Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 14

Tablet Reality Check

Still a bit heavy...

With this week's announcement of the new iPad and expectations for high sales and increased tablet ownership at all-time highs, it is worth taking a minute to review the tablet landscape.

According to Pew Research, as of January 2012 the number of adults in theU.S.who own a tablet stands at 19%.  That number doubled from mid-December, due to the holiday season and driven by the introduction of lower cost tablets such as the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet.  Interestingly, the numbers for e-reader ownership are identical, with 19% ofU.S.adults owning one.  Apple CEO Tim Cook went so far as to predict in a recent speech that tablets will soon outsell PCs.  I would argue that at least in the short term, a more likely prediction is the continuing blurring of the lines between mobile and PC operating systems (see the recently announced Windows 8 and Apple OS X Mountain Lion), allowing tablets to function as extensions of a user's PC.

Options for tablet ownership have expanded significantly as the number of companies releasing Android-based tablets has risen.  However, the iPad still dominates the market with 59%, according to February estimates by DisplaySeach.  The iPad is followed by Amazon (17%), Samsung (7%), Asus (4.6%), and Barnes and Noble (3.5%).

Size options abound for tablets.  The standard remains around 10", with the iPad at 9.7", but Samsung in particular has released tablets in 10.1", 8.9", 7", and recently, 5".  Samsung's 5" Galaxy Note is more of a phone/tablet hybrid than pure tablet, but the company now plans to release larger versions of the Note.  The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are both 7", but are underpowered compared to the more expensive iPad and Android offerings on the market.  Both run heavily modified versions of Android and essentially form a sub-set of tablets, halfway between an e-reader and a full featured tablet.

Consumers are using tablets in a variety of locations.  Seventy percent use tablets while they watch TV, according to Nielsen data from May 2011.  A further 50% report tablet use while in bed and one in four tablet owners uses it in the bathroom.  Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly, tablet use leads to decreased use of both desktop PCs (35% report less use) and laptops (32%).  As of one year ago, in March 2011, Google AdMob found that when using tablets, the most reported activity is gaming (84%), followed by search (78%) and e-mail (74%).

Personally, as I have struggled to find the perfect use for my own tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, I find myself reflected in these statistics.  I certainly have ended up using the tablet while watching TV and while in bed, and gaming search as well as light e-mailing suit the form factor and capabilities of the tablet perfectly.  Because (as a writer) I work with words, I have not found a way to use the tablet for work, although I can see how some professions, such as artists who need to show work to clients, would find tablets helpful.

Oh, and here is what you really came for.  Apple unveiled a new iPad with a sharper display and support for 4G mobile data networks.  The new third-generation iPad has a high resolution Retina display with four times the number of pixels found in the iPad 2.   Also aboard the new iPad is a five-megapixel rear camera that is capable of 1080p video recording, and includes built-in video stabilization. The iPad is powered by an A5X processor with quad-core graphics that is designed to support the Retina display and also be power efficient.  For more information, please read full coverage at Frequent Business Traveler.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.  He can be reached at cburke@basex.com

Beep. Beep. Beep.

So much temptation...

When I look around, I see temptation. Information. It's like crack. You get a little information and you immediately want more.

Three beeps indicate a text message. My friends and colleagues who want my attention send me text messages when they want an immediate reply. E-mail, despite being in real time, has become less so. The same goes for instant messages, which can be ignored as well.

I get so many e-mails that I turned off the various alerts (sound and screen) long ago. Had I left the e-mail chime on, it would be one continuous noise. For the same reason, my Lotus Sametime instant messaging software also no longer chimes.

Americans today spend a vast amount of the day consuming information. A 2009 report from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) found that each person spends an average of 12 hours per day surfing the Web and watching TV, although the study counted 1 hour of watching TV and surfing the Web as 2 hours, so some hours were counted twice. While the typical individual watches TV for 5 hours, uses the computer for 2, and spends 1 hour gaming, only 36 minutes are given to print media, representing a huge shift in how we consume information.

In a typical hour spent online, according to Nielsen data from 2010, the average user spends 13 minutes on social networking sites, 5 minutes on e-mail, and just over 2 minutes using instant messaging tools. Interestingly, when Nielsen looked at online activities on mobile devices, 26 minutes of every hour was spent on e-mail, compared to only 6 spent on social networking sites.

Our choices in media consumption and activity are not without consequence; the way in which we stimulate our brains as we consume information can have a very real impact on our cognitive abilities.

