poof!
During a recent speech to some networking executives, a well-known Internet guru (who shall be nameless) admitted that he had a slight problem. Upon returning from one of his many and frequent business trips, he would find literally thousands of E-mail messages queued up and awaiting response on his computer. Then, he made what I consider to be a rather startling confession: sometimes he had to just blow the lot of them away (poof!).
Welcome to the information age.
Information overload is something that this industry has yet tocome to terms with. In at least an attempt to do that, I developed a concept called quality of information or QOI, the subject of a commentary several months ago. Since that time, a lot of people have been asking me to discuss the concept further. So, here goes.
I've already described the three phases of initiation in cyberspace: information euphoria, information ennui, and the third, something I call strategies of accommodation (i.e., ways of dealing with the onslaught of information that characterizes the current environment, embarrassment of riches though it may be).
The first phase is something that most of us have already been through: the "anything, anytime, anywhere" mania that constituted gushing ad campaigns for the information age that were so common several years ago. The best advice I can give anyone at this point in time about this phase is: get over it, there's more important work to do. (Nevertheless, some publications like Wired magazine seem to remain permanently and irrevocably fixated in this mode, and they have the mainstream press chasing after them like puppy dogs.)
Information ennui is the phase where you realize that something has to change. The bad news is that it's probably you. No knowbot ex machina or miracle intelligent filtering device for $19.99 is going to descend from some obscure cyber-dimension to pull you out of this, at least in the reasonable foreseeable future. This realization, however, is a necessary prelude to more creative approaches: the aforementioned strategies. And these strategies, by the way, reside in human cognitive ability, and our ability to use computer-generated information wisely and intelligently (and, I might add, with a certain style). It's the practical reality that the digital revolution is going to have to be managed and is not going to yield nothing but astonishing benefits without any problems and glitches.
Let's take a closer look at those realities. The problem with the one person/one tube model is pretty straightforward. The first information bottleneck was in the computer. Now that we've got 486s dotting the landscape, this is no longer a problem. The next bottleneck was in the network. With respect to this aspect, all we can say is: we're working on it. But, by and large, this is something that's going to be solved.
So, from an information processing standpoint, guess where the next bottleneck is going to be? Yep, you guessed it: right between your ears. Our own very precious human bandwidth is the next bottleneck because as you sit in front of that tube, your own rate of information assimilation (unlike the technology) has fixed upper limits (at least as far as we know).
The concept of quality of information is a way of thinking about the value of information. It encompasses several concepts, each of which I'll explain. The first is the time value of information, a take off on the time value of money. Yes, information has a half-life. And then again, some information is timeless. Another vector is the scope of the information, which is a factor of how many people it affects. A third value is authenticity of source (i.e., where did this information come from?) If it's something free-floating on the Net and you can't trace it to a reliable source, then the QOI has been diminished. The fourth vector is dissemination value. If a piece of information has been around the block one too many times, again, QOI is affected.
This is a rich but complex area for exploration and I'll have more to say on the subject later. Suffice it to say for now, that the new media, so-called, will require all of us to rethink the process of how we get our information, and what we as professionals, and co-inventors of the new information order, consider important and meaningful. It's hard work, but well worth the payoff.
Tom Valovic, Editor-in-Chief. Internet: valovic@world.std.com; MCI mail: 311-1693; phone: (800) 225-9977; fax: (617) 762-9071.(Note: this commentary is also available electronically on CompuServe)