a way of seeing the world that assumes that we are to information overload as fishes are to water: it's just what we swim in. Yiztak Rabin... has said that "if you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it's not a problem. Maybe it's a fact." That's information overload. Talking about information overload as if it explains or excuses anything is actually a distraction.... When you feel yourself getting too much information, ... don't say to yourself what happened to the information, but say to yourself what filter just broke? What was I relying on before that stopped functioning?
This is an extremely clear, and much more succinct statement of what I've been feeling for a while and have been struggling to put to words. Information overload is a fact of life. So we need to be smart and proactive about the filters that we use to manage and process this information. Check out Shirky's talk, below, for more discussion. It's only 25 minutes and is packed with interesting observations.
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I found Clay Shirki's explanation convincing about information overload being a fact rather than a problem. I am having the same problem with facebook and I think I am giving up on trying to privatize my information. I tried to hide most of what appears on my profile including, my photo albums and other personal information. It didn't work. I tried to remove some of the tagged pictures that I didn't even want on my profile. It didn't work either! When someone who isn't my friend but is friends with most of my friends publish something on their facebook, I get to hear about it one way or another. I remember what a friend said when we were discussing about facebook. He said he likes looking at what people are up to but he doesn't like people doing that to him, which I think is impossible. If you don't have any information on your profile, then nobody is going to want to befriend you.
The interesting question here is that, do sites such as facebook function with much less than six degrees of separation? I think information flow through such sites are way faster than we think they are. You should be careful when you think about publishing your personal lives. Maybe someday you will become the president of your country's. You don't want anyone picking on your previous deeds!
I would like to finish my comment with an interesting quote that Clay pointed out. "If you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it is not a problem. Maybe it is a fact."
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