalf a century in advancethat a combination of information overload, overpopulation and Millennial Madness was going to drive our whole culture slug-nutty by the Eighties.
It was disconcerting, an information overload with too much to take in, and he had to look away or lose himself in the details.
The possibility exists that Mike's synapses are fast enough to pick up the data and that the rest of his brain can't take the information overload.
Faced with an information overload, such a system will skip a given number of words for each word transmitted.
Tom had done his best in pre-setting the various filters available, but information overload was still a factor when trying to follow what was going on.