Editor and Publisher's David Hirshman writes:
"I realize more and more that my up-to-date knowledge of events has actually become shallower, and that the information doesn't affect me all that much. Twenty-two dead in Iraq bombing. Married magazine editor caught with call-girl in airplane bathroom. An event pops up, gets knocked around the blogosphere for a while, enters my consciousness, and then fades out just as quickly."
I don't find this to be a huge problem, but I'm guessing that many people do. I tag important things into del.icio.us but all too seldom go back and refer to them later. I happen to be lucky enough to remember a lot of things well after reading them, or even skimming them I suppose. Still, I know that with 500+ feeds, IM notifications on some feeds, and a crazy amount of emails - there is a lot I'm probably not absorbing as well as I'd like to. Have other people found good methods of avoiding this problem? I don't think that cutting down on the amount of information we access is the best response, there has to be some cool memory tricks out thee. What are your favorites?
Via Cyberjournalist
Does Web 2.0 make you shallow?
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Ah ha! A visit by the elusive Dimitar Vesselinov! Leader of the pack at Share.opml.org! (Why so slow this week? I thought you'd be up to at least 9,000 subscriptions by Thursday! :) Really, now - do you even remember posting this comment a few minutes ago? I'm fully in support of subscribing to feeds all day long, prioritization and organization can prevent overload - but what of depth? I am especially interested in the above author's concern that it's one thing to read or scan news items - another to make them stick and mean something. How do we make the best use of that information might be another way to put it. How do we not grow cynical about information - often a glimpse into real peoples' lives?
Posted at 2:07PM on May 11th 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick
3. "How do we make the best use of that information might be another way to put it."
It's a $1 trillion question, at least...
Posted at 8:19PM on May 11th 2006 by Dimitar Vesselinov
4. Fair enough!
Posted at 8:25PM on May 11th 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick
5. I think this IS an issue in our society. More and more people I work with seem to have come to view speed of message processing as the key metric of their own work quality. In other words, if they can get to the bottom of their email inbox, IM queue, feedreader, whatever...they've accomplished something. This is scary thinking. All of those things were developed as tools to enable folks to DO something better, NOT focus on them as an end goal in and of themselves. I've one co-worker in particular who seems to process everything at the stream of conciousness level, shooting out emails and IMs like a fiend...none of it particularly coordinated or thought out. Keeping up with her message diarrhea wastes an amzing amount of the team's time. I saw a program on TV about a couple who're "so busy" that they IM each other from one side of the house to the other.
Subscribing to feeds and sending out digital messages is so easy that it is tempting to rely on it to provide a sense of accomplishment and activity. That's fine if it is a meaningful input with direction headed somewhere. However, in many cases it is simply done for its own sake...producing nothing.
Posted at 3:01PM on May 12th 2006 by Jim Sampson
6. Jim, that comment was WAY too long! Ha ha, just kidding. I know that I really need to learn to stop and take a breath before writing or responding otherwise to so much information as well. Thinking is good, but the oxygen that breathing delivers to the brain is even better. I'd love to see some study of value created by 100% frenetic workflow vs. 80% vs 30%. My vote goes (today anyway) to 80% hyperventilation, not full-tilt.
Posted at 3:08PM on May 12th 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick
7. "attack-resistant trust metrics" seem like an inescapable inevitability in our near-future society, but hopefully they will be a managable method of dealing with socially irresponsible netizens and instilling a sense of culpability in the average web-troll who absorbs a disproportionate share of the collective attention span.
Posted at 8:51PM on Jul 8th 2006 by wicks
1. "Have other people found good methods of avoiding this problem?"
There is a solution. I have 8119 Feeds.
http://www.bloglines.com/public/divedi
Posted at 2:03PM on May 11th 2006 by Dimitar Vesselinov