...the problems of widespread saturation in communications flow may arise within the next half century

The information overload has become a dictum, if not a cliché, and some people are going to call this phenomenon information pollution. According to one's temper, people react in different ways: some are trying to reduce this pollution, which is a more active coping strategy, but most people just get tired and suffer from the information fatigue syndrome (IFS). This may come in many forms, from e-mail fatigue, password fatigue, feature fatigue, and much more. Quite new is the social network fatigue, caused by a burnout from self-imposed commitment to get to know as much people as possible via the usual community web sites.
Others are craving for data and become informavores, looking for more and more information. Again, this syndrome comes in many forms, including sort of digital acquisitiveness.
Paul McFedries digs deeper into the various phenomena of fatigues and addictions. Being online since 1994, I recall various phases when I started as curious lurker, becoming an infohoarder and now being busy with filtering information as efficient as possible. Often I remember the days when advertizing in the Internet was rare (if present, at all) and there was no Spam. Being confronted with info crap all the day, fatigue isn't far away for many people. Unfortunately, strategies of advertizers change all along and keep you busy in avoiding this. Switching off TV and computer is not a solution. I'd recommend learning how to cope with this and how to protect from too much news, too much spam, and too much unnecessary knowledge.

To keep up to date with actual nerdism have a look at McFedries' wonderful Word Spy web site.