Information theory seems - this week - to be the source of all my worries. I learned last week that there is a linear relationship between the number of choices a person has to make a decision between and the time it takes to make that decision (Hick's Law - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick_law), suggesting both that information can be quantified and that information processing is as rote an operation as assembling toys in a factory.
If this "quantification of information" is as robust as it at first seems, it implies that all information can eventually be broken down in such a way that it can be mathematicized, calculated, and predicted. That would mean that we could begin to get traction on the "information overload" problem, which I think is going to be the defining problem of the coming generation (if it isn't already).
Much more research to be done, but no time to do it. This is partly because I have learned that I only really work under pressure - so I must limit my unproductive dreaming to relatively tangible, immediate things (like drawing and research) if I'm to achieve anything valuable (like schoolwork and grant proposals.)
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