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23 Jun 08

people are unable to 1) think, 2) read on the web

www.techcrunch.com/...surviving-the-net - Preview

informationoverload

The town crier, letters, telegraph, phone, email, IM - the stages of evolution to today’s real time swirl of information overload. As RSS allowed us to orchestrate our input streams into a more interactive daily newspaper, it also created a new measure of authority, one derived in a more personalized way to reduce the flow to something manageable in the time allowable while maintaining the fundamental ability to return to the forest and hunt for the next meal.
Do we friend everybody, nobody; follow, track, hide? Interestingly, the words mirror the dynamics of the hunt, the foraging, the kill, the triage known as sharing.
67 more annotations...
- What social scientists are discovering is that sharing produces a better outcome than hoarding. As Jonathan Schwartz so ably proved in his conversation at Supernova, Sun Micro’s open sharing of software proves much more efficient in creating a partnership with its customers than traditional marketing. The customers establish a connection by downloading the code, and then continually signal their needs, intentions, and even ideas at a granular level based on how they use the code, update it, ask questions, and so on. Sun turns this into an interactive, real time map that produces much greater lead generation and fulfillment than previous systems.
  
  Our nervous systems are designed to use these real time feedback loops to manage the flow of body resources to confront the task of survival. Establishing the relative weight of signals becomes a substantial portion of our investment in survival. Those nodes that produce the highest value of data in the most efficient form reliably over time win. Applications like Twitterly demonstrate the aggregate power of these distilled signals.
- Steve, I won’t be the first, nor the last, to say that you need to tone it down a bit with your writing. You’re trying too hard to impress and you’re losing readers: this isn’t an academic forum, it’s a blog.
  
  What you have to say might be worth reading, but if you can’t find a more a more direct way of expressing yourself, few will ever notice. I suggest spending a few days with some of Hemingway’s work to reacquaint yourself with the value of a simple, declarative sentence.
- There are times when complex issues need further exploration. The subject of social info flow is one of them. Interesting read, much appreciated information from Steve Gillmor. Infohunting sparks within us that sense of exploration, excitement. To share our discoveries with our “networks” stimulates us and continues to engage our circles- this is a positive development in communal communication. The gatekeepers of news/info no longer hold supreme authority- that power is seeping down to us. Now it’s up to us to keep it relevant and trustworthy.
- it’s more Twitturly and Tweetburner than TinyURL. And frankly more Friendfeed and other aggregators that allow you to build your own trusted network of relevance.
  
  Your comment should have been that we have no context of destination or content from TinyURL but only that of the poster. That’s even more true, which makes TinyURL kinda worthless.
- I have no idea what this article is about
- That was really deep. I’m still perplexed as to what it all meant, but it sounded positive for URL shortening services. Maybe you need to provide a layman’s version of your article along-side it for us simpler folk.
- I have no idea why you bothered to write this BS. You have stunned the Internet.
- I applaud Steve for trying to achieve a deeper understanding. If you are not interested in that, then it’s just not your cup of tea, but don’t knock him for it.
  
  There is plenty of other content on TechCrunch to consume.
- What the f**k are you talking about? I can’t has understand you about talking.
  
  Are you sure this article is in English?
- Reading this post was like a trip to the dentist for a bad wisdom tooth.
- WORST POST EVER
- This post is unreadable.
- What a load of BS. Those who can’t, blog.
- drinking today? hehe ..
- The spacebar comment means just skip these posts, he doesn’t care to have a large audience.
  
  Here’s my summary: TinyURL works b/c one only clicks TinyURLs from a friend they trust.
- Point 1: TinyURL, Snurl and URLHawk shorten long links. That makes it easier for us to share stuff.
  
  Point 2: Without short links, less stuff would get shared, especially on cell phones, Twitter and Blackberry.
  
  Point 3: Links from people we know help us decide what to pay attention to.
  
  Point 4: People rank friends/family to be the most trustworthy, reliable source of information, eg, new products.
  
  Bottom Line: The platform that makes it easiest for us to find, send
  
  and get the most stuff from the most people wins.
  
  Steve, forgive me if I tinyURLed your premise incorrectly.
  
  best,
  
  bonnie
- I can’t say I have any idea what you’re talking about.
  
  Although, when confused, I automatically think about kittens. So from the viewpoint of liking kittens, nice article.
  
  Cuddly.
- Thanks for taking the time to digest and regurgitate this for post for us Bonnie. Now I’m actually able to comprehend the point
- mike i’m sending you an invoice for the time i wasted reading this drivel. the bad news is i read slowly. the good news is i work cheap.
- Steve, have you noticed the reoccurring trend of people bashing your posts? I assume you believe that its because your blogs are so profound and intellectual — the layman cant comprehend it, right?
  
