Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 20

Larry Magid: Jonathan Spira on Tech Talk

 

 

Larry Magid spoke with Jonathan Spira about Information Overload and multitasking.

Full podcast available here.

Guest Column: More Trouble For Search…

Wrong haystack?

Searching for content on the Internet is hard enough, but according to researchers at the ICSI (International Computer Science Institute) at Berkeley, there are complications beyond out of date information and an overwhelming number of search results, things we today consider to be typical manifestation of search failures.

According to research papers published separately by the ICSI and Usenix, the Advanced Computing Systems Association, search queries made with major search Web engines that include Bing, Yahoo, and Google are sometimes rerouted through third party proxies controlled by Paxfire, an advertising company whose involvement was uncovered by the ICSI researchers via analysis of patent applications.  The rerouting occurred for users of 10 U.S. ISPs, and has now been halted according to the New Scientist, which broke the story last week.  Paxfire and RCN (one of the ISPs) are now the subject of a class action lawsuit alleging violation of privacy safeguards covered in the 1968 Wiretap Act.

The practice appears to have been intended to monetize search results for the ISPs by directing traffic to specific sites.  The ICSI researchers have identified 165 search terms that include "apple", "dell", "bloomingdales", and "safeway" that, when entered into a search tool, would be passed to an online marketing company by the ISP, which would redirect the user straight to the respective company's online retail site.  The search was essentially hijacked and never actually went through the search engine.

The online marketing companies are paid by site owners (in this case the retail companies, although there is no indication the companies had knowledge of the redirecting of searches to their sites) to supply traffic to Web sites.  In exchange for leading search users directly to the retail sites the online marketing companies then pass on a cut of their fee to the ISPs and Paxfire.  The process bypasses the search engine entirely because use of the targeted terms result in the user being taken straight to the retailer's site, instead of a search results page.

The ISPs involved in the practice stopped redirecting Google traffic after the company complained to them last year, but up until this week were still carrying out the practice for searches made with Bing and Yahoo.

Peter Eckersley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet advocacy group, told the New Scientist that "This interception and alteration of search traffic is not just your average privacy problem…This is deep violation of users' trust and expectations about how the internet is supposed to function."

I would go even further than that.  It is indeed a massive privacy and trust violation, but for the knowledge worker, this is yet one more wake up call that search continues to be a flawed tool that one must use with a critical eye.  The practice of search redirection demonstrates (as if there was much doubt) that search is not a neutral and agnostic process; there are competing interests and financial motivations behind every Internet search and the knowledge worker must be aware of these biases.  It is not enough to simply worry about how authoritative a piece of content is, it is imperative to be critical about the entire process, starting with the selection of a search tool, to the entering of a search query, and to the examination and analysis of the results.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

 

Jonathan Spira at Google

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Spira spoke about Information Overload as part of the Authors@Google speaking series.

Full video of the talk is available here.

Guest column: Can You Hear Me Now Part II

"Are you still there? Oh well, lets wait while he dials back in...."

A few weeks ago, we ran a piece entitled Can You Hear Me Now, looking at the impact of audio problems on knowledge worker productivity.  This is Part II of that story.

Audio problems impact knowledge workers to some extent nearly every day, on nearly every phone interaction.  Typically, this results in two Information Overload-related challenges: interruptions and missed information.

In practice, interruptions in the course of a phone or conference call can take various forms, ranging from dropped calls to participants dialing in late on a conference bridge and disrupting an ongoing exchange.  Anything that causes participants to have to ask for a point to be repeated – or a technical issue to be resolved – constitutes an interruption, and each carries with it a time penalty.  This includes seemingly minor disruptions such as echo, delay, GSM static, and overtalk, because the flow of information stops when someone asks the speaker to repeat himself.  In many of these situations, callers who are experiencing problems will leave a call, switch phones, and dial in again, causing even further delays.  If the caller with the problem was the one speaking, all other callers have to wait until he or she rejoins.

Since interruptions occur numerous times each day, even when they are short (and not all are), the lost time begins to add up and becomes a significant drain on the knowledge worker's productivity.  The impact of an interruption extends past the initial event; interviews, surveys, and first-hand observation of hundreds of knowledge workers reveal the existence of "recovery time". Recovery time refers to the amount of time it takes a worker to get back to where he was in his work or thought process prior to an interruption.  This typically takes somewhere between 10 to 20 times the duration of the interruption itself.

On a call, the same principle holds true, except it may be amplified geometrically by the number of people impacted.  In a call, if one knowledge worker is having audio issues such as echo or delay, all participants are subjected to a time penalty.  Likely there will be a minute or two of waiting for the caller to try fix the issue, followed by some small talk, and then some brief complaining about the conferencing system.  All in all, each caller may have lost as much as five minutes, which when scaled across a conference call with many participants, can translate into significant financial losses.

