Information Overload vs. Filter Failure
No one I know is saying things quite the way Clay Shirky is saying them. There’s so many applications in this presentation for educators, church leaders, media professionals and parents.
Three a-ha moments for me while watching:
1. Our problem with inbound information overload isn’t new. But the filters we’ve used to manage it our whole lives are now failing us.
2. The notion of a “personal life” is quickly becoming extinct. We are all public figures, and we must determine what filters we’ll use to manage our outbound flow of information.
3. Using old metaphors to describe new realities isn’t always helpful. “It turns out Facebook is a lot like … Facebook,” Shirky says. It’s not like traditional media, and its not like a conversation amongst friends. It is its own (new) reality.
05/19/2010 at 10:24 am
Actually, points 2 and 3 are true (and fascinating), but I disagree with point 1. The information overload problem we face int today’s workplace, at least, is totally new; it results from the expectation that we read all the incoming email we get, where no similar expectation applied to the information published in previous eras. I go into detail at http://bit.ly/bDUDuB.
06/21/2010 at 8:03 am
[...] continue to be fascinated by the topic of information overload, and what filters we’re applying to organize [...]
07/07/2010 at 7:05 am
[...] the risk of sounding like a Clay Shirky fanboy (see here and here), there’s some great stuff in this TED talk about what we all do with our collective 1 [...]
04/22/2011 at 8:33 am
[...] in communication. And I wonder if we’ve ever been so needy for brevity as we are today. Clay Shirky would say we don’t have an information overload problem. We’ve got filter failure. I think [...]
02/25/2012 at 4:38 pm
If fault is to be found with Shirky, as well as almost all other internet pundits on information overload, it is in their premises, not their conclusions. Almost all hold the implicit assumption that humans are sensitive to information as static facts. However, if informed by the most recent findings from affective neuroscience on human decision making, this position cannot be true.
Specifically, Shirky (and nearly all of his peers) hold to positions that are not neurally realistic, and would have to abandon much of their opinions (and specifically the reality of information overload) if they were informed by the recent findings in affective neuroscience on how human minds actually process and choose information. Surprisingly, this argument can be made quite simply, and is made (link below) using an allegory of the Boston Red Sox pennant run over the years.
http://mezmer.blogspot.com/2012/02/searching-for-red-stockings-myth-of.html
(Alas, my argument at three pages is a bit long for a comments section, but perhaps not as a link.)
A. J. Marr