The demands of the information age have created an ever increasing level of detail. Some people really enjoy the details. Other people hate it.
The level of detail needed to manage everything has increased exponentially.
Unfortunately, this ever increasing level of detail does need to be managed. Databases give you the illusion that you can manage everything. In fact, the disappointment you feel when you are told there isn’t a way to do something in some application is palpable.
However, every field that is added to a database makes everything just much more complex. It is more than N+1. I think it is actually N+1 factorial, but I am not a math guy.
At the same time, customers information expectations have increased significantly. How often do you think to yourself that they (whoever they are) should have known that.
There are so many points of information failure. Maybe the information is captured, but the user didn’t look for the information, or didn’t look for it in the right way. Maybe the information was never captured. Maybe the information was captured incorrectly, etc.
Eliminating all information defects is probably unrealistic too. Even in situations where information is captured automatically without end user intervention, it is often captured in the most literal way possible.
Information requires attention in every dimension, and because information is infinite and attention is limited it always feels like we always need to be paying more attention.
