Umbral already said it (and what was yet to come)

In a used bookstore, I browse the Cheli DictionaryFrancisco Umbral's book, published in 1983, offers commentary on idiomatic expressions of traditional Madrid slang: more the language of Ramoncín than Cervantes, to put it simply. The book is amusing for those of us who enjoy hybrid words in any language, and because Umbral is both insightful and witty. But I'm mentioning it in this section because there's a passage that immediately catches my eye and prompts me to check out: "Information technology is the antithesis of information. Today we have a lot of data and very little news. The excess of data is the state's excuse for keeping us without news, worldwide." He writes this to comment on the wordnarrowThe article, which applies to a woman who refuses to have sex, uses this term to critically comment on a news story that reveals how those who report rape enter a Kafkaesque labyrinth of bureaucracy. The article in question states that in one year (1981), 4,200 complaints were filed "against honesty," a terrible concept that at the time encompassed sexual assaults. The shame of calling things by their name is both a symptom and a cause of the sexual repression that fosters these infamous behaviors. Incidentally, in 2025, the courts handling cases of violence against women received 51,897 complaints, and we suspect that the number of cases hasn't increased tenfold, but rather that the stigma is beginning to diminish.

In any case, Umbral was already warning that information overload can be counterproductive, numbing. We can compile a thousand figures, but these don't necessarily capture the drama, which is the crux of the matter. And this was 1983, which, viewed through today's lens, is prehistory: a primordial world where all the available information could fit, so to speak, in aUSB driveWe live drowned by the flood.