On information overload...

The current day's information overload is a topic that has been covered by many people, many times. Just having gone through one of those moments of revelation when you notice just how much time you've just spent reading a bunch of interesting, but thoroughly useless tidbits of information, I decided to throw in my two cents.

Over the years I've developed certain habits. I visit certain sites to read general news, technology news and general things of interest. As new forms of obtaining information became available, I've adapted to incorporate them into my daily routine. Some things, seem to add to the time I spend digesting information, while others seem to make me more productive. Sometimes, though, it is a tough call to make, deciding in which category something falls.

One such case for me is Twitter. Though I've had an account for about a year, it was only in the last couple of months that I've actually become a user. I have to say that I have no interest in following when one of my friends went to buy bread, or got on a wrong bus. I, therefore, do not follow people who write about those things. I like to know what people are doing in their professional lives and what they find of interest, though. I've read some pretty interesting articles that were commented on by friends or acquaintances in their Twitter accounts. Considering this, I would say that Twitter had made me more productive as I get a stream recommended articles to read. These articles have already been read by people I know and whose judgment I trust.

With some frequency, perhaps once a month, I run into something on the Web that triggers my interest and ends up consuming several hours of time as I browse from one article to another. On a recent incident I ran into a reference that CBS had made available several episodes of the 1950's Perry Mason TV show, based the books by Erle Stanley Gardner. I remembered watching that show on TV, when I was a kid in the 1970's and started looking into it. I ended up reading about the show, the character, the actor who played the main character and the author's life. In the end I had absorbed a lot of information that, though interesting, was immediately useless to me.

The one bit of information that was most useful was that the one I started from, that you can watch some episodes directly through the browser.

The Internet and the Web make getting information incredibly easy, these days. In fact it is so easy that you need to be careful of not looking too much for information. That was what happened to me in the example Perry Mason incident. I found something of interest, because it reminded me of good moments of my childhood, and just dived into the incredible sea of information that seems to be available about almost anything, on the Web.

An interesting artifact that has, surprisingly, helped me expedite information processing is an iPod Touch. I have been reading most of my email on it. It is helps me quickly discard of what is useless and process what is of interest. Ever since I've gotten it, I have never left unread emails on my GMail account which I have to admit was rarely the case before that. Another source of information I now generally consult through the iPod is Twitter, using one of the many clients that are available for usage on the device. In fact, even on my notebooks I've been using TweetDeck to access my Twitter account and read what the people I follow have to say.

Information is now available in huge quantities, all around us. In our computers, phones and now even in our iPods. We must adapt our habits to these new ways to access information but we must, also, learn to figure out when we've gotten enough on a particular subject so we don't just waste our time.