The Abundance Paradox

The abundance paradox is Ann Blair's term — extrapolated from her comparative study of information-management crises across six centuries — for the counterintuitive finding that more information does not reduce cognitive labor but reallocates it from acquisition to evaluation, typically with a net increase. The logic of material abundance (when food becomes plentiful, the labor of obtaining food decreases) does not transfer to information. When information becomes plentiful, the labor of obtaining information decreases — but the labor of determining which information is worth obtaining increases by a greater amount, because the ratio of valuable to valueless material typically worsens as the total supply grows. The individual's total cognitive burden increases, not despite the abundance, but because of it.