ON REDUCING THE DETRIMENTAL INFORMATION FLOOD IN THE USE OF INTERNET

Among many positive aspects of the development of the Internet in the last decades, one may also find some damaging ones. This paper centers on the information flood, which any user must face whenever she/he approaches the Internet. The amount of information in the network is hastily increasing and it does not seem to have limits. New studies show that the amount of information in the Internet reaches a value near one zettabyte. Zettabyte is a unit of information equal to 10^21 bytes. Any searching in Internet is, ever increasing, an immersion in a sea of information that may bring high discomfort to the users, caused, especially, by the inability to process all the data read. This research analyses the issue of information flood and proposes a solution to be implemented as an interface between users and the Internet. The creation of this new tool takes into account the requirements from the psychological standpoint and the implementation issues from the telecommunication point of view. The cooperation between psychology and ICT (Information and Computer Technologies) seems crucial to improve the well-being of people in a as technical a society as the current one.