Comments for Uh oh: Information overload does not exist

Comment from Jack Vinson on 2004-03-30

2004-03-30T15:23:06Z

Microsoft has an article entitled, "Suffering from Information Overload?" in their section of Outlook 2002: http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/xp/columns/column01.asp. It mostly talks about how to use Outlook well.

Comment from Shannon Clark on 2004-03-30

2004-03-30T19:44:12Z

I think as well "information overload" means one thing in a world of transiant information.

Paper files, small hard drives, etc - all have meant that people have to choose what to save and what to throw away, since there is only limited space (physically) for the items.

However, we are moving to a world where the financial cost of deciding to keep EVERYTHING (even paper via digitizing it) is low and getting lower.

In this world the decision is not the all or nothing of SAVE or DESTROY, but instead the less binary "FLAG/MARK or LEAVE UNMARKED" (made less binary by the capability of tracking accesses and by the capacity to support a multiplicity of schemes as well individuals doing the marking - think the multicolored flags and multiple flag modes in Outlook for a trivial example)

Combined with powerful search and indexing tools - "Google" but also even deeper and broader tools, corporations can seriously consider saving everything.

Then the challenge is to create views into the universe that allow a user to work efficiently and effectively, only revealing the hidden complexity and history when it might be valuable to do so.

From a consulting standpoint this approach might be "focused on enhancing the value and utility of knowledge in the enterprise" or something (need to work on the phrasing).

Shannon

Comment from Jack Vinson on 2004-03-30

2004-03-30T22:09:00Z

The cost of "keep everything" may be low in terms of the technological cost, but the cost in terms of what it means for business is another thing altogether.

How many times do we hear about a legal proceeding where someone has turned up old emails (and other documents) that give the appearance of impropriety? Most large companies today have explicit policies for records retention - when to keep and when to toss any type of record, whether on paper or on your hard drive. My last company even instituted their policy within the Exchange server mailboxes that items were deleted after a certain time period. If it was truly critical, it was to be saved to personal mailboxes. And even then, it was to still fall to the records retention rules.

The company also gave us some education on how to write so that we aren't embarrassed about it in five years.

On the other side of this, companies need to recognize that with electronic media as they are, there will always be the possibility that "deleted" materials will turn up somewhere and create "trouble." Companies need to acknowledge this and work with it, rather than fight it.

Trackback in article Great wrap up of several from Michael Fioritto's Weblog

2004-04-06T15:27:33Z

Great wrap up of several posts on social enterprise from Jack Vinson's "Knowledge Jolt With Jack". The enterprise is social, as we have heard from a number of writers, such as Etienne Wenger on communities or John Seely Brown on The Social Life of Info... [Read More]

Trackback in article Social enterprise from Knowledge Jolt with Jack

2006-01-22T23:08:49Z

The enterprise is social, as we have heard from a number of writers, such as Etienne Wenger on communities or John Seely Brown on The Social Life of Information. Jon Udell of InfoWorld follows this with an article on The social enterprise that discusse... [Read More]