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.
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
... 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.