The title of a fascinating Clay shirky presentation has it that "it is not information overload is the filter failure", and even though I rely extensively on filters to make my online life manageable, I find myself want to nit-pick with Shirky.
After years of discovering a new information resource, as consumed by the producer, to find it too much to bear, then gets on top of it, only to find me will be sucked into another, faster information resource, I have concluded that turn information overload real secret is not better filters: the cultivation of a "probabilistic" frame of mind.
The first online resources I used was dial-up bulletin board systems in the 1980s. At one point I created accounts on each BBS, I could connect with a local phone call (in Canada, where I grew up, local calls is not measured, but long distance calls were charged by the minute).
It was because most of my local BBS's were hobbyist systems with one or two phone lines, and most of the time a connection attempt would be averted by a busy signal. In order to get my fill online time, I would have to create logins on dozens of systems and try to call them all until I found one that was free.
Then the number of bulletin boards is increased, as did the number of lines the average BBS parades, and the number of users on the bulletin board systems. Many of them joined with syndication systems such as FIDONet, which imported the online discussions from remote bulletin boards all over the world.
I went from reading every word posted on each BULLETIN BOARD to read a few choice fora. Then, I had actually down the list of bulletin board systems I used, and then further in fact the list of groups I read. Finally, I had just Mill most of these groups and participates actively in a small number of groups that were right up my street.
This was a real struggle first. There is a world of difference between reading each word comes in a community and read a few choice them. but soon the fear gave way to satisfaction and even delight: it appeared that "congestion" has a wonderful counterpart: redundancy.
Something really worth watching would only appear once and disappear. The really interesting thing would find its way into other discussions and systems for early conferencing made it easy enough to back my way through the forums in ignores or Mill in order to find the most important thing, I had missed.
This pattern continued to repeat itself again and again. Once, I could read all Usenet discussion groups my Internet service provider, then only one selection and then only one or two plus a longer list of groups I immersed in now and again when time permitted.
Once I was able to read each new website went online and was posted to Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web (now known as Yahoo). Then I could only visit interesting them; then I could only visit the last three or four interesting and then I had to abandon the project entirely and simply discovering new sites piecemeal.
Again and again this pattern re emerges: When I could read all The tweets sent out by all I followed on Twitter; now I just skim through the last 20 or 30 a few times a day and to be able to rely on retweets to bubble the good things to the top (I do my bit by retweeting things, when do you think deserve it).
When I was able to read each item on my list of RSS feeds; now I regularly mark them all as read without looking at any of them, just to clear the deck: If there is anything good in missed material, a person will Send again and I will see it then.
This also applies to the e-mail my, the most "deterministic" media for me. Now I got a mailbox for people I have competent with in the past and another that collects messages from previously unseen – the latter receive addresses much less attention than the former, but if I miss something and accidentally delete it, the sender often figures it out and send the message again (I keep a list of people from whom email replies waiting and give them a nudge every so often on the assumption that other people probably have similar probabilistic approaches to their mail).
There are fascinating implications for a world of probabalistic resource use: firstly, it points up the importance of "signal amplification" through retweets, reposts and other recycling of interesting tit-bits – these are critical for the successful use of a medium that is not consumed by any one person from tip to tail.
It is also proposed that the main strategy for coping with information overload is just relax and not worry about missing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity lurking somewhere in one of your inboxes – be it around again soon.
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