Beyond Email
Information Overload
Blogs, Wikis
Always Connected? Why?
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
• Can you have too much information?
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
• Can you be “Too Busy to Notice You’re Too
Busy”?
Alex Eben Meyer
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/business/31shortcuts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
• Google – type in “Information Overload”
• You get 3,630,000 hits. Last semester at this
point in the semester there were 1,900,000 hits.
• An entire series of photos and cartoons are
available to browse
• Research papers have been published from
all over the world.
• There was more information, on information
overload than I could actually manage
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Is this the image of an Information Junkie?
http://www.mathewingram.com/work/tag/cool/page/2/
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit08/credit08_01.phtml
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Know what you know
Are you suffering from information overload?
We develop technologies that enable access to your
hidden knowledge and help you manage your data
efficiently.
http://www.kno10.com
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
http://pro.corbis.com/search/Enlargement.aspx?CID=isg&mediauid=DA083866-353A-4525B3C2-9B86BE395F79
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
•
Issue is mainstream when articles appear in
• New York Times
• Readers Digest
• Books about it available on Amazon
• The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and
the Limits of Working Memory (2008)
• Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information
and E-mail Overload (2007)
• Surviving Information Overload: The Clear,
Practical Guide to Help You Stay on Top of What
You Need to Know (2004)
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Information-OverloadClearPractical/dp/031025115X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237997588&sr=8-2
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Look at this quote:
“Fighting data asphyxiation is difficult but possible”
“Data is like food. A good meal is served in
reasonably-sized portions from several food groups.
It leaves you satisfied but not stuffed. Likewise
with information, we're best served when we can
partake of reasonable, useful portions, exercising
discretion in what data we digest and how often we
seek it out.
Unfortunately, we often do the opposite, ingesting
information constantly to the point of choking on it.
The risk of information asphyxiation touches all of
us -- managers, Web surfers, even lazy couch
tubers.” William Van Winkle
http://www.gdrc.org/icts/i-overload/infoload.html
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Look at this quote:
“Of all the tools we use in the modern office, few are
the double-edged sword that e-mail has become.
Once a method for quick and easy communication,
e-mail has evolved into a time-consuming—but
necessary—evil in today's workplace. In fact, the
average user spends over 30% of his day creating,
organizing, reading and responding to e-mail.
But it's not just overflowing inboxes that vex today's
knowledge worker. Blogs and RSS feeds keep you
constantly connected to the world at large. Social
groups such as Facebook and LinkedIn keep you
continually networking. Then there's the actual
work you have to do. In fact, on average, you start
doing something new every three minutes.
This is more than a busy day. This is information
overload.”
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ideasfromibm/us/email/20081020/index.shtml
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
• Can there be too much information?
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Can there be too many books in a library?
Too many movies?
Too many music CDs?
Too many papers to read?
Too many web sites to visit?
Too many videos?
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Can there be too much information?
•
“The Internet, as we know it, removed previous
barriers to publication: the money required to buy a
printing press or a transmitter or…”
• Before the Internet, “information” was limited but
an unintended consequence was that the amount of
information was also manageable.
• “The amount of stuff on the Internet is of a
magnitude larger than any previous collection of
any sort.”
• “We’re reaching the point where it’s too large to be
effectively, searched, filed, indexed, briefed,
organized, or numbered.
• But we still try.”
Kantor, Andrew, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2007-06-14internet-organization_N.htm
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Can there be too much information?
• “Search tools dispense with categories and let
users define their needs ad hoc.”
• Everything's in a pool
• Keywords narrow it down.
• Search tools have become less useful over the
last few years
• “too much stuff to search”
• Without very, very careful categories a search
results in hundreds of thousands of hits.
• New and better ways of searching the Web are
needed.
− Lots of ideas to make the searching more
manageable
− More specialized searching
– Tools like Wikipedia and it’s sister sites
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Can we handle all our information Toys?
• First there was Email
• Then there was Email with SPAM
• Then there was Email with filters that filter
some SPAM and well..
• Then there was the Web
• Can we get through a day without checking key
web sites
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Class sites
News sites
Business sites
Political sites
Games sites
Music sites
Wikipedia
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
• Enter My/Our World!
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Check Email (on multiple accounts)
Check regular web sites
Check Email
Then my Palm (personal digital assistant –Ugh!)
reminds me of a meeting or a class
Attend meeting or class
Then I get a text message, or a phone call or both
Then of course there is my Email
Then someone comes to my office
Then of course there is my Email
And somewhere in between, I try to get some work
done.
• And the pattern repeats all day long
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Can we handle all our information Toys?
• Workers in the “Information Age, need to develop
skills for managing information overload.”
• This overload is caused by the “rapid rate of
growth in the amount of information
available”
• While days remain 24 hours long
• And our brains remain roughly the same as
they were in caveman days.
Krill, Pau, http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ca/xml/00/01/10/000110caoverload.html
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
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Do we really need all these Toys?
Do we need to be connected 24/7?
Has all this information made us better – somehow?
How much information is enough?
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia5FxoeFJWI
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/ipod-shuffle-video(iPod Shuffle. )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yhZaJnqdRY (information overload)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv99WA0xyNk (Ted Koppel on
Info. Overload)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INFe-YkHjbw (Info. Overload Ex.)
