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Knock, Knock: Information Pollution Is Here
CowboyRobot writes ""Information Pollution" is one of the newer buzz-phrases, appearing in various media to describe unwanted phone calls, faxes, emails, etc.
Jakob Nielsen, known for his critiques of user interfaces has an article about the problems of unwanted instant messaging interruptions. Nielsen is respectable not only because of the clarity of his arguments but because he also cites empirical evidence, rather than just complaining.
In the article he describes the current problem, then proposes a 'control panel' as a centralized interface to manage all the communications one would make via the computer."
Nielsen is respectable not only because of the clarity of his arguments but because he also cites empirical evidence, rather than just complaining.
I hate to sound like I'm just bashing the guy, but he's a huge hypocrite. I started reading his site back in the day, and after signing up, I got spam for years afterwards.
"Information Pollution" my ass. Up until he decides something's bad and coins some clever term, he'll do it with no compunction.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
With all the spam on the Internet these days I find it harder and harder to find information on what I want. I was searching for information on teens in general for a project that my company was working on and majority of the results were adult related. When searching for products such as Cell Phones I'll be shown thousands of results for Antenna Boosters, Free unlocking Kits and more. Is anyone else having the same problems?
'...then proposes a 'control panel' as a centralized interface to manage all the communications one would make via the computer."'
What are the options? Drop nuke on spammer's house? Send in the black helicopters? The problem isn't so much on the receiver's end as it on the sender's end. Instead of forcing users to jump through flaming hoop after flaming hoop why don't we develop systems that make it more difficult to send spam in the first place? Jakob Neilsen, of all people, should know better than to suggest such a wasteful UI to solve a much deeper problem with the system itself. If you want total anonymity on the internet than you have to deal with these problems. You can't say only certain peolpe get to be anonymous and the people I don't like can't. You want to be able to spoof headers? Be prepared for spammers to take advantage of this "feature". You want to have the ability to have open relays? Get ready for the flood of spam that will use them.
Or...how to categorize anything they say:
A- Conceited without reason
B- Self-interested to astronomic proportions
C- Frustratingly condescending and tunnel-visioned
D- Doesn't matter, it's all idiocy to me.
Get your votes in fast.
oh fuck, i only rtfa after i wrote a comment.
the guy is making no sense. his control panel is just an app for idiots to filter the mail they subscribed for.. wtf, that's supposed to be new, auto filtering into boxes? geez, somebody drag this guy into 2003 before it's too late!
that is supposed to be an article!?!?!? it's just a bitching up!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Initially, it made me less available and less responsive, and that bothered me. However, my work habits started to change in response to it. Because I now control my exposure to communications, I find that I can flip to the other box, scan for messages, and flip back to my work box without exiting the flow state.
This has had some other really positive side effects. For example, people are aware that I'm in my office, even if I'm not responding to IM. That means that if something's really important, they'll often just drop by, replacing the thirty back-and-forth email with a simple 5 minute conversation. Sure, I lose my flow state, but high priority problems bubble up to the top of the list and get resolved in the most effective way (ie; face to face) possible.
The idea for solving "Information Pollution" is interesting, but what of the quality of the information that is delivered? In this day and age when you can find web sites devoted to "Proof we never made it to the moon" and hard facts are often replaced with "that sounds about right" isn't the real pollution the content we supposedly want - and not the advertisers?
Find me a system to easily and quickly verify the "facts" with something I can trust.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
1. Do you ever use your email like an instant messenger? Meaning, do you and another person sit there writing messages to each other in almost real-time? You sit there pathetically pressing refresh or check email, waiting for the next reply? I have.
2. A control panel for monitoring information flow is not a bad idea - just that it needs to be implemented to cover everything and be easy to use. You should be able to easily define rules (like spam rules) that says what to do with the messages if they meet certain criteria.
Of course, it defeats the purpose of IM - after all, if you don't want to be available, or just don't want to be interrupted, just turn the thing off!
