Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Do You Avoid 'Information Overload' (wikipedia.org)
As we approach a holiday weekend and a brand new year, do we need to start carving out more time away from the internet? "I'm convinced the Internet (as in Slashdot) is making many people more lonely (and duller), not better," writes long-time Slashdot reader shanen:
I think the best description of the problem I've read is The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Not exactly his formulation, but in brief I would say that too much information is overwhelming us...
Some approaches towards solutions appear in The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli (based on the German Die Kunst des klaren Denkens : 52 Denkfehler, die Sie besser anderen uberlassen. Again, better references would be greatly appreciated, especially as regards the problem of disaster porn overwhelming journalism.
New Media professor Clay Shirky has argued that "it's not information overload, it's filter failure." And Carr's original question was actually "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" though he still warned of the possibility that "the crazy quilt of Internet media" is remapping the neural circuitry in our brains. (And that "as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens.") The original submitter asked the question another way -- "Is deep thought possible in the Internet Age?" But it'd be interesting to hear what strategies are being used by Slashdot readers.
Leave your best answers in the comments. How do you avoid information overload?
Some approaches towards solutions appear in The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli (based on the German Die Kunst des klaren Denkens : 52 Denkfehler, die Sie besser anderen uberlassen. Again, better references would be greatly appreciated, especially as regards the problem of disaster porn overwhelming journalism.
New Media professor Clay Shirky has argued that "it's not information overload, it's filter failure." And Carr's original question was actually "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" though he still warned of the possibility that "the crazy quilt of Internet media" is remapping the neural circuitry in our brains. (And that "as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens.") The original submitter asked the question another way -- "Is deep thought possible in the Internet Age?" But it'd be interesting to hear what strategies are being used by Slashdot readers.
Leave your best answers in the comments. How do you avoid information overload?
I didn't have enough attention span to read the summary. Could someone please summarise it?
"I'm convinced the Internet (as in Slashdot) is making many people more lonely (and duller)"
That's because you still hope to find some news for nerds, stuff that matters,
We old fucks gave that hope up years ago.
Since Trump was elected I mostly ignore the news. Instead of CNN, I discovered all the Star Trek reruns on BBC America. No information overload and I'm happier.
Seriously. Turn off the phone and put it in a room you're not in. Then, step away from the computer (PC, tablets, laptops, whatever you use.)
Now, go do other things you've forgotten how to do.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
I exclusively read slashdot on the internet. That keeps the actual information content down.
Nullius in verba
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually the last advice in The Art of Thinking Clearly was to stop reading the news. While I do agree that the lion's share of the news is trivia, disaster porn, or worse, I think that it's going too far to ignore all of it.
In terms of solutions, I've been thinking along two lines. One involves time management, as you mentioned, but the problem there is project planning. It's really hard to judge how much time a specific task or project will consume, but it's even harder to decide how much time that task or project is worth.
The line that seems more tractable to me involves public reputation of the sources. This would involve collecting and displaying such public information as how people have reacted to public writings, but I think there's also enormous potential in sharing the profile information that is already being compiled (by such companies as the google) and sharing it back to the people it came from in the first place.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Seriously. Turn off the phone and put it in a room you're not in. Then, step away from the computer (PC, tablets, laptops, whatever you use.)
Now, go do other things you've forgotten how to do.
This is exactly my strategy. You know what's the very last thing most people need? A smart watch, or anything else that tethers them even more to the online world. I think people are forgetting how to experience life first hand.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I'd probably give you the "Funny" mod if I ever saw a mod point, but the deeper truth underlying your joke is that the Internet was largely paid for by porn. I had that not from the horse's mouth, but straight from the owner of an early ISP.
However I'm not sure whether to classify the joke itself as the shallowest form of not thinking or as deep fantasies. I'm embarrassed that I can't recall the name of the anonymizing network... The thing with the little onion?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
... it is exposing how shallow and stupid humanity always was. The reality is we live in a dystopian idiocracy. The reason the world is so corrupt is because the vast majority of the public falls for the lies of the rich and powerful and their corporations and vote against their own interests. That's reality.
1. No Facebook
2. No Twitter
3. No LinkedIn
4. No Instagram
5. No Flickr
6. No Slashd.... d'oh!
#DeleteFacebook
As we approach a holiday weekend and a brand new year, do we need to start carving out more time away from the internet?
I don't have any problem with the Internet being full of information, I find it's great. Even if parts of it are full of crackpots you can find tons of useful posts if you're willing to go outside the echo chambers. No, what's killing "everything else" is that there's so much entertainment, even if Sturgeon's law that says 90% of everything is crap I have the feeling the total is growing and growing. Here's a good TV series, there's a good movie, this was a cool game and I feel like I have a "backlog" of things that would be fun but that didn't make the cut. Heck, I have a bunch of things that I'd kinda like to watch a second time which gets constantly pre-empted by something new.
I don't think it's that I've gotten less picky. Maybe it's that I had more time, but that still doesn't explain everything. I feel like things were different before like before WoW etc. where you couldn't get so addicted to a game you'd basically disappear into the computer. Not that I actually played WoW, I knew I had the tendencies from other games and that would be like shooting heroin. But damn, they're good at making things addictive. And this new trend of releasing a whole season at once hasn't helped me, it's like an invitation to binge watching. If I had a week's cool down maybe I'd stop and think it wasn't that great instead of getting caught up in what happens next. And the smartphone killed the remaining zone-out time.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
we're overloaded with data.
There isn't a precise semantic distinction between these two terms, and they're often used interchangeably. That leads to confusing terms like "information overload".
