Chapter 15 and Epilogue Summary and Analysis

Chapter 15 is called "New News Every Day (And Such Like)." With the flood of information comes information overload, Gleick writes. It is not a new concept. He quotes from the 17th-century scholar Robert Burton who felt overwhelmed by the amount of news he received every day. The sheer amount of information and the speed at which it travels now is remarkable and presents the problem of finding what is useful among the flood.

We have developed two main strategies for coping with the flood, Gleick explains, filtering and searching. Without indexing that allows for searching, the Internet is just a jumble like unshelved library books. This has fundamentally disrupted the way in which information was organized, he argues.

The Epilogue is subtitled "The Return of Meaning." In it, Gleick presents his optimistic view of the future regarding...