A study of 11 German schoolboys at the Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln (German Sports University Cologne), published in the November 2007 issue of Pediatrics, investigated "the effects of singular excessive television and computer game consumption on sleep patterns and memory performance of children." The research, led by Markus Dworak of the Institut für Bewegungs und Neurowissenschaft, which is part of the Deutsche Sporthochschule, involved having the boys play video games for 1 hour after doing their homework on alternate nights. The other nights, the boys would watch television or a movie. The researchers looked at the impact of different media on the boys' brainwave patterns while asleep and measured their ability to recollect information from homework assignments. Playing video games, as compared to watching television, led to a "significant decline" in the boys' ability to remember vocabulary assignments and also resulted in poorer sleep quality.

The temptation to give in to interruptions from our devices is strong.  However, we must resist the siren's call and stay focused.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

 

The Man Who Didn't Invent E-mail

You invented e-mail? Really?

Recently, I was shocked to learn that a 14-year old named V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai invented e-mail in 1978.  This story came to me via the Washington Post, which reported on February 17 that the "inventor" was being honored by the Smithsonian.  A Time magazine online story which I hadn't seen until the past week apparently broke the "news" last November.

Why am I using quotation marks (which I typically abhor) around the word "inventor" and "news"?  The answer is simple.  When I first read the story in the Wash Post, I started laughing and quickly double-checked the calendar to see if it were April 1st.  Since it wasn't, I felt compelled to set the record straight and I am sure that I am not the only one doing so.

If you go back to the Wash Post story today, you'll see a "clarification" (whoops, there are those pesky quotation marks again) explaining that "a number of readers have accurately pointed out that electronic messaging predates V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai's work in 1978. However, Ayyadurai holds the copyright to the computer program called "email," establishing him as the creator of the "computer program for [an] electronic mail system" with that name, according to the U.S. Copyright Office."

Let's look back for a moment.   E-mail was a feature of 1960s mainframe computer systems that had the capability allowing a user to send a message to another user of the same system.  This was an advancement of real-time chat programs that were in use up until that point (yes, chat was around in the 1960s).  The MIT CTSS (ca. 1965) is likely to have been the first system that incorporated this kind of e-mail.

In terms of e-mail as we know it now, meaning the ability to send a message to someone using a different computer or computer system, credit goes to Ray Tomlinson (who also invented the use of the "@" symbol in the addressing scheme).  I cover this in my book, Overload!, and this was the killer app of its time.

Now, back to our hero, Mr. Ayyadurai.  While the clarification issued by the Wash Post serves to indicate that there was some degree of public outcry about the article, its wording is ambiguous at best.  Holding the copyright to a computer program named "EMAIL" is not the same thing as having invented e-mail.  Were I to write a messaging program today (assuming I took a crash course in programming first), I too would be able to copyright my very own "EMAIL" program.  So could you, for that matter.

What makes me uneasy about this is that all of the press coverage comes in advance of the publication of Ayyadurai's book, The EMAIL Revolution.  While the cover of the book seems to be ready, the description merely says ""Lorem ipsum…"   His Web site is a masterpiece of self promotion that also includes a video he prepared: "Turmeric: Wonder Herb of India."

I stand by what is not really my claim but that of many eminent computer historians, namely that Ray Tomlinson is the inventor and father of modern e-mail.  At least Ray didn't capitalize it and he certainly isn't trying to capitalize on it either.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

A conversation with Patrick – The Clog

 

My desk seems a bit clogged up...

Every week, I get the opportunity to sit down and chat with knowledge workers who are overloaded. Last week, I spoke with Patrick, a mid-level banking executive.

He refers to the problem of Information Overload as a "clog." "We're just bombarded with all sorts of stuff," he told me.

I nodded knowingly.

"Technology," he continued, "is supposed to help us but sometimes it is more of a hindrance." He went on. "The inefficiency of our technology is just driving me crazy." "It's a bit of a touchy subject," he tells me, "bandwidth is a problem and even getting to Web sites is an issue at times."

"I spend a lot of time with e-mail," he notes. "It's one of the biggest drags on productivity."

His observations: "People copy too many people, they use e-mail indiscriminately, they don't read what others write…" The list goes on and on.

Patrick uses rules and filters in e-mail in an effort to keep the clog to a minimum but it's not enough. His solution just to keep up? Working on weekends. He finds it a time when he can do what he has to do without any interruptions.

Patrick, of course, is one of the almost 100 million knowledge workers in North America and he's far from being alone in his struggles with "clog." The fact is that, every day, we are sending more – not fewer – e-mail messages and that is only increasing the clog.

Last week I spoke at a corporate meeting about Information Overload. At first, I thought everyone was going to be bored by my topic but, apparently, It struck a nerve. The Q&A session didn't want to end – everyone was hoping for a wooden stake or a silver bullet.

