The ways in which people communication, process, share and select  information has been dramatically changed since the Internet has been put into practice. Information has never been important than ever in today’s society. Living in the so-called information society, it is vital for individuals and organisations to have the right and ability to capture the information they want in an effective and efficient manner. While this is the ultimate objective being pursued by everyone, it is more easily said than done because of the shadow of information overload. The aim of this article is to examine some of the causes and effects of information overload and illustrate some of the possible methods that could be used to overcome such problem.

The reasons why people experience information overload are vary. They can be generally categorised as the quantity of historical data, the accuracy and relevancy of the data and the lack of means by which the data can be easily analysed.  These are further linked with the way that how technologies are being used in the information society.

The EURESCOM PARTICIPANTS in Project P947, which involve four giant telecommunication companies in Europe:  Swisscom AG Tele Danmark A/S Telenor AS  Eircom plc (2001) attribute the root causes of information overload to several elements including Computer mediated communication (CMC), Mobile access, Always-on’ capabilities of networks, Hypertext, Life-style related factors, New marketing strategies and technologies etc. It is obvious that the Internet is likely to become the root cause of IO .

The InternetWorldStates (2006) reported that the Internet usage growth increased from 16 million of users in 1996 to 1096 million in 2006, and certainly such trend will probably continue. A direct impact derived from the Internet is the use of e-mail.  Amis (1999) reported that: "One study, Messaging Practices in the Knowledge Economy, commissioned by Pitney Bowes Inc. and undertaken in 1998 by the Institute for the Future claimed that 38% of UK workers were 'very distracted' by interruptions from emails and other electronic communications such as cellular phones, voicemail and fax. The study claimed that UK workers said they had to deal with an average of 171 electronic communications per day, while their American counterparts were apparently dealing with over 200 a day. "

In the world of economics, there is a concept called diminishing returns.  Worthington et al (2005) define this concept as: “…as more of a variable factor is combined with a given volume of a fixed factor, then eventually both marginal and average returns to the variable factor must decline.” Suppose the human brain is a container processing a fixed amount of information, with the information received is a non-stop growing variable, there will be a stage at which information can become too much and people will be overwhelmed. 

Despite technologies, human beings ourselves may be the real cause behind. Individuals should be considered as goal-seeking, cybernetic systems. This implies that individuals will always have the need to make decisions and this is only available if there is information available to support the selection process. Although there is usually one final decision made by an individual, people tend to consider as many alternatives as possible and each possible alternative being considered could become a potential requirement for some information. Needless to explain why search engine has gained much popularity, yet some useful information are hardly embedded within the thousands of result pages.

Having said this, some organiztions have made great effort to overcome the IO issues. Zeldes (2000), an engineer from Intel, designed a training program involving three steps targeting at information management: Awareness training, Group Discussions and Skills Coaching. http://blogs.intel.com/it/2006/10/information_overload_iii_first.html

The program was deployed across the company and the result was rewarding. Zeldes (2006) found that 80% of participants viewed it as beneficial, there was an improvement in the e-mail effectiveness in 71% of employees ; 63% saw an improvement in the quality of e-mail they receive from others; and the group e-mail effectiveness had an increase in the eyes of 75% of managers.

Such an initiative should be considered as a good practice because it takes teamwork, co-ordination and communications between people within an organization as the staring point and illustrates the important role of human factor in battling through information overload. In addition, self- assessment of things like e-mail etiquette and stress and time management skills will all work well alone with technical knowledge. This also reveals a hope for people who are under the pressure of information overload. Perhaps there is nothing such as information overload, all we need is the improvement in our knowledge and skills, some awareness of how to command the information around us and co-operations with people living and working with us.