Lately, I’ve been railing against information overload—the oversupply of unfiltered data from an ever-increasing number of sources. Even when those sources are trusted, or based on explicit search, the sheer volume of results is overwhelming. Finding actionable information too often takes more time than we have. Clay Johnson’s new book, The Information Diet, takes issue [...]
Archive for February, 2012
The Digital Connection Addiction
It’s popular these days to rail against technology—especially all that smartphoney-gamey-iPody-texty-Internety kinda stuff that all those kids and those Starbucks loners do all day long. It’s an addiction! Get a job! (Wait. I’m writing this at a coffee shop. I can quit whenever I want, right?) Seriously though, pundits will be pundits, and “addiction” is [...]
Digital Assistance
Do you remember the Knowledge Navigator video? In 1987, shortly after Jobs’ first departure from Apple, the Scully regime produced this futuristic look at collaborative technology.* In hindsight, it seemed to anticipate Mosaic, WiFi, Skype/FaceTime, Siri, and many other technologies. For geeks of the Mac persuasion, it was a positive, HAL-like experience, without all the [...]
Alternatives to Mopping
One of my favorite expressions—humorous and tragic—is, “I’m too busy mopping the floor to turn off the water.” Notice, I didn’t say “you.” Let’s be frank; it’s not just the jerk standing in the way of progress. Each one of us spends many, many hours keeping various crises at bay, and too few hours figuring [...]
Beyond the Digital Turning Point (Part 2)
In my last, I went semi-ballistic on the “E-Nuff Already” section of the new USC Annenberg report, “Is America at a Digital Turning Point?” However, the flood of unfiltered noise represented by social media messaging is only one of several excellent points in the study. I’ll skip the predictions that print newspapers will be dead [...]
Beyond the Digital Turning Point (Part 1)
USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future is releasing yet another provocative report, “Is America at a Digital Turning Point?” It’s a ten-year perspective on Americans’ relationship with online technology—including the personal costs of time, privacy, and well-being. For those who can afford the full report, it’s undoubtedly worth the price. For the rest of [...]
Lighting a Candle
Help! We’re up Information Overload Creek without a paddle. With each new device, every new connection, the promise of easy access to data is being fulfilled—but not in a good way. We’re increasingly slaves to information technology, not the reverse. Automated search alerts, news feeds, emails, and now social posts (even from trusted, qualified sources) [...]