Archive for the 'Impact and Symptoms' Category

Beyond Millennials: Information Overload and the Alpha Generation

Posted on December 22nd, 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

Information Overload Day webinar recording is available for viewing

Posted on November 2nd, 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

Our Shrinking Attention Span and What to Do About It

Posted on November 28th, 2019 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

Photo by Daniel Cañibano on Unsplash Recently I gave my History of Computing lecture to a group of hi-tech employees. After I’d finished, an engineer came to me and complimented me in an unexpected way. “These days”, he said,  “I have a three minute attention span. After three minutes of listening to anything out comes my smartphone… but in your lecture I put it right back in my pocket!” It is pleasant to hear this kind of feedback, but as an information overload expert it set my mind thinking about the first part of his comment. The part about the.. Read more

Driving like a millennial

Posted on July 26th, 2019 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

An uncanny driving experience I’ve been driving in California for decades. As an Intel engineer I spent two years on relocation in Silicon Valley, and then flew in a few times a year for over 20 years. But last month I was in Santa Clara and decided to visit a friend who had moved to the central valley, an area I’ve never visited before, some 4 hours’ drive south-east of the San Jose. And unlike all my previous visits to the golden state, this time I used Waze. It worked beautifully, as always, without any need to adjust anything to.. Read more

How Smartphones are Harming our Children – and What to Do About It

Posted on January 31st, 2019 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

When will they ever learn? Observation: people and organizations are much more eager to adopt new technology than they are to think about its potential damage. This gap gave me the basis for a 25 year career as a computing productivity expert: I realized that Intel, my employer at the time, was happily rushing towards a major mess by giving employees every new computing and communication capability without doing the required advance analysis of how they should use it. We gave users email, and were soon hit by email overload; we gave them modems, and the work/life barrier was toppled.. Read more

The Arrival of The Silence

Posted on April 29th, 2018 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

Dinnertime – 60 years ago The drawing below was made by Giuseppe Novello (1897–1988), a noted Italian cartoonist of times past that you most likely aren’t acquainted with. In his long career he used the medium of the newspaper cartoon to dissect the daily life realities of middle class society, with all its little joys and sorrows, its hypocrisies and hardships. Novello did this with a piercing perception, which one could call ruthless if it weren’t for its deep underlying humanity. I am fortunate to own the set of his works, and you can read about them at http://www.nzeldes.com/Miscellany/Novello.htm. THE SILENCE.. Read more

What Can We Do About our Teens’ Smartphone Addiction?

Posted on December 30th, 2017 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

An interesting audience question I had just finished delivering my lecture on Information Overload at a hi-tech company and was taking comments from the usual group of attendees that approach me after everyone else has left – these are usually the best comments, since they come from people interested enough to stay and wait their turn. And this time I had a surprise. A man asked me whether I give such lectures in schools, targeting kids in their mid to late teens. These are the members of Generation Z (what will we do next, one wonders, now that we’ve run.. Read more

One Thing at a Time: Debunking Multitasking

Posted on October 17th, 2017 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms, Individual Solutions

Dinotopia is one of the lovelier literary utopias out there. Introduced as a lavishly illustrated book by James Gurney, and later made into a TV miniseries, it tells of a fictional island where intelligent dinosaurs and humans coexist and collaborate in a peaceful society; the absurdity of the premise is offset by Gurney’s magnificent illustrations. And although this blog seldom deals with dinosaurs, real or fictional, there is a point in the book that is relevant here. The code of Dinotopia The citizens of Dinotopia obey the ancient “Code of Dinotopia”, which consists of 11 short commandments, such as “Give.. Read more

Broken Communication Across the Generation Gap

Posted on May 25th, 2017 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

Fathers and Sons I was talking to a veteran manager and he told me an anecdote that caught my interest. This man had a son that had a room in the upstairs floor of the family house. One day the son told him he was sending him a web link of interest; the link failed to arrive. The father asked for a resend, which the son promptly effected; yet still no link was received. Finally my friend asked what email address the kid was sending it to – and the son, surprised, said “Skype!”… A growing communication gap What was.. Read more

Email, Digital Photography, and the Hole in our Historical Record

Posted on April 30th, 2017 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Impact and Symptoms

Letters from the past One fine day in the 20th century BCE Ilabrat-bani, an Assyrian merchant from Kültepe in Anatolia, wrote to one Amur-ili a letter concerning shipments of textiles, and providing advice for travel. The letter, written in cuneiform on a clay tablet, survived to reach present day historians and inform their research. On June 8th of 1511 Piero Venier, a merchant living in Sicily, penned a letter to his sisters in Venice. It contained his observations from an Auto de Fe he’d witnessed in Palermo, where the Spanish Inquisition burned at the stake conversos suspected of heresy amid.. Read more