Archive for the 'Impact and Symptoms' Category

Information Overload before Email

Posted on September 23rd, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

Real time communication over large distances has been around for millennia, if you count smoke signals and bonfire beacons; but it’s really taken off in the 19th century after the arrival of Morse’s Electric Telegraph in 1844. Suddenly it was possible to freely send text across the nation, and the new invention spread as fast as new wires could be strung up. Isn’t progress great? The transformation this brought to all aspects of life was sweeping, and is described in Tom Standage’s fascinating book “The Victorian Internet“. My favorite part of this book is the quote from a speech made.. Read more

The occupational hazards of handling information

Posted on September 17th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

Handling stuff has always carried occupational health risks. Back in previous centuries it was physical stuff: if you worked in a coal mine your lungs would get shot; if you lifted product (“16 tons”), your back was at risk; if you dipped matches you’d be poisoned outright… and even dealing with books and ledgers involved the stereotypical “scholarly stoop” or myopic eyes. In this new century the stuff that matters is information, which is odorless, weightless, and non-toxic; you’d think there would be no hazards associated with its handling. And yet, there are distinct health issues related to Information Work… Read more

Is the brevity of SMS language compromising our emails?

Posted on September 12th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

An interesting observation in a client meeting: we were discussing the contribution of language gaps in a global company to email overload, and one participant pointed out that these days many younger employees use the super-abbreviated “SMS language” in their emails, leading to more misunderstood messages than in the past. Writing brief emails is not a new device; I notice it particularly among senior executives, who respond in one-liners and even in ALL CAPS to maintain communication despite the overload. These, however, tend to be older people and they write these brief emails in English. For instance, a baby boomer.. Read more

Six ways your email can reach the wrong eyes

Posted on August 18th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

One mistake people often make is assuming the emails they send are private. All hell can break lose when an email is disclosed to unintended parties. There are many ways this can happen to a message (and Murphy’s laws will ensure it does, at the worst possible time). For instance: The recipient might forward it inappropriately. This is probably the most common occurrence. Sometimes it’s an act of pure idiocy, as when you send someone a personal comment about X and before you know it they send it to X or his colleagues. But often it’s indirect: the recipient forwards.. Read more

Reading email or Understanding email?

Posted on June 12th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms, Individual Solutions

Considering the amount of time we all spend reading incoming email, it’s amazing how little we understand what we read. That reading and understanding are two different things is clear; this is why legal documents use verbiage like “I confirm that I have read and understood the terms & conditions bla bla bla”… but it’s amazing how easy it is to read a mail message and totally miss large chunks of it. People glance at the message, form an impression of what it means to them, and move on – after all, they may have 100 others waiting to be.. Read more

Five characteristics of Information Overload in Small Businesses

Posted on June 6th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

Last week I lectured on Information Overload at a seminar for small business entrepreneurs. This is a very diverse, lively and interesting population segment, brimming with energy and originality. I had an interesting time talking to people making a living from areas as different as marriage (and, alas, divorce) counseling, organic food production, web site development, optometry, software coding and interior design. These people were young and old, male and female, technically trained or not; but they had one thing in common: all were victims of massive Information Overload. Which is strange, in a way: you’d think someone running a.. Read more

Online Silence and Trust

Posted on May 8th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I lectured at the Info 2010 conference this week, where we had a special track dedicated to Information Overload, with many excellent speakers. One of these was Dr. Yoram Kalman, a key contributor to IORG and a long time friend, who presented his research into Online Silence. This is the phenomenon, so familiar to us all, where you send an email to a person and no reply comes back. After a few days you get restless and resend; often this will remain of no avail. Then you phone the recipient, and perhaps leave a message urging they look for your.. Read more

Collecting Manifestations of an Obsession

Posted on May 2nd, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

Knowing my specialization in Information Overload, people around me tend to share stories from their own observations of people submitting to obsessive reading of email 24×7. For example: one friend reports being at an airport, seeing a family with young children waiting in line with their luggage on a cart. The mother was holding on to the cart, and trying to keep an eye on the kids. The father was banging on a Notebook doing email… (I can imagine that despite this fine proof of the feminine capacity for multitasking, his wife would have preferred to share the burden with.. Read more

Computers in Health Care – Take 2

Posted on March 22nd, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

I mentioned in a recent post Lesa Becker’s study of the impact of computer adoption on hospital personnel. Well, I was visiting in a hospital the other day and noticed the wheeled computer the doctors were lugging around to patients’ beds, so I asked staff members whether the move to computerized patient records is a boon or a bane. Opinions varied as to the time impact: all agreed it takes longer to use, with older folks feeling more affected than younger ones; but I was surprised with the reply of the head nurse. She replied with an emphatic condemnation of.. Read more

Information Overload: how do we quantify the cost?

Posted on February 26th, 2010 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms

We grown-ups like to quantify things in numbers, as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry charmingly observes in The Little Prince: “If you were to say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.” Then they would exclaim: “Oh, what a pretty house that is!”” So, it is no wonder that any fighter against inefficiency in the workplace is often confronted.. Read more