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Drowning in a Sea of Information

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Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#41

Post by mbrock »

50CNT wrote: post #26
peff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been thinking similar things. Also, diagrams are underrated.

Maybe "reading" is a low tech invention that we just don't have the patience for anymore. Instead we want to "explore" a theory or network of statements or social graph.

It's pleasant to click around in Wikipedia and get a sense for how different topics relate, but reading the (often turgid and boring) prose seems like work.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#42

Post by Anthony-G »

heisenbit wrote: post #16
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…

A much deeper discussion in that article - thanks. However you really should warn others that your link is going to old 2013 content and may have been super-seeded by newer blog, twitter or snap-chat posts ;-)

FYI: You presumably meant to write “superseded”. I spent more than a few seconds wondering how the verb, “to seed” would make sense in this context before figuring it out. :)

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#43

Post by mbrock »

Swizec wrote: post #40
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.

> 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 Otherwise known as "real journalism". You know, that thing we collectively decided we don't want to pay for. You just described the "lead, intro graf, story" structure that newspapers have been using for decades if not centuries.

Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals. Most magazine articles don't start with a concise thesis statement, instead they try to hook the reader with something like "As I made my way up the stairs in the convention center, a stocky man with pale blonde hair stopped to ask me for directions to the men's room." and keeps going with this kind of enticing pseudo-fictional storytelling.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#44

Post by TeMPOraL »

mbrock wrote: post #43
Swizec wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Otherwise known as "real journalism". You know, that thing we collectively decided we don't want to pay for. You just described the "lead, intro graf, story" structure that newspapers have been using for decades if not centuries.

Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals. Most magazine articles don't start with a concise thesis statement, instead they try to hook the reader with something like "As I made my way up the stairs in the convention center, a stocky man with pale blonde hair stopped to ask me for directions to the men's room." and keeps going with this kind of enticing pseudo-fictional storytelling.

> Lots of prestigious journalism fails at this, or has different goals.

The answer is exactly that "or" of yours. Informing the reader in an efficient and useful way is a very distant, low-priority goal, and we're all aware of that and yet still somehow pretend journalism is about informing people. It's not anymore.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

Bartweiss wrote: post #39

First, I would note that this is one of the better pieces about attention problems and information overload. Far, far better than a work like Shallow , which weighs down a handful of actual insights with a vast collection of grumpy "good old days" rhetoric. Having said that, I think the piece misses one key motivation for "TLDR culture": most online content is terrible. It is very bad and often non-obviously bad. If…

I totally agree. I've noticed this in my own reading pattern - when I'm linked to an on-line article, I first skim it very fast to identify if there's even anything worth reading in it, and if I determine that there might be, I go back to beginning and start reading.

It's a pattern born from experience - I've wasted way too much time reading through articles only to discover half-way that they could (and should) be summarized in a Tweet.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#46

Post by ghaff »

Swizec wrote: post #40
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.

> 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 Otherwise known as "real journalism". You know, that thing we collectively decided we don't want to pay for. You just described the "lead, intro graf, story" structure that newspapers have been using for decades if not centuries.

Otherwise known as the specific inverted pyramid style historically used by newspapers specifically for technology reasons--so the story could be more or less cut at any point. Many magazines don't follow this format.

That said, as I've written before, a lot of longer pieces ramble around and take way too long to get to the heart of the matter. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a short paraphrase whether it's literally an abstract or a bit more of a teaser (especially if the main point really does need some build-up).

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

henrik_w wrote: post #9

I 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.

I've read "Deep Work" a month ago and by now it's single highest ROI on a HN-recommended book I've ever gotten. Not joking.

I know three weeks is not enough for the habit to make itself permanent, but those last three weeks were for me one of the most productive periods in the last several years. Something must have clicked for me in that book.

In particular, I finally stopped being afraid of the calendar - I now follow the idea of "scheduling every minute of your life", but treating that schedule only as a guideline - i.e. tasks you pre-plan to be doing, but can rearrange at any moment if you see the need. And at least for the last three weeks, that process alone pretty much single-handedly solved most of my procrastination issues :).

(Time to go off HN, btw., my break slot is coming to an end ;).)

The second point that helped me tremendously was on cutting out distractions. After reading the book I've made a resolution to unsubscribe from every newsletter that comes across my mailbox and to turn off any but most important push notifications. With my daily load of e-mail coming down from a hundred to just a few, I feel much less distracted and pretty much got over compulsive checking of the mailbox.

I've also went ahead and read Cal's other book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work". I also recommend it strongly, it has some really good (and come to think of it, obvious) points about approach to work life.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#48

Post by stuxnet79 »

DYZT wrote: post #32
vitd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 underst…

Good point. My app doesn't replace the video as the source, but rather creates a smart way to navigate it. Give it a try. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

Dude you misspelled extension on your site. Ctrl + F for "exstension" to fix.

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#49

Post by theseatoms »

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…

Fwiw, I just copied that link into my 'bookmarks' Evernote note. :)

Re: Drowning in a Sea of Information

#50

Post by hrc2 »

henrik_w wrote: post #9

I 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.

A great companion to "Deep Work" is "Hooked". The second is more of a how-to guide to developing products that become habit-forming. But in seeing how it's done, there's the potential to free yourself from it's grasp.

After reading these books, OP's article feels a little under-researched. Content aggregators like HN, Reddit, Pinterest, and Twitter are essentially using reality as a content generation algorithm. The content provided by reality is the variable reward component of the hook model shown in "Hooked".

It's not just that there's tons of information, it's that we're wired to seek novelty. This is also seen with pornography addiction, which is a more widespread phenomenon than most people realize, or admit.

From a product perspective, is it possible to take advantage of this wiring of the human brain to perform useful work? In other words, if we're wired to seek novelty, and we can create information products that are highly addictive, can we direct human attention to particular problems?

That's not to say that comment chains on Reddit don't provide value, but so many human hours of effort are spent glued to these novelty engines. It all seems inefficient, unpurposeful.

But then again, if the wheels of the economy keep turning, that's all that matters, right? Where are we headed?

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