Thing 4

Thing 4

How do I handle information overload? Typically by running for the nearest rock large enough to hide under! More seriously, although technology like IM came out in my college years, I still have trouble multi-tasking and find I'm more productive when I can focus on one person or activity at a time. There is such a vast unknoweable amount of content on the web. I used to be overwhelmed simply thinking about all the possible books at the library I might be interested in reading. Then the Internet appeared. The amount of info available online is so many times that of a library collection--if I ever thought I could keep up, it was in the very early days of the Internet when I didn't fully grasp how huge it was. It wasn't a particularly long lasting delusion. There are a few websites I usually check daily; however, if there is no new content, I generally stop looking in favor of something else more reliably updated. Time is usually the limiting factor. The idea of looking at just one site and finding new content in one place sounds like a great idea, one of those "how did we live without it" types that in a simple way has the potential for big changes in how we get information. That said, I think there's a risk too of overpersonalization--if we only subscribe to those sites or even parts of sites that are congruent with our current interests and ideas, we may miss viewing or blindly stumbling across content that might change our thinking.