To be honest, so are Patrick and I.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

Institute of Noetic Sciences: Meditating at Work: A New Approach to Managing Overload

Jonathan Spira's research at Basex was cited in this great article in Noetic Now by Wendy Woods:

According to Dr. Edward Hallowell, the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive functions such as decision making, problem solving, and planning) cannot execute properly when it is in stress mode. Instead, the "lower part" of the brain, which is responsible for dealing with survival, takes over. The prefrontal cortex then waits for a signal from the lower brain that the stressor has disappeared. Until then, the prefrontal cortex still functions, but poorly. Intelligence declines, and flexibility is minimal.1The result of this information and distraction overload is wreaking havoc with both employees' and managers' mental and physical health, as well as with productivity. As Jonathan Spira notes in Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization, this problem has been estimated to cost the U.S. economy $900 billion per year in "lowered employee productivity and reduced innovation."2 This figure also includes recovery time, which can be ten to twenty times greater than the time lost from the interruption itself.

While organizations have addressed these challenges with a variety of stress-management solutions, until recently meditation was not among them. It still had a reputation for being flaky and unfit for corporate consumption. However, scientific studies that have proven the value of meditation in changing the brain point to meditation's practical application in the workplace. Meditation is now gaining acceptance and being used in established American companies such as General Mills, Google, and Prentice Hall.

Read the full article here.

E-mail Disclaimer Overload

Just the message thanks

I recently noticed not one, not two, but 11 disclaimers at the bottom of an extensive e-mail exchange that occurred over a period of several days.

I noticed that disclaimers first started appearing on some e-mail messages from lawyers a few years back, but more recently, accountants, bankers, financial advisers, and certain types of consultants have also gotten into the act.

Most disclaimers ostensibly serve three functions, although their actual efficacy is subject to question (and would be the topic of an entirely different article):

1.) Notify the recipient that the e-mail message may contain "information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law."

2.) Tell the recipient NOT to read the e-mail if he is not the intended recipient (presumably, telling the recipient not to read it won't make him more curious, especially when the disclaimer is at the very end of the message and he's presumably already read it).

3.) Ask the recipient to destroy the communication if he's not the intended recipient and, additionally, to notify the sender thusly.

There's a problem inherent in all of these disclaimers, namely, their position relative to the text of the e-mail message.

Our research on Information Overload has taught me that knowledge workers frequently don't make it past the middle of the second paragraph of a message. The likelihood of someone making it all the way down to the disclaimer and then reading it is about as likely as someone reading an end-user license agreement (EULA) for a piece of software. (The software companies know that it is very unlikely that a EULA will be read; years ago, PC Pitstop, an antispyware maker, put a note in its own EULA promising $1,000 to the first person who sent an e-mail to a specific e-mail address. It took four months and several thousand downloads before that e-mail arrived and the sender received the $1,000 for his trouble.)

Despite all of this, I really didn't give much thought to the disclaimer problem until I read an article in the Wall Street Journal (Warning: If the Email You Just Read Isn't for You, Don't Read It") focusing on it. (The premise of the piece was that disclaimers are routinely ignored and held by many to be silly.)

What was really telling were some of the comments from readers. There was clear agreement that the disclaimers were, well, just silly.

Garrett Mcdaniel wrote that, at a previous employment, he added sentences including "Failure to do so will result in the unintended recipient's immediate extradition to Guantanamo from which they will never be seen or heard from again" or "Crest has been shown to be an effective decay preventive dentifrice when used in a conscientiously applied program…." Neither was ever noticed by a recipient.

Finally, Peter Eggert included a disclaimer on his own comment:

"This comment is the property of Peter and is in no way a representation of his lawyer, dog, parents, the Sun, Jerry Seinfeld, Uranus, or Major League Baseball. Any attempts to recreate this comment shall be deemed ineligible under the SEC Act of 1933, Miranda v. Arizona, and "Finders Keepers"."

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

January 18, 2012 – A notable day in information history

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. ~Tommy Smothers

In what had an eerie resemblance to a No Email Friday but which occurred for very different reasons, portions of the Internet went dark last week.

On January 18, major Web sites including Wikipedia and Reddit were closed to business. Google did not shut down but covered up its logo with a large black bar, making it look as if the site had been censored.

These were all part of a grassroots effort to protest anti-piracy legislation, namely the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect I.P. Act (PIPA), which had been working their way through Congress.

This is the first time in history that major Web sites banded together in protest and it was largely led by information providers (i.e. Wikipedia and Google), which get more traffic than other sites.