  Seriously… these unintelligible musings of yours hurt the quality of this site.
- Who the h*ll is Steve Gillmore and why the f*ck did I have to see this post in my RSS reader.
  
  Arrington, try some quality control please.
- god….
  
  i haven’t seen someone on these kind of drugs in a while!!
  
  ummm.. you are doing drugs while you’re typing this aren’t you.!!??
  
  if you aren’t - oops! my bad!!
- Steve’s just fucking with us.
  
  Nobody writes that bad.
- his prolixity might not hold well with the “zero attention span” generation.
- I got to the 3rd paragraph and gave up….
- Mike Arrington, please remove this guy already. His posts are empty nonsense.
- Wow, this is painful.
- Maybe I am just stupid, but I read it twice and I’m still not sure I understand your point.
- Steve Gillmor should write less.
- Filter out all Gillmor posts: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/p.....veSj9YS63A
- wtf is this article about? it’s like one of those random text generators where the words don’t make sense. what’s happened to techcrunch over the last month or so?
- wrap up your story and bring your thoughts together!
- The problem with this post is that Steve could have made the point in half the words and in more readable terms. Instead, only a few people made it through the whole post, and only a small percentage of those readers even understand it.
- Almost every comment here is critical of Steve’s writing style. Hopefully this feedback is considered before inviting him to write again.
- is Arrington performing acid tests with his writers now? What’s the point of even posting on the weekends if this is the result?
- Oh, god, make it stop…Michael, you have to take this assclown off your site now…none of his posts make any sense, they’re painful to read. Once the users spend their time making fun of the author, he’s done…pull the plug, this is just embarrassing you. I can’t even finish these damn things…
- I thought I was going to actually learn something about “Surviving the Net” but I missed it. I honestly have to say that after a while I was wondering if someone had haxored techcrunch and posted a random snippet from a sociology textbook.
- It’s an easy trick to produce something that is incoherent and then lay the burden of understanding wholly on the reader. If the reader doesn’t understand the author throws his hands in the air and says the reader isnt smart enough. In his head he says “Who cares if the reader doesn’t understand, my boss knows I’m smart and it makes sense in my head.”
- Worst post on techcrunch ever - it’s just a load of unreadable garbage. Looking forward to normal posts resuming.
- It’s not like Steve is saying highly controversial but potentially interesting things like Rush Limbaugh or Cindy Sheehan. He’s certainly not saying complex things in simple ways like Noam Chomsky or Jon Stewart.
  
  He’s saying simple things in complex ways. He obsesses on certain sites like Twitter and misunderstands technologies like XMPP. He replies to his detractors with attacks.
  
  Mike, what the hell are you doing? Why are you wasting this valuable space on someone your readers overwhelmingly don’t like? Does Steve have pictures of you in compromising positions?
  
  Please, help us understand!
- It does take more effort to glean Steve’s meaning than for most of the stuff on the Web but I usually find it worth the effort. And maybe I’m the only one, but I like the dense metaphorical writing style.
- This is a world where a ring tone hit the top of the charts in the UK and true artists die penniless. The hurtful manner of response is not conversation, it is fecal shotgunning. Why not ask for a clarification
- Sometimes the guy with the most experience in the room doesn’t transmit the message in a way you can understand
- Some of you trust Mike Arrington to provide you with information that you can trust, understand and use. He in turn must find some value in what Steve says or he wouldn’t have extended the chance to blog here to him.
- As for style and presentation, I will not defend Steve this time. I enjoy his writing or I wouldn’t be here reading it each week. Those people I don’t like reading, I don’t bother. I don’t ask you to learn something and I don’t say that there is something here to learn. That is for you to decide.
  
  And you could always ask a question, start the conversation, rather than loading your cannon with fresh waste to Pollack another comment section with.
- brilliant. and a great mirror in these comments.
- “Many of you seem to have a lot of spare time that might be better used by hitting the space bar.”
  
  Your time would be better used by hitting the delete key, Gillmor. Deleting 95% of the words in this steaming pile of BS could only make it better.
  
  Arrington, I’m begging you, please fire this no-talent ass-clown. He couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag.
- Arrington, looking at the declining readership of your blog, you should keep that in mind before giving Gillmor another opportunity to spill his words here.
- This is good. I’d like to hear more from Gillmor about how social sharing and websites relate to basic human biology and psychology.
- I suggest you learn how to write for a web based audience.
  
  Here’s a link to start you off: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
- I skipped the post - one glance told me it was pure bullcrap (love the way SG adopts intellectual superiority when challenged btw).
  
