Datalaxia

 

Lifespans keep getting shorter. Obsolescence is no longer just technological: now ideas, discourses, emotions, relationships, and even tragedies age quickly. Everything is ephemeral, recyclable, dispensable. To paraphrase Bauman, the present has become liquid. Not only that—it has become messy and, in many ways, indigestible. The immediacy of the present overwhelms us.

 

Today, calm is an extravagance, and stability a rare commodity. Neither our ability to adapt nor our capacity for astonishment withstands the test of time. Things become obsolete in no time.

It’s often said that history has accelerated so much that the extraordinary has become ordinary. And that makes sense, because it would be impossible to live in constant astonishment. No matter how phenomenal our circumstances are today, we are not: we remain as imperfectly human as our grandparents were.

 

Since the beginning of the 21st century, we’ve been shaken by pandemics, financial crises, climate catastrophes, wars, the boom of social media, hyper-individualism reaffirmed in every selfie, big data and artificial intelligence, fake news spread by algorithms... We have normalized living in a state of alert. The bombardment never stops: data, figures, messages, alerts, stimuli. Instead of understanding, we barely manage to react.

 

Consider this: in 2000, only 7% of the world’s population had internet access. Today, 68% do. We’ve gone from a few hundred million users to over five and a half billion. Never in the history of our species have so many people been in contact with so many others. But we’ve also never been this confused.

 

The fact is, although more people than ever can now be informed, more people are also exposed to deception, manipulation and—above all—noise. Misinformation has become a global plague. Don’t take my word for it: the World Economic Forum stated in its 2025 report that the greatest short-term threat to the planet isn’t climate change, nuclear war, or a new pandemic—but misinformation and disinformation: false information spread unintentionally and intentionally, respectively.

 

Is that it? Are lies the greatest evil? Perhaps not. Perhaps the biggest problem is no longer untruth, but unmanageability. Because in addition to being uninformed, we are overinformed. We’re no longer sure whether what paralyzes us is not knowing... or knowing too much.

 

That’s why I’ve come up with a new concept: datalaxia. From the Latin data (data) and the Greek ataxia (disorder). It is neither an infection nor a computer virus. It’s a cognitive disorder caused by information overload. It isn’t born out of lies, but out of saturation. It’s not falsehood that hinders our thinking—it’s overload.

 

Datalaxia manifests as a kind of lucid paralysis: we know something is wrong, but we’re not sure what. We struggle to distinguish between reality and simulation—not because we’re naïve, but because we’re overwhelmed. The avalanche of data disorganizes us, exhausts us, shuts us down.

 

Censorship is no longer necessary: saturation is enough. There’s no need to hide the truth—just bury it in irrelevance. Between memes, fleeting scandals, hourly opinions, and five-minute headlines, how could we not lose our judgment? Confusion is no longer a flaw—it’s the norm.

 

Datalaxia doesn’t discriminate. It affects the overinformed and the disillusioned alike. It strikes the enlightened skeptic and the credulous militant, the multitasker who thinks they’re staying up to date and the one who’s gone off to live in the woods. It’s the syndrome of the collapsed mind overwhelmed by stimuli: information without hierarchy, knowledge without understanding, connection without meaning.

 

Sharing an opinion no longer requires thinking. Knowing no longer implies understanding. We defend half-formed ideas with crusader-like passion, get outraged at everything and nothing, share what we don’t read, and argue about what we don’t understand. Datalaxia shows up in this wild hyperopinion, in the generalized suspicion that everything is manipulated, in the fatigue of constantly being on high alert.

 

And in the midst of so much excess, paradoxically, we get bored. So many stimuli end up overwhelming our senses. The contemporary individual no longer suffers from lack, but from abundance. It is not deprivation that causes distress —but excess. It is not silence that oppresses— but noise.