Member-only story
Overwhelmed by wide horizons
Thanks to technology, we have access to stuff beyond our wildest imaginations, but that can also make our life more difficult. How can we best handle these super wide horizons?
In the olden days, we could see little further than the corner of our street. There were a few national or regional radio stations, and some national TV stations that filtered international news and broadcast principally locally produced material, complemented with mostly English and American series. If we wanted to buy a book or a CD, we went to the store and checked what they had on their shelves; if we wanted to meet people, we went to the pub or joined a club or society where we would find likeminded individuals.
Our horizon was limited, and to discover something novel, or to make new friends we could only explore the small, local pond we were swimming in. Now, borders and distances are no longer constraining us. We have access to countless radio stations, on-demand video, books, musical artists and people who share our interests, many orders of magnitude larger than we imagined possible. Our horizon has become so wide that we risk being completely overwhelmed. How can we make sure we don’t end up the victim of abundance?
