Information Overload - where are we at?

"Information is not knowledge"
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
James Gleick

Information overload was a term first popularized by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book Future Shock.  He put forth the case that information overload was similar to sensory overload and had similar effects - disorientation and lack of responsiveness.  However he also went further in describing these effects - "when the individual is plunged into a fast and irregularly changing situation, or a novelty-loaded context ... his predictive accuracy plummets. He can no longer make the reasonably correct assessments on which rational behavior is dependent."

Yet even in April 2008,the New York Times reported that "E-MAIL has become the bane of some people's professional lives" due to information overload, yet "none of [the current wave of high-profile Internet startups focused on email] really eliminates the problem of e-mail overload because none helps us prepare replies".

It is this information overload that many of us appear to be fighting each day as more and more messaging addressed to us or relevant to us comes through our mailboxes.  We're no longer just talking about emails but also Twitter (that mentions us or our business), Facebook (updates from our friends) and instant messaging and texting.  All of these messaging options are looking for a piece of our attention.

It may not, however, all be the fault of the increasing volumes of information coming our way.  In September of 2008 a presentation was given at the Web 2.0 Expo by Clay Shirky entitled "It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure".  Some cognitive scientists and graphic designers have also emphasized the distinction between raw information and information in a form we can use in thinking. In this view, information overload may be better viewed as organization underload.

In his recently published book "The Information", James Gleick writes:

There are two keys to cope with the information flood: searching and filtering. Think about how many times you are having a conversation with a group of people, and the most interesting feature of the conversation is some dispute over something you can't quite remember. Now, any one of us has the power to pull out their iPhone and do a Google search—it's just a matter of who is going to be rude enough to do it first [laughs]. We are now like gods in our ability to search for and find information. But where we remain all too mortal is in our ability to process it, to make sense of it, and to filter and find the information we want.

All of this suggests:

1.  the information wave is not going away or getting smaller
2.  to manage this flood we need the support of the tools we use each day.

Unified Inbox (sign up here for release information) has at its heart the tools required to manage this information flood, to ensure that you can stop overload, and start living.

 

 

 

 

And as we now flood the world with information, it becomes harder and harder to find meaning. That paradox is the final tension in my book