Hyperinformation

The era from somewhere around 1980 until at least 2008, or maybe as late as 2020, in the United States, and probably in many other countries as well, could be described as having a liberal cultured that was hyperinformed: paralyzed by too much information.  It wasn't just that we felt an "incredulity towards all metanarratives" - even if we had been credulous, we wouldn't have been able to apply metanarratives even if we wanted to.  The phrase "infodumping," which was coined in 1978, is telling.  So much information was dumped on us that it became impossible to process it, to categorize it, to feel anything about it, or to do anything about it.  We became numb, jaded, depoliticized, more thoroughly alienated, apathetic.  We were so overwhelmed that it didn't even feel like being overwhelmed anymore - it ceased to have any emotional, rational, or conscious impact on us whatsoever.  We became mere passive spectators, information flowing at us from all directions relentlessly, merely absorbing it - or not even absorbing it, letting it crest over us in waves of incomprehensibility.  It's more than a roller coaster ride - the key aspect to it is that it never ends, it never pauses, it's just one thing after another, and a thousand things at once.  It's nauseating.

I have to admit that there's some kind of weird pleasure I feel in response to hyperinformation. Could it be that this is the contemporary form of the sublime?

Now, with AI, we're in a different culture phase, post-hyperinformation.  Will we miss the "good old days" of hyperinformation?