  But keep the posts coming, love the comments
- Wow. I haven’t seen this level of self-fellatio in a while. Kudos Steve…your narcissism knows no bounds.
- I think TC needs some way to cluster, group or thread comments (specially for Gillmor’s posts). I want to be able to read the comments from readers that didn’t give up first (if there are any) and be able to decide if I want to read the other comments later the same way TC readers can decide to read or not Gillmor’s weekly posts.
- the next step is link aggregation for filtering purposes (techmeme) and with enough adoption probably @ and # can bring more semantics to texting, the easiest way to share until audio, video & image become as mainstream as SMS.
- Thank you for the summary Bonnie!
  
  I would love to hear Steve give an elevator pitch
- Uh, WTF? Reading that kinda felt like i just smoked a joint or something. Weird.
- the point of the post is good, however maybe an easier metaphor to understand or a different way of putting it. The ideas do not link well, and not many people will get what you are trying to say.
- I do not know which is more fasinating Steve’s points or the comments to Steve’s article.
  
  I just might be the greatest psychology experiment ever made
  
  For some reason picturing Steve as Psychology Doctor for some of you kind of pleases me to no end..:)
- Steve is a Philosopher if Tech - the mechanics of the technology always are placed well behind the metaphysical view as seen by Steve’s creative mind.
  
  The process of writing allows his prophetic dream to be realized.
- If you think it’s bullshit or random chaos… you need to practice listening to
  
  deeper modes of thinking. Shallow is easy but essentially dull. Deep is obscure and maybe essentially thrilling.
- I for one would like to praise Steve for that article… I completely understood and appreciated what he was saying. If its lost on so many people, then that’s quite interesting.
- The problem with Gillmor posting here is that is doesn’t tell anyone how to make money. And that pisses some people off. They can’t exploit the ideas presented.
  
  It seems they can’t even understand the ideas presented. Sad.
  
  Clue: start with a Google for Maslow and re-read the post.
- At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
- Like the other readers of this post I had some challenges understanding it. I had to skim it twice:)
- I found this to be one of the better posts on techcrunch. Thought-provoking.
- A true intellect is someone who can take something complex and can break it down into a few key points.
  
  Incoherent babble is a sign of something else…
- Hi Techcrunch
  
  Request: Is it possible to create something so all the comments that do not touch the subject of the article are ‘marked’ in some kind of way?
  
  It is remarkable how many people do not comment on what the article is about; it is remarkable how many people do not bring the article further, which is the big opportunity because we are able to comment.
  
  Visionary posts. Perhaps an idea to create a new segment: VisionCrunch … ideas, insights etc on where the web is going…

17 Jun 08

Checking your email obsessively? It's costing you money, time, and probably sanity - Download Squad

www.downloadsquad.com/...ely-its-costing-you-money-time - Preview

informationoverload

A NYT article says that Americans waste $650 BILLION dollars over-checking their email obsessively. BILLION. Not Millions. Not Thousands. BILLIONS. Crazier? We waste $650 BILLION dollars trying to get back into the groove of work after checking our email obsessively.

Why do we do it? Are we that afraid of missing something?

15 Jun 08

Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...14email.html - Preview

informationoverload

Silicon Valley denizens speak of “e-mail bankruptcy,” or getting so far behind in responding to e-mail messages that it becomes necessary to delete them all and start over. Another relatively new term is “e-mail apnea,” coined by the writer Linda Stone, which refers to the way that people, when struck by the volume of new messages in their in-boxes, unconsciously hold their breath.
“We are hunter-gatherers at the core,” said Tony Wright, chief executive of RescueTime, who is also a member of the new nonprofit group. “We open e-mail and hit ‘send and receive’ to see if something interesting has come in.”
Members of the new organization, called the Information Overload Research Group, planned to have their first meeting in July in New York.
2 more annotations...
- In the other experiment, called “zero e-mail Fridays,” the goal was to encourage employees to favor face-to-face communication. Mr. Beavers said employees liked the idea in theory, but they continued to send e-mail messages, finding them essential.
- “We’re trying to address the problem that people get so addicted to e-mail that they will send an e-mail across an aisle, across a partition, and that’s not a good thing,” he said.

Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...14email.html - Preview

informationoverload

A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.
In the United States, more than $650 billion a year in productivity is lost because of unnecessary interruptions, predominately mundane matters, according to Basex. The firm says that a big chunk of that cost comes from the time it takes people to recover from an interruption and get back to work.