3. I think that instead of finding a technical solution (yet another program that will cure all, bring world peace, and improve worker productivity - remember that's what they said about email? Instead of all of these, just sit down and take some time and figure out the best routine for yourself. Everybody has different work habits, and a control panel, no matter how flexible, is not going to accommodate everyone's requirements. If you don't want to be interrupted, then just turn those notifications off, change your IM status to "away" or "do not interrupt"
4. Some workers don't "want" to be productive. They want to be interrupted.
Nielsen is respectable not only because of the clarity of his arguments but because he also cites empirical evidence, rather than just complaining.
But he is just complaining!
From the article: "It is naive to believe that IM is the answer to the information overload that's ailing e-mail. Continue current trends a few years and most people will get so much IM that they will have to tune it out to get any work done."
This is the problem he's trying to address it would seem, and his solution is a nice pretty control panel that does everything for him. Now this is obviously a problem, as many many other people have pointed out, but what is Nielsen doing about it? Whining that someone else should write a program apparently. If he believes this control panel is the end-all-be-all solution he should write it and try to sell it, but I'm not buying it. Until some public key standard ala PGP is made idiot proof and seamless enough for the average suburban housewife to use, consumers and big media will keep complaining, imho.
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
This may be hard for some to fathom, but try this: turn it off. No really. I mean it. When I need to work, I minimize email, go "invisible" on IM, and let voicemail pick up the phone. My cell phone has caller ID so I can ID my wife and know to pick up the phone.
All of these technologies have a way of being turned off and queueing messages for you. Use it. When you're ready for a break or it's just that time again, process them in bulk and get them over with. When I was programming, I only processed email 2-3 times a day (morning, right before lunch, and towards the end of the day) and this worked very well. Having a gig in marketing land has changed my job requirements where I'm actually judged by how often I interact with the sales team and customers so I check mail more often -- but, when I need to get a document written up or read and comment on something else, I minimize it all and focus.
One last note about IM -- have strict rules about IM. I don't socialize over IM when I'm working. I tell friends that are on my buddy lists to not expect a response during typical working hours if they just want to chat. I won't respond. If you want to send a social comment, send it via email to my personal mailbox and I'll get to it when I've got time to socialize.
Good grief, why? IM seems to me to combine the worst features of the telephone and e-mail. I've never understood its allure. E-mail is quite fast enough for non-interactive communication, and if you want interactive communication pick up the phone (or better yet get off your ass and walk over to me, if we're in the sam building, I hate intra-office telephoning) and we can be much more interactive when we don't have to type at each other. And many people have e-mail through work, but not IM accounts. (Sadly, spammers are not amoung them, as IM spam is apparently becoming common.) Plus, the IM space is fragmented.
So, can anyone convince me that I should sign up for an IM account?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Want to only read the articles that interest you? Use Bayesian filters!
Yes, use Magic Beans, er, Bayesian filters and everything will be wonderful! We don't understand what they are or how they work, but by god, we'll recommend them for any kind of content filtering! Don't like TV? Use Bayesian filters!
This brought to you by the Bayesian filter marketing board -- you wouldn't have seen this if you used Bayesian filters.
IM is no different. It's just that IM is by design an interruptive form of communication. This just makes it all the more important that you don't leave it on all day long like many people do. If you leave your IM client on and complain that people keep interrupting you, I have no sympathy. There are some companies these days that seem to think using IM for work is a good idea. If somebody in the office wants to get in touch with you, they should walk over to your cube, or call you on your office phone. If it's not important enough for that, then an email is a better idea.
Check your email once every few hours, no more. If you must more often, for work, at least try to reeducate people - don't reply to emails immediately, train them to use more direct forms of communication when they need an immediate reply. Only turn on your IM client in the evenings when you don't expect to do productive work, and are just surfing the web. Learn to turn off your cell phone, and make sure the people you work with understand the rules for contacting you outside of work hours - leave a message, you'll get back to them. Be in control of your life and your time, you don't need some magic technotool, just a little self-restraint and discipline.
A better definition from Nielson:
"Excessive word count and worthless details are making it harder for people to extract useful information. The more you say, the more people tune out your message."
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What is the sound of this sentence?
Our inbox mirrors our daily life.(even the penis enlarger ads[enzyte]).
3000 commercial messages a day are rammed into the average persons head wether they like it or not.
Adbusters argues that our mental environment is becoming polluted. "information pollution" has been a focus of their "mental environmentalism" since '89.
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
"Information Pollution" is one of the newer buzz-phrases, appearing in various media ...
Hmmm. Funny thing is that I've always considered those buzz-phrases that are so often bandied about by 'various media' as Information Pollution in their own right. The by-products of processing good information down into a more-assimilabable (but less rich) format for consumption by the masses.
GMD
watch this
I think our biggest problem isn't the amount of SP*M (hehe it is a 4 letter word you know) we get, or the unrelenting advertising that we get bombarded with. I think 90% of our discontent arises from not being able to weed out the content that we do want.
I would give my left kidney if I could do a google search for an item and exclude all places that try to sell me the widget.
Google search: widget -sale
then I would gladly wade through the 5,000 sites that had INFORMATION on the widget.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
"Information Polution" isn't a new thing, we're just mainstreaming an old problem. I certainly don't want to put up with billboards, telemarketers, sidewalk evangelists or any of the advertising that comes up in my mailbox every day. I'm sure people used to complain at length about the illegitimacy of newspapers or magazines. (Okay, so they still do.)
Nowadays we don't have just a few dozen channels for information at any given time, but literally thousands, possibly more, arranged and biased exactly the way you want it. If Mr. Nielson can't handle the two he's most concerned about -- and he's more concerned about workflow than personal use -- there are existing options. Email not fast enough? Pick up the phone. IM causing worker inattention? Block it.
Small "Internet Control Panels" exist, in limited-information capacities. I have no idea how many "e-bay tracker" applications there are out there, but my guess of "a lot" would probably be an understatement. And the message-filtering abilities of many modern e-mail clients means you could easily sort everything into the locale you want. (I'm not talking spam-filtering, but scripts to filter mail from a general pool into folders.)
E-mail is hardly dead, or sick, or dying. It's abused, and like many things that are abused people will either abandon it or find a way to change it into usefulness. Both are proper social reactions. People use and adapt to the most useful channels of communication.
Mr. Nielson appears to be so far behind the issue that he probably thinks he's ahead.
This now concludes our broadcast day.
First off, don't get me wrong, I actually agree with everything you've said, I would love to have this level of concentration available to me daily -- others have posted this sentiment, but every time I read it I find myself thinking, what would the average PHB think, and it goes something like this:
Question:
Financial implications aside, what is the difference between a tech guy in my office who I can only communicate with peridodically, usually via email, and rarely ever see; And some coder working for an Indian mega-consultancy in a cube in Bangalore.
Answer:
Not a damn thing...
Companies are groups of people working together for a common purpose, hell its why they're called a 'company'. For better or worse, they have eveolved into very social entities, with all the benefits and problems that entails.
One clear advantage the average local geek has over his outsourced counterpart is that he can be reachable, responsive, even friendly. I've played that card extensively over the last couple years, sure I get interrupted alot, but I've never been outsourced.
Just food for thought, not meant as a flame.
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
And I didn't even mention the worst new irritant: the accumulated ringings of everyone's personal cellphones, all of which are set up to ring with the most annoying and lengthy ringtone possible, at the highest possible volume.
A search for teens using Google didn't show any adult sites on the first four pages at least. I just had a quick look, and on page four I didn't bother going any further.
And the other comments about ring tones. What are you people searching for? I don't seem to have these problems at all.
Enlighten me.
Clever signature text goes here.