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Drowning in a Sea of Information

digitalculturist.com

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Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#21

Post by DYZT »

sosuke wrote: post #2

I 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'…

I have a very similar problem of 'get to the main point' in videos. That is why I've built BriefTube (brieftube.net). It gives you instant automatic summarisation of lengthy youtube videos (with more platforms on the way).

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#23

Post by roymurdock »

welanes wrote: post #14

One of the best articles I've read on this topic is here: https://next.ft.com/content/009050e4-75ea-11e2-9891-00144fea... "we overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. I feel this market failure keenly each day when I recommend a fine piece of writing that deserves to be read for years to come and yet will have at most two days in the sun. You never hear anybody say, “I’m not going t…

This is a great article, thanks for sharing.

For me, this is the crux: You can call up a year-old piece as easily as you can call up a day-old piece. And yet we hardly ever do so, because we are so hardly ever prompted to do so.

HN does a decent job of getting old stuff reposted and discussed on the front page, but the internet's main curation process (Google/major media sites) inhibits the discovery of old material. Walk into a library and you're immediately surrounded by old texts ripe for the browsing if you want to walk up and pick on off the shelf.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#24

Post by karpodiem »

Recently quit twitter other than to @ at people directly. Was never a heavy user a Facebook, but came to conclusion that checking it once a day was sufficient. No more RSS - just typing in HN, The Register, and TheVerge a few times a week to catch up. I listen to music instead of podcasts; Apple's Beats 1 station and some local jazz/classical stations.

This has worked wonders for my latent anxiety. I finally feel free.

I very much recommend it, if you feel overwhelmed.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#25

Post by MrQuincle »

The fact that a task has been "done" in my team in Trello leads to an automatic email thanking the people who made it happen.

I think we need to communicate more about the things that have been done. We only tend to celebrate only the really big things. The challenge is to appreciate the small things you have done or experienced in a day.

The feeling of fulfillment is a feeling that requires to be taken serious!

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#26

Post by 50CNT »

peff wrote: post #20
rmelly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see a writing format with something like the following structure: 1) A TLDR of Twitter length 2) A paraphrase of the key concepts and point argued in the article 3) The actual full-length article This way you could ramp up at each stage and decide if it's valuable to keep reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid I actually agree with your list; I think the inverted pyramid is really about prose construction in an age where print space was at a premium. We can be a lot more free with formatting or redundant information (if it is clearly marked as such) on the web. I mostly wanted to point out that the concept is not new, but as far as I can tell, it has been pretty much forgotten…

I've been reading some academic papers recently and taking notes in org-mode.

What I find is that a lot of information expressed in solid paragraphs becomes a lot easier to parse once you convert them into an appropriate list, tree or graph structure. A surprising amount of the text I've been reading is lists that have some relation ("x is used in x_1,...","x consists of x_1,..."). This ties in to authors deciding to shake things up by adding unnecessary complexity to these simple lists. This kills the reading comprehension.

For example

    K. Merton developed in the 1940s his nor-
    mative framework for the conduct of sci-
    ence based on universalism, communalism,
    disinterestedness, and organized skepticism
becomes

     K. Merton developed in 1940s a formative framework of scientific conduct based on:  
     - universalism :  
     - communalism 
     - disinterest :  
     - organized skepticism :
A nice bonus is that that allows me to annotate specific items in these lists very easily, and visually match up items to notes quickly. (Note how that statement itself is a list due to being joined by an "and").

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#28

Post by overcast »

karpodiem wrote: post #24

Recently quit twitter other than to @ at people directly. Was never a heavy user a Facebook, but came to conclusion that checking it once a day was sufficient. No more RSS - just typing in HN, The Register, and TheVerge a few times a week to catch up. I listen to music instead of podcasts; Apple's Beats 1 station and some local jazz/classical stations. This has worked wonders for my latent anxiety. I finally feel fre…

I took it a step further, and just closed the majority of my social network accounts. The main culprit being Facebook. I also put away the phone on the charger before bed, and don't pick up until after my day has started. Now I read more books, go on long hikes, and have more time for my personal projects.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#29

Post by miguelrochefort »

welanes wrote: post #14

One of the best articles I've read on this topic is here: https://next.ft.com/content/009050e4-75ea-11e2-9891-00144fea... "we overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. I feel this market failure keenly each day when I recommend a fine piece of writing that deserves to be read for years to come and yet will have at most two days in the sun. You never hear anybody say, “I’m not going t…

I can feel it already:

"Show HN: Chrome extension that randomly inserts read-later links from Pocket into the HN front page."

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#30

Post by vitd »

DYZT wrote: post #21
sosuke wrote: post #2

I 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'…

I have a very similar problem of 'get to the main point' in videos. That is why I've built BriefTube (brieftube.net). It gives you instant automatic summarisation of lengthy youtube videos (with more platforms on the way).

I'm torn about this. On the one hand, people are very bad at editing in general and editing video in particular. They post 4 minute videos of something cool or funny, where it realistically could have been trimmed down to 10-20 seconds.

On the other hand, this constant need to condense everything, including complex topics, into 10 second sound-bites is problematic, in my opinion. Some topics can't be properly understood without more background or explanation of a position.

I'll have to check out your site. Looks like a cool idea. I just hope it doesn't go too far!

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