A few days ago, I ran into a post by Nova Spivack that talks about the work his startup, Radar Networks, is doing. It’s a long article, but here’s a portion that caught my attention (emphasis mine):
As the Web gets vaster and more complex, and as consumers must work with a growing array of content and services, productivity is seriously being threatened — not only in search, but also in every other area of our digital lives. Most of us who work intensively with knowledge and information already have a direct and intuitive experience of how information overload has grown, even in the last decade. Clearly something must be done about this or in another few years we will all be buried in our own information.
The Semantic Web provides the best (and really the only) long-term solution to information overload and complexity. By starting to add richer semantics to data, and by enabling applications to start leveraging this, it will make it possible to help people regain more of their productivity and to make software smarter — without having to attempt to create super-duper science fiction artificial intelligence.
I completely agree with Nova that Information Overload is a serious (and obvious) problem — my love of information has led me down a dark, dark path that keeps my laptop within close range at all times. The technologist in me likes to think that this is a solvable problem — when we finally get around to doing X, Y, and possible Z we’ll look back and laugh about information overload, Y2K, and other crises of yore.
Then reality — or perhaps it’s cynicism — sets in and I realize the only solution to this problem is willpower*.
When I first started using the Internet (in 1995, I’m a huge nerd), my surfing habits were targeted. I would look for something specific, like a technical reference or song lyrics. As time went on, I started adding a set of sites that I visited daily or weekly such as magazines, message boards, and the proto-blogs.
A few years later, I had somewhere between ten and twenty sites that I visited on a daily basis. If it was a slow day, I might conjure up a few other sites to tackle. Time spent visiting these sites was certainly over fifty percent of my time spent on the web — I still used the web for targeted search, more each year, but the daily surfing grew more rapidly.
Fast forward a few years to 2001, when I first started using an RSS aggregator. Suddenly, I was able to get through my daily sites much quicker. So much so, that I found myself with “extra” time. I had developed a habit of web reading, and that thirst wasn’t feeling quenched by the briefer reading sessions.
So I subscribed to a few more sites.
What happens next will surprise no one — my subscription list grew until I was spending as much time reading as I used to, and then increased some more. Unlike my “manual” surfing, the aggregator made sure that I never missed a thing. I thought this was wonderful. I was able to read more than ever, and I nothing got past me!
As I upgraded to newer, better news aggregators, I found myself adding more and more feeds. I was spending more time reading each day, but think of the time I was saving! Eventually, I was subscribed to about 200 feeds, and had over 4,000 unread items — and I completely intended to get to those unread items (in fact, I believe I still have them all shared somewhere …).
At some point, I finally broke, realizing how unsustainable it was trying to keep up with that much news. I switched aggregators, and scrapped my old subscriptions, starting fresh. I’ve done this a few times, and I currently have under 50 feeds — most of which are infrequently updated.
The dream is half right — technology can improve efficiency. It’s just that, at least in my case, I the savings got reinvested back into consumption. This is a risk for all information gluttons, no matter what the technology (blogs, email, etc).
There are many parallels with food consumption — you have to watch what you eat, lest you get fat.
* I should clarify what I mean by “this problem” — search technology has made huge improvements in the ability to find relevant information (topical searching). The problem I’m referring to is the “information overload” of incoming items such as email.