A lack of clarity on a call can result in not only a time penalty as knowledge workers ask for a speaker to repeat key points, but also in missed or incorrect information.  This introduces errors into work and can lead to costly problems down the line that range from time-consuming corrections in the best case to sub-standard work product being produced in the worst case.

In a voice-only communication environment, missed or incorrect information may be due to a number of factors that range from poor quality connections that garble voices, the use of mobile phones, background noise, ambient noise picked up by a speakerphone, audio clipping due to over talking, volume inconsistency, or even simply neglecting to use the mute button when appropriate.  Some of these issues are behavioral in nature, but many are not.

The time and productivity penalty for missed information is huge.  A knowledge worker may have to go back and listen to the recording of a call (assuming it was even recorded) a second time to catch or clarify valuable information, or even engage in lengthy follow up e-mail exchanges with other participants to confirm key data.  More likely, the knowledge worker will not even be aware that information was missed, and will move forward with an action item using incomplete information.  As the project moves forward, correcting an initial error will increasingly become more costly and disruptive.

Audio quality issues can have a significant impact on knowledge worker productivity; the importance of clear communications is often overlooked, but improving audio quality will not only have a dramatic impact on productivity but may have a surprising impact on an organization's bottom line as well.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

Junknews and information overload

Junknews and information overload

Jonas Pulver

Le Temps

July 29, 2011

 

What amount of information humans can absorb and share with the age of Web 2.0? Indigestion watching …

997 billion dollars. Here the cost of information overload for the U.S. economy last year, dixit Jonathan Spira, book author Overload! How too much information IS hardous to your organization and owner of a business expert to the extent of the overflow media on the Internet. Information overload? This term defines a bit barbaric reality known to every person connected normally. A: the compulsive need to constantly gather information messages through sources growing.

Full article can be found here (translated from French).

Larry Magid: Struggling with information overload

 

 

Magid: Struggling with information overload

By Larry Magid

for the Mercury News

August 1, 2011

 

Like many of you reading this, I have to deal with a constant barrage of emails along with tweets, Facebook messages, text messages and now Google (GOOG)+ updates. And that's on top of my landline and cellphone ringing as well as my dog needing attention and the usual interruptions from family members.

I work at home. People who work in an office often have to deal with colleagues stopping by asking, "Do you have 30 seconds?"

Well, even if that interruption really is only for 30 seconds, recovery time turns out to be between 10 to 20 times the duration of the interruption, according to Jonathan Spira, the chief analyst at Basex and author of "Overload: How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization."

Spira, a panelist at a Churchill Club event last week appropriately titled "Information Overload 2.0," said it "takes time for the neurons to fire and it takes time for you to regain your thoughts and recapture the flow of what you were thinking." And sometimes, he added, what's lost cannot be recaptured.

Full article available here.

IT Tech News Daily: Tips on 'Speaking IT' to the Rest of the Company

Tips on 'Speaking IT' to the Rest of the Company

Cynthia Bunting
IT TechNewsDaily Contributor
June 11 2011




Ever feel like you're speaking another language at work? The fact is, you kind of are. While IT jargon might seem elementary to you, much of what you try to communicate to the rest of your organization gets lost somewhere between their in-box and their "to do" list.

Lots of technically oriented people tend to assume everyone speaks their language, but most non-IT workers don't know what the heck you're talking about, according to author Jonathan Spira.

Spira, CEO and chief analyst of Basex, a research firm focusing on issues companies face in the knowledge economyrecently wrote the book "Overload! How Too Much InformationIs Hazardous to Your Organization" (Wiley, May 2011). He tells IT TechNewsDaily how IT people can better communicate with everyone else in the company.

See full interview here.

 

CLO Media: Eliminating Information Overload in the Workplace

Eliminating Information Overload in the Workplace
Ladan Nikravan
July 27 2011
CLO Media

Learning leaders should have a real, clear vision about what they want the business to achieve by prioritizing the most important work and information and developing employees who are best suited for certain tasks.

Information is no longer about facts and figures, it has become noise. Leaders are bombarded with so much data that they're on information overload; their abilities to process information have passed limits and are now interfering with their ability to learn and grow themselves and their employees.

According to results from the LexisNexis 2010 "International Workplace Productivity Survey," which surveyed 1,700 white collar workers in five countries — the U.S., China, South Africa, the U.K. and Australia — and asked them about their experience of, and attitudes toward, information in the workplace, information overload is a widespread and growing problem among professionals around the world.

Full article can be found here.

 

Leadership in An Age of Information Overload

"Gentlemen, please don't overload me today!"

What will distinguish successful companies in the years to come will not be their products nor their services.  Rather, it will be the ability of their leaders to ingest and make sense of massive amounts of information that is received on all levels – as well as to create strategies that allow their companies to do the same.  Leaders, be they CEOs of corporations or presidents of countries, are today bombarded by more information than ever.  They are not immune to the problem of Information Overload; in fact, they may actually be more vulnerable to its insidious effects.