But if you think about information as that aspect of data or its context that makes us informed, and we instead call the phenomenon we're talking about "data overload", then things become a lot clearer. What we're talking about is a form of incapacitation, but this is exactly the opposite of becoming informed, which is a kind of empowerment. The experience of becoming informed is one of surprise; it makes you sit up and feel alert.
So the answer is to be both more selective about information and more broad-minded about it at the same time. Absorbing data which simply reinforces what you already know is mind-numbing. Seek data which puts the data you already have in context, or shows it in a new light. That's what I mean by being more selective (stop mindlessly consuming the same old stuff) and more open-minded (seek out data that challenges your preconceptions and takes you out of your rut).
Also, beware data that is packaged to be easy to consume mindlessly. It's junk food data. You need more intellectual roughage, something that takes time and effort to chew.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You brought up the shallows in the summary. But the issue isn't that you have information overload, the issue is that you keep surfacing new ideas all the time. Stop what you're doing. Turn off reddit and pick 2 or 3 places for information and check them on a schedule. Not when you're bored, not when you have free time. The problem is that a person gets attuned to the constant 'ding' new thing alert, its the same thing as someone playing slots in vegas. Just choose when it is time to look at things, stick to the schedule and problem solved.
How to stop drinking? Stop drinking. How to stop drugs? Stop taking them. Information overload? Stop consuming it.
The complete and total compromise of our society is the problem.
Natural selection is finding a way to operate through the interface of our mechanized microcosm.
The weak are being sucked into the singularity. Their humanity; their reason, their spirituality, their vision, have long since left them and now the devil is coming to collect their debt. There are going to be hordes of brainless media drones no matter what we do now.
Most people reading this are already far down that path, their amygdala programmed by hyperstimulation, overriding all other conscious mental function, spurring them to classically conditioned behavior triggered by artificial symbols.
The question is not what we do to help the fallen. They are already gone.
The question is how do we stop the current leaders of the world from using them to rip civilization to shreds and destroy the freedom of humanity forever.
Aside from that, they are physically destroying the world with poisons and climate change.
If some crisis doesn't happen to wake up the middle class and spur them to take action against the power structure, the fate of the world, the fate of life itself, looks very doubtful.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
How do you avoid information overload?
Make space in your life.
1. Stop reading the news. It's amazing how (1) information isn't really all that important, nor informative and (2) you tend to get to know important information by IRL socialising.
2. Deactivate your Facebook. Or at least, remove the bloody app from your phone and stop checking it every damn day.
3. Socialise with real people, in real life. Have meaningful conversations.
But if I did, it'd take the form of a 'distributed intelligence agency' of devices and people that observed me, observed my interactions with the world, engaged me in conversation (and other devices and humans on my behalf), and then acted based on its perception of my need. Such actions would include filtering or augmenting my information flows (preferably, doing both). But of course, such a system would need to be controlled, and answerable, to me the user.
This is such a natural role for operating system vendors, its a wonder that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Fitbit, Amazon, Redhat, Omron, Arduino, KDE, etc, haven't cottoned onto it yet. Perhaps because building a 'society of intelligent agents' that acts in the best interests of the customer requires cooperating with 'the other'. And that is hard - both financially, and technically.
When that day comes around, my medical records, Fitbit history, readings from my home blood pressure monitor, locations from my mobile, credit card history -- all these would be brought together and 'digested'. I'd then be 'counselled' to eat healthy takeaway from WholeFoods, bypassing the PizzaHut I was walking towards. (Or not, as the case may be - I've had a stellar exercise week).
Unfortunately, commercial OS vendors and data providers are busy building or tending the walled gardens of their rent-seeking dreams. So the API hooks this 'Society of the Mind' intelligence agency requires aren't available. Until that comes to pass, we're stuck entering data into our own life.
social networks:
No social networks. I have one spoof account on FB for my social dancing contacts which I use as needed. Can go for weeks without looking at it. My other social network account has my real portrait and name and is basically there to lead people to my professional Homepage (I do websoftware development).
Email:
I get roughly 5 meaningful emails a week (that includes work), the rest is mostly newsletter spam which I filter or unsubscribe. I seriously cannot fathom what these poor sobs getting 200 emails a day handle it.
Web:
I read and write a little Slashdot every day, and skim German newspapers and newsmags. Although I've reduced that lately - to much cheaply produced read & enrage bait even in respectable outlets (they are *all* struggling to compete). I watch John Oliver, Jim Sterling, and the occasional TED talk. Tim Ferriss (tim.blog) roughly once a month.
Professional:
Techcrunch roughly once a week, Chromedev channel on YouTube roughly once a month.
My biggest struggle is trying not to get caught up in to many web technology fads, which I don't always manage. With full stack webdev you never stop learning so there is more than enough information for me to take in anyways.
Books: roughly 1 every two months right now. To little. I read American scientific stuff (poor economics, why Nations fail, etc.) and some sci-fi and cyberpunk fiction.
Recently I've picked up the habit of breaking off reading if I find I have more important/rewarding things to do, like yoga, dancing or planning my next trip.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I limit my exposure, and force time restrictions on my own browsing. I will only allow myself to browse certain set times and when I feel I need to look some information up, I take note and either wait for that time or consider alternatives.
Twinstiq, game news
This may not be true of Slashdot readers, but I think the majority of Americans spend a huge percentage of their non-working, non-sleeping time tapped into some kind of entertainment. TV shows, Netflix, sports, music-as-background, smartphone and console games; the list goes on and on. All of these interfere with critical thinking. In the U.S., doing critical thinking brands you as an "intellectual", and we've always been anti-intellectual in this country. What other country in their history has had a political party called the "Know Nothings"? I think for the most part we've inoculated ourselves against Information Overload just by not paying attention.