Information Processing Danger Zone

Burns suggests that, while a flow of new information for a short period initially improves decision-making ability, a continued flow can impair it, unless information processors (i.e. human beings) have had time to integrate that new information into their exisiting frameworks of reference. He argues that the greatest pressure to make a decision paradoxically coincides exactly with that period when information glut is overwhelming information processing capability - the "danger zone" in the graphic above.

From: Christopher Burns, Speech to the National Forum on Information Literacy
Washington DC, 2002