So as I begin to write this, I lean back in my Ikea office chair, and nearly fall flat on my back. This has been the case for months now. So, why haven't I already remedied the problem? The short answer:
Grad school.
The life of the student is rich, but the wallet of the student is slim. But, as has happened every year so far (though past performance is no guarantee of future success, or something like that), my birthday has come around giving me an excuse to splurge on a chair that doesn't consistently hurt my ass if I sit in it for more than ten minutes, and that doesn't attempt to dump me on the floor if I swivel too quickly or, God forbid, lean back (lean back.. yeah lean back...).
Which brings me, finally, to the real point here: the interweb is cool.
Now, you might ask, how exactly was I brought to this point? Well, before I go out to the local big box office retailer to blindly drop my birthday money on some crappy chair that will fall apart almost as quickly as my valiant though poorly constructed Swedish-made torture device, I navigated the aformentioned interweb to this wonderful search engine, Google. From there I branched off to several office chair buyer's guides and some reviews (though surprisingly few for office chairs) on epinions. My searches revealed several absolutely glowing reviews for the Herman Miller Aero chair. Unfortunately, it's like $600 bucks: too dear even on my birthday I'm afraid. But apparently you can adjust this thing to the point where it actually grasps your butt in a firm yet supple embrace every time you sit down.
So here's the thing: the internet makes me a better consumer. I now can walk into the big box office retailer (who I hear through the grapevine is currently having a big office furniture sale... Yes!!) having some idea what to look for. I want a chair that meets or exceeds ANSI/BIFMA standards; that has forward seat tilt, that has a cushion made of memory foam; and so on.
Aside: who the hell thinks of a name that gets you the acronym "BIFMA"? Sounds like the punchline to a bad joke.
I culled this information in the space of a bout half an hour, the results of hundreds or thousands of people's opinions and experiences. While any single piece of information may be misleading (there are some baaaad people out there), the ability to crosscheck across multiple sites leaves me with a good idea of which chairs are good and what to look for. I really never make a major purchase anymore without first having done some lookin' on the old interweb first.
And you know what?
I am rarely disappointed anymore with the things that I buy.
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This, and I think it was the point, is the reason I think it's difficult for their to be too much information with respect to the interweb. My basic familiarity with the concept of "too much information" is that there is so much information that you spend more time sorting the information and not enough time evaluating it and therefore your decision is still not complete. This is complicated by the fact that, especially on the internet, not necessarily every information source is accurate (and in many cases sources are flat-out wrong). However, with a search engine like Google, which works partially to put those sites that receive the most visitors at the top (not entirely true, but there is a correlation) it is at least a little easier to separate the wheat from the chaffe. Ditto for the argument that too much information drowns out the truly excellent information. My experience with product research on the web shows that the excellent information tends to be repeated (sometimes ad naueum actually).
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