Information Overload

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

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.


posted by Aliooplv @ 5:45 PM  

5 Comments:

  • At December 13, 2004 at 7:24 PM, Blogger Aliooplv said…

    The more I read on this subject, the more research is found that a person's performance positively correlates with the amount of information he/she is exposed to up to a certain point and if further info is provided beyond this point, their performance declines rapidly. the info receieved after that point no longer integrates into the decision-making process. This is the definition of information overload.

    An example of Info Overload from The Concept of Information Overload: A Review of Literature from Organization Science, Accounting, Marketing, MIS, and Related Disciplines by Martin J. Eppler and Jeanne Mengis is when the "Amount of reading matter ingested exceeds amount of energy available for digestion; the surplus accumulates and is converted by stree and overstimulation into the unhealthy state known as information overload anxiety.

    I am starting to feel this way with some of the projects we have done in this program too Nick. :)

     

  • At December 13, 2004 at 7:36 PM, Blogger Aliooplv said…

    An interesting fact I read is that a typical worker today who uses technology and information within the context of his or her job, spends more than 40 percent of their day processing work-related information. This includes emails, instant messages, phone and conference calls, etc. (Information Overload, by Tim Barkow)

    Microsoft has a new project, MyLifeBits, which is a powerful tool that allows you to organize information. This may help reduce information overload.

    Another way to reduce the stress is to find out if you are goal, learner, or socially motivated, which will help you in your navigating. The older (beginning) web was focused on information creation, where now we are starting to see trends in information management/organization, like blogs, search engines, etc.

     

  • At December 13, 2004 at 7:43 PM, Blogger Aliooplv said…

    Just reflecting on the last few articles I read, information is everywhere and spreading so fast. We see it with the latest diet fads (low carbs, low calories, etc) Trying to read all of those labels and trying to figure out what you should really be looking for can be overwhelming.

    We also have so many ways to communicate information now, that too can be overwhelming. When I opened my work email this morning, I had over 500 emails. I have 5 other accounts that have about the same amount of mail as well as getting text and instant messages. Those alone in one day can be overwhelming.

    With all of this information, people can get information anxiety and just shut down. I love having all of this information available to me. I can go find just about anything one the internet and very quickly too, now with all of the search engines available to me. If I don't want the info, I can turn my computer, phone, or tv off and ignore the info.

    I love having all of this information available to me, but I know it can be overwhelming to others. Anyone else out there agree???

     

  • At December 13, 2004 at 7:57 PM, Blogger Aliooplv said…

    www.clusty.com is a new search engine that launched 9/30/04.

    Clusty is a meta search engine, meaning it pulls together results from other search engines, such as Lycos, Wisenut, LookSmart and MSN. The company does not crawl the Web itself or index Web pages, as other search engines do.

    As with other search engines, Clusty returns listings of results ranked by relevance, but the Web site also clusters the results into categories, displaying them in folders in a column to the left of the main results.

    A search for Information Overload, for example, clusters results into categories such as "Management," "Research" and "Overwhelmed."

     

  • At December 17, 2004 at 1:05 AM, Blogger Vicki Suter said…

    Another great resource on this topic is "Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut," by David Shenk (New York, New York: Harper Collins, 1997).

    I'm interested in the future convergence of content management systems, learning management systems, knowledge management systems and personal information managers - in the next generation of networked software.

    But for now, we are limited to organizers. The Macintosh seems to have the best selection to choose from, as described in an article on "The Outboard Brain," (see http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/08/05/outboard_brains.html).

    OneNote is a Microsoft product that has some promise for organizing notes - see http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/prodinfo/occupation/education/default.mspx

     

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