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Join us at the Information Overload Day webinar on Oct 18!

Posted on October 8, 2022 · Posted in Uncategorized

On October 18, 2022 at 11:00 AM EDT the Information Overload Research Group (IORG) will celebrate Information Overload Day by hosting a webinar dedicated to the theme        “The intersection of Mindfulness and Information Overload” The event will be held by Zoom. No registration needed – just mark your calendar and show up! The Zoom link is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89522954198 . The 60-minute program will include: Andy Lee will give a talk about the application of mindfulness programs and practices to coping with the overwhelm of today’s workplace. Andy is a thought leader in the drive to introduce mindfulness into the corporate world… Read more

Beyond Millennials: Information Overload and the Alpha Generation

Posted on December 22, 2021 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms, Individual Solutions

Image credit: Peter Merholz on Flickr. Are we running out of alphabet? We have Generation X (born 1965–1980), we have generation Y (a.k.a. Millennials, born 1981–1996), we have Generation Z (1997–2012)… so what shall we call today’s children, born (mostly) to millennial parents after 2012? Actually, no worry about running out of letters: not all letters are in the Latin alphabet. The Chinese script has enough ideograms to last us for millennia… but before we go there, there is the Greek alphabet, now gaining fame for naming Coronavirus variants, and indeed the post-millennial cohort are now officially “Generation Alpha”. So.. Read more

Not Like “Being There”: the Surprising Trajectory of Video Conferencing

Posted on July 31, 2021 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Video conferencing has a long history… much longer as a dream than as a reality; and it is interesting to examine how that dream has evolved. Teleconferencing by voice goes back to the nineteenth century: Jules Verne’s “The begum’s fortune”, written in 1879, describes a teleconference at the city council of his utopian “France-ville”: “I will immediately convene the Council!” , said doctor Sarrasin, and preceded his guests to his study. It was a simply furnished room, whose three walls were covered with bookshelves, while the fourth had, below some paintings and objets d’art, an array of numbered devices similar.. Read more

Babbage and Turing: Two Paths to Inventing the Computer

Posted on April 29, 2021 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Off-topic

A younger me at the Babbage difference engine built by the Science Museum Success has many fathers, and so it is hardly surprising that there are numerous claimants to the title “inventor of the computer”. These include innovators like Aiken (constructor of the Harvard Mark I, 1944), Zuse (Z1, 1938), Atanasoff and Berry (ABC, 1942), Flowers (Colossus, 1943), and Mauchly and Eckert (ENIAC, 1946). But two men stand out, head and shoulders above all of them: Charles Babbage and Alan Turing. These two Englishmen invented the computer from scratch, but unlike the others, both failed to construct an actual machine.. Read more

Progress and Pig-Headedness in COVID-19 vaccination

Posted on December 29, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Off-topic

Well, at long last we have a COVID-19 vaccine – many of them, of which two are FDA-approved – and a vaccination drive is underway, just in time for the new year. I just got my first shot! Edward Jenner vaccinating his son. Note the cow outside! Colored engraving by C. Manigaud. [Source] Here I want to share some thoughts and observations about the vaccine situation. Soon after the pandemic became a thing I listed in my newsletter some ways that this pandemic, or rather our war against it, is different from earlier historical ones. One way I noted was.. Read more

Information Overload Day webinar recording is available for viewing

Posted on November 2, 2020 · Posted in Impact and Symptoms, Individual Solutions

The Information Overload Research Group (IORG), which I chair, held its annual Information Overload Day Webinar on October 20th. This year it was dedicated to the theme “Information Overload in the Post-COVID Workplace”. It was a great session with many interesting presentations and some good discussions, and it is now available for your viewing pleasure here. The program included: Welcome to Information Overload Day 2020 – Nathan Zeldes, President, IORG, and Founder, Nathan Zeldes Consulting. Information Overload 101 – Jonathan Spira, Vice President, Research, IORG, and Senior Managing Director, Accura Media. Amusing & Informing Ourselves to Death during COVID Crisis.. Read more

Learning to code in an information-flooded world

Posted on October 1, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

The world around us keeps changing, and many of the changes are caused by, or related to, Information Overload and the instant access to limitless information resources. Recently I’ve come face to face with one more instance of this fact. I’ve been programming computers – sometimes for work, but more often for fun – for over four decades. I’ve written programs on mainframes, minis and micros. I’ve done it in maybe a dozen languages, including Fortran, Algol, Assembler, BASIC, C, Forth and C++, and with the exception of the first two I always learned them on my own. So with.. Read more

How to Hold Magnificent Conferences in the Time of Corona

Posted on July 21, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

In May I went to a large international conference, EcoMotion 2020, devoted to the exciting innovative field of autonomous vehicles and other novel means of transport. There were 3,000 attendees from 54 countries and 211 exhibitors. It was a magnificent event. Welcome speech at the start of the event Of course, in May I couldn’t possibly have gone to a large conference… not with the blasted Coronavirus imposing social distancing and travel bans. In May I stayed at home. And yet I went to EcoMotion 2020, and it most definitely was a magnificent event. The impact of COVID-19 on the.. Read more

How to Manage Working from Home in the Age of Corona

Posted on April 7, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Organizational Solutions

The Corona virus is holding the world hostage at the time I write this, and is probably feeling pretty pleased with itself. For my part, I won’t speculate about when this mess will be over, but I retain my optimism that we humans will overcome it… after all, remember the smallpox virus: it had killed millions of us well into the 20th century, but we’ve finally wiped it right off the face of our planet. Now we’re gunning for Coronavirus… I’d be less smug if I was in its place. Meanwhile we’re all stuck at home and have time for.. Read more

Throw Them in the Water and Let Them Swim!

Posted on February 14, 2020 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Back when I joined Intel Corporation in the early eighties the concept of Intel Culture was very real for us employees. I don’t mean the laudable corporate platitudes about respecting everybody and caring for the planet that are standard today; back then Intel was a small company that had yet to win the IBM PC processor contract, and the culture it embodied was the sort of stark “frontier culture” that as an Israeli I could easily identify with. It had originated with Andy Grove, who was then a forceful presence in the company, and it was all about personal responsibility,.. Read more