Beltane Solstice Moon
So many information sources, so little time. Those of us who are indiscriminate infovores have entered the paradise period of the human era. It’s not only the internet, though it looms very large in easy access to information (see the snapping turtle info below), it’s also the smart phone and the services that disaggregate television programs and resort them into chunks we can watch all at once with no commercials.
While the physical information stream has begun to dwindle like an old man’s (oh, no, I won’t go there.), the condensation and availability of information continues to accelerate. The mail box has little of interest anymore and the post office is beginning to hear the hoof beats of the Pony Express. And books. Heavy physical paper things. So yesterday. Meanwhile, I can get TED talks on so wide a range of topics that interest me that I can spend all day watching them. And not get anything done.
And there’s the youtube talks I just signed up for from Big Think, mentors giving advice about their areas of specialty. Also, I get e-mails from Foreign Affairs, the Chinese Human Rights folks, Big Think, Brain Pickings, Delancy Place, NASA, Trendline and others I’ve forgotten, each one with interesting, compelling information about things I didn’t know I had an interest in, but suddenly I do.
Managing our information streams is not something any of us have been trained to do. Yes, we were taught to read. And an increasingly small number of people read an increasingly large number of books. But who was taught to watch youtube videos. or TED talks. Or to sort out condensed information like the folks from Big Think and Brain Pickings offer up for germane and reliable data. Who can manage–and interpret–personal information available both to us as individuals and increasingly to government and large corporations?
Notice that I haven’t mentioned podcasts, audio books or the extraordinary ease with which we can receive music tailored to our tastes. Pandora. Playlists on I-pods. Classical or current or jazz or oldies radio stations Neither have I mentioned my all time least favorite, the robo-call. Or, the old fashioned, but still extant slow information venues like theaters, museums and sports arenas. Real time entertainment? Now there’s an idea.
I’ve not got a handle on this and I don’t know who has, though I’d sure like to hear from them. I’m eager to get as much information as I can, but now, like never before in all of history, the inflection is on the can. And the limits on our capacity to get information are now chronological more than anything else, i.e. we can’t have our ears and eyes occupied 24/7. God forbid.
How do you manage your information streams? Or do you? Do they manage you? Leave you exhausted? Or, energized, better informed and more able to be what and who you want to be? An interesting dilemma of our time.
OMG. How last century of me. I left out social media. Twitter, Facebook, this blog for example. And, I thought I was being clever in inventing infovore. Nope. It’s the title of a book on Amazon.