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Headlines like these should scare us into thinking
hard about Information Overload:
• Reuters Study Reveals Growing Danger Of Information
Addiction Worldwide And A New Generation Of
Dataholics (1997)
• Information could become the ‘drug of the nineties’
http://www.netaddiction.com/bio/reuters.htm
• Information Overload: Is There a Cure? (2008)
• Between meetings, mobile phones, e-mail and IM, we're
failing victim to the stresses of daily business.
Interruptions are here to stay.
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3737601
• Is Information Overload a $650 Billion Drag on the
Economy? (2007)
• an estimate of the “cost of unnecessary interruptions”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/is-information-overload-a-650-billion-drag-on-theeconomy/
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
• Technology isn’t the solution to everything?
• We need to set limits and boundaries.
• “Key to information management is focusing on the
quality of the data your receive.”
• Recognizing quality is hard
• Who do you believe?
• Alan Lightman, an MIT humanities professor and
physics lecturer said,
“ I think that the high-speed information technologies,
while very useful in many ways, have robbed us of
our necessary silences of time to reflect on values
on who we are and where we’re going.”
Krill, Pau, http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ca/xml/00/01/10/000110caoverload.html
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Information Overload
Ways to beat back the overload
Do
• Develop an information management plan that works
for you.
• Filter information.
• Recognize that you cannot possible look at all
relevant data before you make a decision.
• Attempt to recognize quality data.
• Take control.
• Create “down” time
Don't
• Let information take control of you by working 60 to
70 hours per week.
• Take cell phones or computers on vacations.
• Attempt to examine every piece of data available.
• Focus on things beyond your control, such as the idea
that every minute there is more and more information
out there…..
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Krill, Pau, http://www.infoworld.com/articles/ca/xml/00/01/10/000110caoverload.html
Beyond Email
Organizing Information might be a way past
Information Overload!
Wikis
Blogs
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Collaboration Wikis
So what’s a Wiki?
Great Idea:
http://en.wikipedia.org
• “A wiki is software that allows registered users or
anyone to collaboratively create, edit, link, and
organize the content of a website, usually for
reference material. “
• Wikis are collaborative websites and are often used as
a way to keep data on community websites up-to-date.
• Wikipedia is the best known wiki.
• Wikis are used by businesses on intranets as a way of
managing information (reducing information overload).
• Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki originally
described it as “the simplest online database that
would possibly work.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email –
Collaboration Wikis
• Wikis are for collaborative writing
• Groups of individuals, anywhere, working
together in a written, web format
• Website is hosted making it available to users
• Can be a collection of connected sites, and
hyperlinked documents
• “A wiki is essentially a database for creating,
browsing and searching through information.”
(Leuf, Bo. & Cunningham, Ward, The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web.,
2001)
• Easy to create, easy to edit, easy to update
• NOT reviewed by anyone other than the users
• Kids in High School and Middle School create
group projects using wikis
• It is an easy way to comment on and enhance each
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
others work
Beyond Email –
Collaboration Wikis
• Public Wikis
• Public group forums for sharing information
• Usually require user accounts and special logins so
everyone in the wikis’ community knows who is
changing the material
• Edits are in real-time and instantly appear on the web
making it possible for unhappy users to abuse the
wiki.
• Some public wikis (ex: wikipedia) have a site
moderator who can lock down abused sites.
• Private Wikis
• Often require user authentication to edit and change
pages
• Can be hosted on systems not directly on the Internet
but only on a local Intranet
• Check out: http://www.wikispaces.com/
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email -Blogs
Great Idea:
• A blog (an abridgment of the term web log)
is a website, usually maintained by an
individual, with regular entries of
commentary, descriptions of events, or
other material such as graphics or video.
• Entries are commonly displayed in reverse
chronological order.
• "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to
maintain or add content to a blog
• A software environment that runs as a web page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email -Blogs
• Blogs are online diaries
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Can provide news and commentary on events
Often include text, pictures and sometimes video
Readers can comment on what the blogger reports
Unlike a wiki, readers cannot change the bloggers
content
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email -Blogs
• Blogs come in all shapes and sizes and
cover all topics
• NY Times, and other media outlets, has blogs where
the newspaper can report and receive comments from
readers
• http://www.nytimes.com/ref/topnews/blog-index.html
• Personal Blogs
• Corporations have blogs to increase communication
and disseminate information
• By “readership”: education blogs, political blogs,
travel blogs, movie blogs, fashion blogs, you name it
there’s a blog for it.
• Dilbert Bolg http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/
• The Facebook Blog http://blog.facebook.com/
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email -Blogs
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email -Blogs
• There are free blogger sites:
https://www.blogger.com/start
• How do we know our content is secure?
• How do we know where to host a blog?
• Review of Blogging sites:
− http://hostingreview.com/?gclid=CLjmx8z34pICFQNEPAod4SWSdw
• Gaggle, Launches Safe Blogging site for
Schools and Students.
http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com/news-blog-website-gagglelaunches-safe-blogging-site-for-schools-and-students-1926.html
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner
Beyond Email
• Information Overload is a part of our lives
• Whether we embrace it or not, it is here to stay
• There is some value in being disconnected for
some period of time, each day, each week,
each….
• Wikis and Blogs
• Help us organize our information
• But what we say and how we say it can then
become who we are forever, and for every one.
• Data can haunt us or help us or both
• Finding Balance is the critical question
Copyright © 2008 by Helene G. Kershner