Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 15

Hot Off The Press: Information Literacy to Quell Information Overload

Lucy Duhon from the Hot Off The Press blog referenced Ben Rossi, Basex analyst, in a post about information literacy.

Missed this piece.  But better late than never.

From a blog titled 'Information Overload'  selling a book by the same name, here's a nice little essay by Ben Rossi (a business analyst with an apparent academic interest) on why information literacy (and librarians) are (still) important in higher education.

Two words in this essay struck me.

One I hadn't thought of in ages: 'satisficing' — as in, just barely satisfying requirements for an assignment — merely sufficing; the other a new one (for me), which I like very much:  'presearch' — the kind of "research" most librarians agree Wikipedia is OK for.  Wikipedia is the kind of resource that helps students initially chart out a path for an otherwise unknown topic.  A good starting point.

Full article available here.

Chicago Tribune: VW stems flow of email outside of work

The Chicago Tribune covered VW's attempts to limit e-mail overload by switching off BlackBerry e-mail access during non-work hours.  Jonathan Spira was featured in the article.

Jonathan Spira, author of "Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization," has spent 15 years studying the impact of 24/7 email.

He says work phones were originally imagined as a great way to get more work and productivity out of employees. But, actually, he said, they might be doing the opposite.

For every 100 people who are unnecessarily copied on an email, he said, eight hours are lost. And each time workers are interrupted by that little blinking light, he said, it will take an average of five minutes for them to get back into an undistracted thinking mode.

"Information overload has caused people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas, contemplate and even reason and think," he said.

Full article available here.

The Chicago Tribune covered VW's attempts to limit e-mail...

The Chicago Tribune covered VW's attempts to limit e-mail overload by switching off BlackBerry e-mail access during non-work hours.  Jonathan Spira was featured in the article.

Jonathan Spira, author of "Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization," has spent 15 years studying the impact of 24/7 email.

He says work phones were originally imagined as a great way to get more work and productivity out of employees. But, actually, he said, they might be doing the opposite.

For every 100 people who are unnecessarily copied on an email, he said, eight hours are lost. And each time workers are interrupted by that little blinking light, he said, it will take an average of five minutes for them to get back into an undistracted thinking mode.

"Information overload has caused people to lose their ability to manage thoughts and ideas, contemplate and even reason and think," he said.

Full article available here.

ABC News: Volkswagen Gives Workers a Break from BlackBerry Email

Jonathan Spira was quoted by ABC News in its piece about VW's attempts to cut back on e-mail overload for its workers.

"It's a very tough tightrope to balance oneself on," said Jonathan Spira, CEO of Basex, a technology consulting firm, in an interview with ABC News back in 2006. "Everything could be the next important emergency that needs to be taken care of."

Full article available here.

Is Having All of This Information Worth It?

As the former CIO of a Fortune 500 company, I shudder to look at the world of information since my retirement over 10 years ago.  The amount of information that is available to the typical corporate employee is simply mind-boggling.

When I speak to my successor (who is still at the helm), I find that his issues are so different from mine – and so is his day.

While I would never describe my job as leisurely, my successor works at a frantic pace which is foreign to me.  The number of e-mails he gets in a day is probably what I got in a week – and it is an incredible drain on his time.

I can well understand why the chorus around turning off e-mail has become so great – but at the present time, there really is no single replacement and we can't make employees run around checking a variety of non-unified systems looking for what they need to keep current on.

And that's just e-mail.  I see the number of search tools and content management systems proliferating beyond what I would ever have termed "reasonable" and the end is not yet in sight.

I was able to do my job and help keep my employer profitable with far less information at my fingertips than exists today.  Clearly the world has changed, but it's not necessarily for the better.

For the current and coming generations of workers, this is just frightening. As for me, I'm going to enjoy my retirement and not worry about any e-mails I might be missing.

What the future holds: IBM's 5 in 5 Forecast and More Information Overload Ahead

The future is murky...

On New Year's Eve, we generally like to take stock of where we are, take a deep breath, prepare for a fresh new year with some resolutions, and of course, make wild predictions about the future.

IBM is getting into the spirit of the season with its 5 in 5, a list of five innovations that will change our lives in five years.  This is the sixth year that the company has released its list of predictions, which are driven by market data, social trends, and innovations taking place in IBM research labs.

Before we look ahead, let's look at how IBM has done with its past predictions.  In 2006 IBM predicated that, by 2011, we would have digitized medical records and be using advanced video teleconferencing systems to speak and interact with our doctors.  We are not completely there, but we are on the way.  The company also predicted context-aware mobile devices and nanotechnology being used to control our environment.  Mobile devices have certainly evolved in that direction, and we are using advanced nanotechnology to improve solar energy collection.