President Obama and other world leaders spend their days digesting voluminous amounts of information – and this is after aides predigest material into briefing books.  Speaking at a college commencement in 2010, Obama commented that information has become "a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation". The typical CEO's day is similar although the typical CEO doesn't normally have as many people culling, pruning, and analyzing the information headed his way.

Most leaders – even those who do feel overloaded by information – don't fully understand the great cost of Information Overload to their organizations.  One 80,000-person firm in the tech sector estimated the cost of Information Overload at roughly $1 billion.  For a smaller organization with a workforce of 1,000, the cost could easily be as high as $15 million.

The vast amount of information available to leaders has dramatically increased the need to delegate more efficiently.  The leader's day – as well as that of his subordinates – is frequently chaotic.  An analysis of a typical day shows that a mere 5% is available for thought and reflection.  For leaders in particular, as they – more so than other knowledge workers -should be thinking for a living, only having 5% of the day for focused thought can be devastating.  What takes up the largest part for the day?  This time is lost due to Information Overload-related problems that, while taking tiny amounts of time individually, end up collectively costing 25% of the workday.

As a result, according to my research, 66% of knowledge workers feel that they do not have sufficient time to get all of their work done and over 50% feel that the amount of information they are presented with on a daily basis is detrimental to getting their work done.  94% of knowledge workers have felt overwhelmed to the point of incapacitation by the amount of information they encounter every day, so any reduction in the deluge of information they must process is a positive step.

Leaders need to reduce their information exposure and – at the same time – help their organizations create an information strategy that will anticipate the increased amount of incoming information, manage it, and actually reduce the amount of Information Overload that each worker in the organization is exposed to.

Effective management of Information Overload-related issues increases productivity, reduces stress levels, and leads to a more healthy work/life balance.  Employees who work in an environment where management has begun to address the problem of Information Overload and its impact will have greater chances to learn and develop.  Learning effectively necessitates focused, thoughtful discussion and reading, which is impossible in a distracted environment.

Leaders need to recognize the tremendous information burdens of their staff and lead the charge in ensuring that the problem of Information Overload is addressed to the greatest extent possible.  This will give everyone a chance to breathe.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex.

Guest column: Memory in the Age of the Internet – The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same?

Almost everyone can identify with the following situation: Your cell phone runs out of battery power, and you need to make a call.  A friend graciously offers to let you use his phone, but as you attempt to make the call you realize that you have no idea what the actual number is of the person you are trying to reach.  Now flash back 15 years and try again.  Odds are you would have had much better luck, because you would have had to memorize that number, instead of relying on the contact list in your phone.

The reason behind this aspect of how our memory works (or doesn't work) is the subject of a recent study by Betsy Sparrow at Columbia University.  In the experiment, test subjects entered bits of trivia into a computer; half were told that the information would be saved in the computer and half were told it would not.  Subjects who believed the information would not be saved were significantly more likely to retain the information.

A second experiment was designed to test how computer accessibility impacts what is remembered.  The subjects were asked a question, and asked to remember both the statement, as well as which of five file folders it was saved in.  Subjects had better success in recalling the folder than the question, showing what is called transactive memory, which describes how we rely on others, be they friends and family, or physical reference material such as books and electronic tools such as the Internet, to store information for us.  The concept of transactive memory is not new, but historically referred to a person to whom we would turn for information on the topic that they specialized in.

While the temptation is to begin handwringing and loudly proclaim that we are devolving into memory-less, Internet addicted zombies, doing so would be not only premature but also misguided.  Sparrow, in an interview on PBS's News Hour, made it very clear that we are offloading memory for things that we are not expert at, that is, areas where we are not the primary transactive memory holder for others.  She also makes the point that what we are doing now is not very different from what we have always done (ask others for information), but that because we are asking a computer, the experience feels different and more salient.

For knowledge workers, the significance of the Sparrow's research may be an understanding of the importance of transactive memory sources.  Her works shows that humans will naturally offload information when they can; adapting to a changing environment and conserving their mental bandwidth for information they can not offload.  This is not due to laziness or because technology is making us stupid, both common arguments raised in debates around these issues, but instead a sign of how our brains adapt to our surroundings.

To be effective in a work environment that is rife with Information Overload-related problems, ranging from e-mail overload to interruptions and distractions, knowledge workers need to know where to look for information.  Quickly finding the contact information for a human expert or the correct database for a critical document are both examples of effective use of transactive memory sources, yet both tasks are often problematic and can cause delays and significant costs in lost productivity.

Improvements in search technology, expertise location, and even unified communications technologies that allow for knowledge workers to initiate conversations with colleagues with minimal friction can facilitate what is a natural (and uniquely) human tendency to learn where information resides and leverage that knowledge to be more effective.

Instead of being reactionary and pessimistic when faced with the data from this study, it falls on organizations to recognize the amazing adaptive ability that humans posses to use external memory sources, and to give their knowledge workers the tools they need to find the information they are looking for.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.