@rafer direct #involvements

the most important strategy for coping with information overload is to simply relax and not worry about missing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity lurking somewhere in one of your inboxes – it’ll be around again shortly.

Cory Doctorow (via putitperfectly)

(via thewavingcat)

There’s no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure.

Clay Shirky (via bryantshea)

informationabundance

HighTouch: The President drinks from the 'information overload' Kool-Aid →

informationabundance

hiten:

The U.S. Consumes 3.6 Zettabytes in One Day Edition - - Lifehacker

Rafer sez:
We didn’t consume this much data and information per capita even half a generation ago. I’m with Steven Johnson. It has an effect. That effect is not information overload. In fact, Everything Bad is Good for You. Your processing of complex interactions improves, as does your synthesis of data from multiple streams.

This was the first nonfiction book in my current Audacious Reading Cycle.

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 A. Simon, 1971

Possibly the most concise description of our modern struggle.

(via designtumblelog)

(via delayprocrastinate)

TUMBLR is currently my dilemma.

(via anin)(via libraryland)(via ronmarks)(via pukomuko)(via lkt)

Rafer sez:
I now have an entire string of posts disagreeing with this point of view. Information overload only occurs when the structure of the information being offered to you isn’t intuitive for you. It’s not the amount of information; it’s that you’re stuck in a meta-rut due to age, attitude, or lousy intellectual environment.

Some months ago I tweeted something about the problems of information overload and my friend Jof Arnold replied that he didn’t see any of his non-techie buddies thinking or worrying about this problem and questioning if there is much of an opportunity here (excluding web search as ‘already done’).

Opportunities created by the growth in data | The Equity Kicker

Rafer sez:
Maybe overload is an enterprise problem, maybe not. None of my non-SiliValley pals complain about it in my hearing. I hear complaints about NOT finding enough good stuff, but never about finding too much stuff.

you never hear 20-year-olds talking about information overload because they understand the filters they’re given. You only hear, you know, forty- and fifty-year-olds taking about it, sixty-year-olds talking about because we grew up in the world of card catalogs and TV Guide. And now, all the filters we’re used to are broken and we’d like to blame it on the environment instead of admitting that we’re just, you know, we just don’t understand what’s going on

Clay Shirky (via Scott Heiferman) (via betaworks)

Rafer sez:
Don’t worry. You aren’t overwhelmed; you are just obsolete.