After the protest, dozens of members of Congress as well as the White House dropped their support of the bills and the sponsors of SOPA and PIPA are contemplating considerable changes to the bills.

While some of the Internet sites went a bit overboard with scare tactics about SOPA and PIPA, ultimately the power of the people – and information providers – prevailed. The people spoke and the government listened and made an abrupt about face.

And regardless of any future legislation that may address anti-piracy, January 18, 2012 was a notable day in information history.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

Overloaded 2012 – An IORG Event

On Feb. 25, in San Francisco, the Information Overload Research Group will host "Overloaded 2012″, a gathering of people from a diversity of domains such as business, academia, technology, journalism, psychology, and research, committed to the battle against information overload. We've intentionally decided to make this an "un-conference", a more informal and intimate event than a full blown conference, where the focus will be on creating a lively dialog, crossing organizational and domain boundaries, and developing new insight into the state of information overload as well as the latest solutions.

In my experience, getting professional colleagues who usually interact remotely into one physical room liberates incredible energy. Ideas flow, knowledge is shared, innovative thinking is triggered, collaborations are born, friendships are cemented… in fact, IORG itself was born in the aftermath of such a gathering a few years ago. I look forward to attending this day in San Francisco with much pleasant anticipation!

If you share our passion, please join us there! Reserve your place by registering here. We look forward to meeting you in what promises to be a productive, interesting and (not least) fun coming together of like minds.

Nathan Zeldes is the president of the Information Overload Research Group.

Financial Times:Fighting the Battle of the E-Mail Inbox

Jonathan Spira was quoted on Janurary 9, 2012 by Beagan Wilcox Volz in the Financial Times:

There's a huge incentive for firms to confront information overload: It's costing them big. One major Fortune 500 company estimates that information overload impacts its bottom line by about $1 billion per year, according to Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization, by Jonathan Spira, CEO of Basex, a research and advisory firm.

 

Some of that cost comes from lost hours spent slogging through e-mails. E-mail fries approximately 21 days per year for each employee, estimates Monica Seeley, an e-mail management expert at consulting firm Mesmo, and author of Brilliant Email.

 

"We have very bad habits — all of us — when it comes to e-mail," says Spira, who notes, however, that e-mail is just the poster child for information overload, which also includes constant interruptions in the form of instant messages, inefficient data and information searches and firms expecting workers to ingest more data and information than is humanly possible…

Full article available here (subscription required).

2012 Resolution Roundup: Limit Your Information Exposure

More toasts, less e-mail?

Now that 2012 is upon us, it is worth noting the abundance of end-of-year resolution articles that focus on our own favorite topic, Information Overload.

Nick Bilton, writing in the New York Times, resolved that, in 2012, he will spend at least 30 minutes every day without his iPhone, iPad, Internet, or any other electronic device.  Bilton believes that his use of electronics has cut into his daydreaming time to his detriment.  He notes that he came to this resolution after finding himself spending more time trying to take the perfect picture of a magnificent sunset with his iPhone than the time he spent actually enjoying what he was witnessing.  Our research has revealed that the typical knowledge worker has only 5% of his day for thought and reflection, and we wish Mr. Bilton the best as he tries increase that figure.  As he put it, "I don't intend to give up my technology entirely, but I want to find a better balance. For me, it's that 30 minutes a day for daydreaming."

Writing in Fast Company, Aaron Shapiro, CEO of Huge, a digital marketing company, has made some resolutions of his own.  They are to turn off IM, which he sees as an invitation to be interrupted; check e-mail only a few times a day; and to schedule time for social media.  We agree with Mr. Shapiro that IM, e-mail, and social media can be the source of significant interruptions, and it is incumbent on the individual to set limits for use and to always take the time to select the appropriate communications channel for the task at hand.  Turning IM off completely may be a bit on the extreme side though, as the tool can actually help avoid other interruptions, such as e-mail and phone calls.  Our current guidelines for selecting the best tool are laid out in our recently updated What Works Better When article.

Ironically, other resolutions that are being advocated this year involve more reading, which may actually increase overload.  Bruce Upbin of Forbes suggests that your resolution for this year should be to read The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson.  Johnson, whose coining of the term "infovegan" we reported on previously, advocates limiting the information you allow yourself to consume, thereby achieving a more healthy mental state by reducing Information Overload.

In numerous recent radio interviews and articles, Jonathan Spira's Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization has also been offered as a great way to get a jump start on a productive 2012 by learning how to take steps in order  to reduce your exposure to Information Overload.  No matter what book you read or steps you take, resolve to make 2012 the year you take action against your Information Overload exposure.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.  He can be reached at cburke@basex.com