Nuggets from Information Anxiety 2

Key points from Information Anxiety 2 by Richard Saul Wurman:

"The great Information Age is really an explosion of non-information: it is an explosion of data." His definition of information is: "Information is that which leads to understanding."

On employee training and education: "Any program should involve employees in their own training. They should be allowed to tailor their own programs, to learn at their own rate."

Ideas and facts: "It is ideas that precede our understanding of facts, although the overabundance of facts tends to obscure this."

Ignorance: "When you can admit to ignorance... you will realize it is the ideal state from which to learn."

Age of Also

Based on part of "Information Anxiety 2", we are now living in the"Age of Also", of adapting to alternatives. we are obssessed with absolutes like top 10's, who are the 400 richest people, who is fastest, smartest, etc. Each new technology that comes along is touted as teh best that will replace the rest, but most of the technologies just seem to keep adding to the rest. Computers were supposed to make paper become obsolete, but it has done just the opposite.

In our new connected world, we will need to master the following concepts:
- Information is not enough
-Organization is as important as content
-Your market is the world
-If you can't integrate, you can't operate
-Size really doesn't count
-It's not the what, but the how
-The web is not the answer to all problems

Information Overload

I am going to explore the topic of information overload. Based on How Much Information 2003? (Lyman and Varion), "The world's total production of information amounts to about 250 megabytes for each man, woman, and child on earth." Someday in the near future everyone will have access to all recorded information.

Before we drown in all of this information, we need to learn to swim and take advantage of what is available to us. Through better training and tools, we will be better able to sort through it and find what we need in order to take advantage of everything we have available to us.