The noise in Web 2.0 is mainly a Tech Elite’s problem « Alexander van Elsas’s Weblog on new media & technologies and their effect on social behavior

vanelsas.wordpress.com/...s-mainly-a-tech-elites-problem - Preview

informationoverload

Just let it go. I see Twitter, Friendfeed, and all these other sites as rivers of information, anekdotes, posts, friends. I tap in whenever I feel like it, join the conversation. But I leave when I need to get back to real life. I know the river won’t dry out. There will always be a next scoop, another funy remark, a great blog post. Life doens’t stop simply because I choose not to be drwoning myself into this cyber river of information. I don’t need 20.000 followers, nor do I want to follow 20.000.

12 Jun 08

Where Are All the Great Ideas? - Harvard Business Online's HBR Editors' Blog

discussionleader.hbsp.com/...e_are_all_the_great_ideas.html - Preview

informationoverload

In 1996 –when the Web was young, and Microsoft and Netscape were fighting their browser war -- David Gergen held an NPR interview with George Kennan, a central figure of the famously brilliant, cohesive, yet diverse team advising Harry Truman. Then 92, Kennan observed that while the computer age has given us more information that we don’t need, “What we really need is intelligent guidance in what to do with the information we've got.”
Andy Boynton, the Dean of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Boynton is one of the hungriest people I know when it comes to ideas – in addition to running the business school, he is a voracious reader. The last place he looks for new, agenda-setting ideas, he says, is in the business section of bookstores. “They’re a desert,” he says dourly. (One recent exception, he says, is Chip Heath’s Made to Stick.)

So where does he look instead? The history section
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- Meanwhile, the electronic firehose -- including the blogosphere to which I’m contributing at this moment – is full of observation and complaint, but very little that’s truly agenda-setting.
- Great ideas arrive by connecting dots of information that can be acquired all around us. We need to learn to become keen observers and take time to talk to people, even those we don't expect to spark ideas for us. I believe we have become too specialized in modern times and we need to stop confining our discussions to those within our own fields of expertise. Without expanding our horizons we are fated to repackage the same old ideas.
- The psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, lists the five creative blocks as preconceived notions, fears, judgment or destructive criticism, distractions and unclear goals. Overall I find my most creative ideas come from my ability to observe without the imposition of these creative blocks and allowing myself to entertain even the most absurd ideas from time to time.
- There actually are some great ideas in scholarly journals. At least there better be, or academia is pretty much of a fraud. The ideas are just not quite as accessible to most readers (to put it mildly).
- But the transformation from those sources to managerial consumption (HBR) would take some thought and work (by an astute editor like Bronwyn-it would very doable); but I think the effort would be worth it -- to connect great academics and their ideas to the world of practice. I straddle the world of practice and academia and I am always finding interesting and important (to managers) concepts and insights in those traditional academic sources; however the translation and imaginative leap is needed.
- Personally, I'm increasingly convinced that the best emerging ideas come from combining -- even smashing together-- various disciplines.
- One very current example is the new field of behavioral economics, which combines behavioral psychology with economics to reveal insights into human decision making and behavior, with important implications for marketing and management. (Dan Ariely's new book, Predictably Irrational" is all about this.) Studies in neuroscience are increasingly being applied to thinking about human motivation, and so on. The most interesting new stuff seems to be coming from this kind of cross-breeding.
- the bulk of work by business academics lacks the combination of insight and applicability our practitioner audience looks to us for. But we will always keep looking, and we hope our prospective contributors will always keep trying.
- Big ideas generally require more room for development and illustration than journal articles allow. They also place much more emphasis on being "accurate" than provocative.
- Books like Ideas that Stick, Predictably Irrational, Freakonomics, and Blink demonstrate quite clearly that the general public and business readers both have a strong taste for solid social science research when it is packaged effectively.
- Nonetheless, some of the best selling books are successful (in my opinion) precisely because their authors range widely over multiple disciplines to make their points.
- Absent major changes in the traditional academic outlets (and academic incentive/reward structures), I believe that the best way to incubate and diffuse potentially great ideas is to foster more co-authorship between social scientists doing great basic work and journalists/writers who can help with the translation and packaging of that great research (a la the partnership between Dubner and Levitt on Freakonomics).
- Andy is right in suggesting that lessons in leadership and management are richly abundant in many fields. The particular value of "non-business" books is that, besides being typically better written, they tend to be more vivid in description, and more transparent in the telling. What drives me crazy, however, is when our participants say that they are "not real business." The fact is, that they are powerful learning vehicles, that are much more engaging and often informative than the traditional books in this genre.

12 Oct 07

Feedhub: Helping reduce RSS overload? - Download Squad

www.downloadsquad.com/...ub-helping-reduce-rss-overload - Preview

apml informationoverload

Starting off with your own RSS feeds (which you upload in an OPML file from your favoured newsreader), FeedHub analyses the content in that file, determining content you seem to be interested in (grouping them into memes).