Information overload: The case for e-learning within Gaia Global

The paper addresses the issues raised by an ongoing digital cities project, coined Gaia Global, concerning how people can learn and use information. Gaia Global main concern is to introduce a 288.000 inhabitant’s city in Portugal – Gaia – to the information and knowledge society. The project aims to provide Gaia with a digital counterpart that represents the region in digital format. This digital representation is not only the World Wide Web but mainly the digital interaction between people and local institutions using any possible channel to help people solve their problems and needs. Among the issues related with this digital cities project, one of the most challenging is to bring people together to use and take advantage of such an infrastructure to deal with information and provide them with the knowledge to know what and how to use it. As just around 34.000 of the 288.000 inhabitants of Gaia have some higher education degree, a true effort must be on place to introduce the digital cities facilities to the main population. E-learning is seen as a strategic concept as it provides the digital tools, methods and technology to help each individual to learn and support the massive effort anytime, anywhere and any user profile that is required to introduce the Gaia Digital to all their potential users. In order to Gaia Digital becomes a successful environment to the region it belongs, there is a need to include the greater number of people possible. It is necessary to consider both the required skill that each individual must have and the huge amount of information generated by such an environment. As a result, the paper also discuss information issues that challenging Gaia Global users and the learning requirements that Gaia Digital must obey in order to deal with information overload problems. The author argues that such an environment can be developed where there is a balanced between the offer of digital services and the people ability to work with it, both the region and their inhabitants benefit from information and knowledge society impact both in economical and social issues. Such a digital cities facility that comprises the need to consider people and try to provide the support for people needs and problems can foster the region and their potential in the same way as highways can act as a competitive advantage to enhance a region’ logistics.