Drowning in a Sea of Information
digitalculturist.com
Drowning in a Sea of Information
1–10 of 62 posts
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#2I think that if there were a clear outline at the beginning of articles, essays or blog posts like this I might waste less time trying to skim them for the point. I didn't read nearly enough of it to find the author's point but personally I've started skipping over content that doesn't present clear goals up front. If I want suspense, mystery and surprise endings I read fiction.
I would think that "Deep Reading" isn't something you can't do today that you could do yesterday but something that has to be prioritized. I never could find time for fiction in my life today like I could chew through books as a kid. I have to divide my attention now because I have taken on responsibilities outside myself. I simply cannot get lost in a book unless I've planned to get lost in a book that day.
I'm writing awfully different than usual today. Oh look my phone is blinking.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#3This is my favorite point in this article:
In addition, the rate at which information is created and shared, dictates the rate at which it is consumed. This encourages a shallow culture that skims, snips, and divides content into small “digestible” pieces that lack depth, all while utilizing technology as a creative crutch to create said content.
I think it well-illustrates this hole we've dug for ourselves and makes it clear that it's pretty hard to get out of. Personally, I'm not really sure how to increase my attention span. I think a big part might be allowing my "queue" of emails and phone notifications to grow and only check my phone at designated periods in the day, e.g. 30 minutes after waking, after the stand up meeting, at noon, at a coffee break at 3 p.m., after getting home, after dinner.
That way, at least, it's checking the phone maybe ten times a day, as opposed to 80 or more. I wonder if there are apps that can suppress notifications (using Android administrator API?) until specific time periods.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#4Tangential - I wonder what's responsible for that downwards spike in "number of indexed webpages" graph?
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#5I think that if there were a clear outline at the beginning of articles, essays or blog posts like this I might waste less time trying to skim them for the point. I didn't read nearly enough of it to find the author's point but personally I've started skipping over content that doesn't present clear goals up front. If I want suspense, mystery and surprise endings I read fiction. I would think that "Deep Reading" isn'…
Tl;dr: infinite information and social streams satisfy our needs, TODOs carry a mental tax, http://project.wnyc.org/infomagical/ worked for the author.
I really wish this was framed differently, so I'd know there was an answer buried in there. I read this as an informational article, and didn't realize there was a "solution" until paragraph 33 out of 35.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#6This is my favorite point in this article: In addition, the rate at which information is created and shared, dictates the rate at which it is consumed. This encourages a shallow culture that skims, snips, and divides content into small “digestible” pieces that lack depth, all while utilizing technology as a creative crutch to create said content. I think it well-illustrates this hole we've dug for ourselves and makes…
"Just" turn off the ringer and put it in a drawer. And close that open e-mail tab in your browser. (If you try it, you'll likely find that it's a rather hard thing to do)
As it turns out, none of the notifications (and very few of the e-mails) are actually relevant to most of our daily lives.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#7I personally love feeling crushed by the vast surges of information that surround me, being able to let go of the need to understand it all, or to ride my hunger for information right down to the very moment before it consumes me.
Basic physics shows there will always a disconnect in the way information flows and the obsession over controlling all information is in my opinion physically impossible.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#8Well, we're drowning in a sea of nearly identical articles about information overload, at least.
It's time we had some novel contributions to the genre: this is not one.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#9I can recommend "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. Made me realize how distracted I am, and how much can be gained by focusing on "deep" work. A quick read, but describes the problem and coping-strategies well.
Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information
#10As the editor of a daily digest about the web platform, I can witness that there are so many new posts, discussions, resources each day, that there is barely enough time to properly process all that content if you do nothing else; I have no idea how web developers cope with this (^_^;).