In the fail column, IBM also believed that, by 2011, we would be immersed in a 3-D Internet (Snow Crash, anyone?) and that real-time translation (Star Trek-style) would be possible.

In the area of Information Overload, we previously predicted that Information Overload would continue to increase despite attempts by us and on the part of others to raise awareness of the high cost and the negative impact it has.  Unfortunately, we were correct in our prediction and the amount of Information Overload rose in lockstep with the increase in the amount of information created over the past year.

Looking to the year ahead, the trend will continue and we can expect more of the same, namely more information and more Information Overload.

This year, in its 5 in 5 forecast and on a more positive note, IBM is banking on the following:

1.)  People power.  Advances in renewable energy technology will allow for the harnessing of kinetic energy from movement such as walking or jogging, or even residual heat from individuals or machines.

2.)  Multi-factor biometrics.  Passwords will become obsolete as we increasingly rely on identification via biometric data such as facial definitions, retinal scans, and voice recognition.

3.)  Mind reading.  No, really.  Bioinformatics is the field of harnessing electronic brain activity with advanced sensors to understand facial expressions, concentration levels, and thoughts of a person.  The technology can be applied to controlling mobile devices, medical testing, and the gaming industry.

4.)  Death of the digital divide.  IBM believes that the ubiquity of mobile devices will all but eliminate the gap between those who have information access and those who do not.  The company estimates that in the next five years there will be 5.6 billion mobile devices sold, giving 80% of the 7 billion people on earth access to such a device.

5.)  Junk mail will become useful?  With both spam filters and targeted advertising becoming more precise, IBM thinks that real-time analytics will become so advanced that the technology will be able to accurately determine what you really want.  An example of this kind of predictive, targeted advertising would be reserving concert tickets for your favorite band on a night that you have a free space on your calendar, all without asking you.

This year's 5 in 5 predictions are interesting and fun, and it is easy to see how trends support some of the ideas.  Biometrics, control of technology via brain waves, and harnessing kinetic energy in particular seem very plausible.  Eliminating the digital divide that separates the information haves from the have nots and solving the junk mail problem seem a bit trickier, but in the spirit of the holidays lets be optimistic.

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

(Image courtesy of John Stephen Dwyer)

CBC: IT firm phasing out email to boost productivity

December 16, 2010

Jonathan Spira was quoted by CBC News regarding the Atos IT firm's e-mail ban.

Jonathan Spira, author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization, has spent years studying what communications tools work better when and found that the answer changes as the tools evolve. He agrees that companies and their workers will benefit from thinking about how email can adversely impact work and personal lives and being more thoughtful about its use. For example, he recommends copying as few people as possible on emails, to avoid the lost productivity that comes from interrupting them in the middle of a task.

However, Spira said he doesn't think we can be rid of email completely in the next couple of years because the alternatives can't always replace it: "The one thing that doesn't work is to completely turn off email, even for a day."

Read the full article here.

Jonathan Spira on The Think Tank with Garland Robinette

December 14, 2011

Jonathan Spira was interviewed by Garland Robinette for The Think Tank on WWL radio.

Listen to the full show here.

Jonathan Spira on CBC radio: No more internal e-mail for Atos, an IT firm

December 15, 2011

Jonathan Spira was interviewed on CBC radio's The Current by Anna Maria Tremonti.  They discused the recent company-wide internal e-mail ban at the Atos IT firm.

Listen to the full interview here.

New Year's Resolutions for the Overloaded

Cheers!

It's hard to believe, but the New Year is almost upon us.  In the interest of not contributing further to your overload, dear reader, I'll keep my resolutions brief.

E-mail – as demonstrated by the amount of coverage that the Atos e-mail ban received in recent weeks – is still a hot topic, so let's try to fix it for 2012.

First, when preparing an e-mail message for the consumption of others, write it with the recipient in mind and please take a moment and read it for comprehension before clicking on Send.

Second, when replying to an e-mail, please read the entire message you are replying to.  It's amazing how many people reply asking a question about what the writer very clearly covered in paragraph seven of the original e-mail.

Third, on the topic of even having a paragraph seven in an e-mail message, keep e-mail messages short and on topic.  Cramming three or four (or 10 or 20) topics and questions into one e-mail simply means that most of them will be ignored and unread.

I can't promise this will remedy all of the ills of the world but following these three easy steps will Lower the Overload in 2012.

Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! Prosit Neujahr!

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