"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."
-- Herbert Alexander Simon (sociologist, 1916-2001)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon