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Information Overload Overblown, Says Gates
Aarthi writes "Microsoft's annual CEO meet-and-greet kicked off on Thursday with the company's Chairman, Bill Gates, countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information.'We still want a lot of information.' He also outlined plans for Office 12, the next version of its desktop software, which is due to arrive in the second half of next year." From the article: "There is a real temptation that the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to, even though that may be the least important...That turns you into a filing clerk."
Yeah, well, thanks for giving me the latest scoop on what some plutocrat college dropout thinks about how the brain works. Tell ya what, if I ever need some solid info on "information overload", I think I will consult someone who actually knows something about it, like maybe a neuroscientist, or something.
Who gives a fuck what Bill Gates thinks about every little thing?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"countering the notion that the workers today are not overloaded with information"
I think he is countering the notion that workers areoverloaded with info
It appears that Bill Gates is not immune to this ego inflating weakness of the human condition.
I only know this, due to having read a bit of study a year or so back. So, my information could be wrong, out of date or otherwise inaccurate.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Don't you get it? This is America. Where talking out of your ass is an art form.
We see this everyday. Some call it bullshit. Others call it spin. Regardless of what is actually is, it's destructive.
What is surprising is that more don't call this stuff out like you did. I wish that happened more.
- Turn off the TV (download your shows if you must). - Browse with ad / flash blocking tools or with an RSS feed reader. - Don't sign up for "reward programs", don't give away your permanent email to any service. - Don't multitask yourself to uselessness (i.e. watching tv while working on your project with music playing and a game minimized you go into every 15 minutes while your paper's in front of you and you're baking cookies). ...You can sign up for my information overload program for just 3 easy payments of $49.9..just kidding. :P
"There is a real temptation that the thing that comes in the latest is the one you shift your attention to, even though that may be the least important," Gates said. The result, he said, is that people either have to leave everything "in one big bucket" or they have to spend a lot of time creating lots of folders. "That turns you into a filing clerk."
How about hiring people that understand how to prioritize their own work? If someone can't figure out whether to run a report for their boss or send on a chain letter, I don't think a new version of Office is going to fix the problem.
The typical Web search takes 11 minutes these days. Gates acknowledged that that is a big improvement over search times and capabilities of a few years ago, when half of the searches didn't yield the needed information. He added, however, that a Web search is still a "treasure hunt" in which one hopes that the top few links contain the desired information.
Who the hell is taking 11 minutes to find what they want on the web. I timed myself just now, and I was looking at "hot teen lesbians" within 13 seconds. If that doesn't count for what people want on the web, I don't know what does. In 11 minutes, I could build my own website for it.
If I were to file this release into folders, it would probably go into my Marketing/Propaganda one.
/. ++
If office doesn't cause information overload, then why does M$ have to hide all the extranious menu options by default. I tire of telling users to click on such and such a menu and they come back with "I don't have that."
-TheDawgLives suckitdown
We are overloaded with data not information.
1) Make tasks easier to manage. Make it easier to enter task dates and improve the ability to link tasks to email messages. The ability to have super-tasks be made up of sub-tasks would be a great feature.
2) The idea of server-based Excel spreadsheets is intriguing. Unfortunately, the article does not go into any details about this. Excel could benefit from improved multi-user editing. The granularity of locking and editing needs to be increased. When more than one user works on a spreadsheet, instead of locking the whole thing, Excel should only lock smaller pieces. Built in version control, with formalized checkout, check-in, and merging of individual spreadsheet pieces, would make multi-user editing much easier to keep under control.
...if I have a serious problem. I spend my whole day filtering information, code, tech manuals, slashdot etc. and only taking in the bits that I think are useful/interesting/funny. If I miss something I figure I can always go back and read it again.
The problem is I can't switch it off. I skim everything, and now the problem is spreading: it's affecting my listening too! I have to really focus on someone to take in everything they tell me, especially people I listen too a lot, like my girlfriend. If she is talking to me about something 'really important', like shopping, holidays, TV or hair and my brain doesn't agree how important it is I simply don't hear what she's saying. What worse is that she has a typical female ability to multiplex two or more streams of information, one of which might actually be important. This has lead to all sorts of arguments.
Does this affect anyone else?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The reason for an Iraq invasion is actually quite clever. It was not really about Iraqi oil. The reason the terrorists used mainly Saudis in 9/11, was an attempt to turn America against its closest ally in the Middle East, that fat oil tit, Saudi Arabia. The fundamentalist Islamic movement in the Middle East really wanted the region in chaos in an attempt to gain hold. Attacking the US in a spectacular way guaranteed our play on the field. We have no intention of carrying on a conflict on our own soil. Instead of making the move they hoped to provoke, we attacked Afghanistan. They wanted war in the Middle East, we gave it to them. The Taliban weren't making many friends in the international community at the time. Had we left it alone as only an invasion of Afghanistan we would have likely incurred another attack on US soil, in further attempt to provoke an attack on Saudi Arabia. In order to keep the war in the Middle East and not destroy our alliance with Saudi Arabia, we invaded Iraq. This allowed for some exercise of back pocket agenda to oust Saddam, but really directed all attention of the terrorists off US soil and into the Middle East. The fact that Iraq has oil, is really just gravy in the whole scheme of things. If war in the middle east was only about taking oil for the US, Kuwait would be the 51st state in the union.