Can too much information be bad?

I was watching this great video about from Kevin Kelly who gave a great interview at the Web 2.0 Summit. I liked most of the interview, I could not help react to his final vision of the future. Us being connected to all of the data in the Internet cloud, our perceptions being expanded beyond our current "shell". I find the concept scary. I find it scary for 2 reasons. First with all this data available, even I who is a bit wary of doing it too much, I spend most of my time trying to catch up with information. The information overload, I do not need to start again. Second, the notion of always being connected seems a bit disturbing.

On the one hand, I understand the need to have better information. Better connected information with access to the multi-dimensional aspect of information available. A bit like what is available is mashups . A map of my travel pictures combined with pictures taken by other people and articles from wikipedia. But somehow this gets blended in an easy way, not sure I have a vision of what that is at this point. The Internet has so much to be positive about, there is no corner of the planet, or soon anyway, that does not have access to free information, unfiltered. Most people can express opinions and expose anyone (ok, this one could be bad, but it is also pretty cool).

I believe we can run away from ourselves. By trying to learn all the time, we do not really try to understand ourselves. There is a lot that can be done here, but it can only be done while the mind is quiet. Are we going to measure ourselves by the amount of information we have? Or are we going to take the time to understand our nature by taking the time to listen to it.

This kind of thoughts always brings me to how ideas are created. We often refer to the stupidity of crowds and how it is difficult to come up with something brilliant while debating with the rest of the team, the best ideas are created in the shower. I think group meetings are important, this is where you level the plain field, this is where you learn about things that are relevant to what you are trying to achieve, providing you are not too set one way already. But then individuals will take the matter at hand and do something with it. If the group tries to dictate the final answer, you will end up with a common denominator and nothing brilliant (well in most cases anyway). But you can use the group as a way to gather the necessary information to make the idea possible.

So, on the other hand, if the information is available so easily, maybe we do not have to pursue knowledge to that extend, maybe we can relax a bit knowing that once information is needed, it will be easily found. Maybe we will find new grounds to compete in, because we will always compete. Maybe we will excel in synthesizing knowledge and create new intelligence that we will freely give for everyone else to make more knowledge with. That is a bit of an optimistic vision, but I kind of like it. I think it will take a while before people feel comfortable giving away information like this. We might have to change the way we make money or even live, so we do not need money. One can always dream...