Information overload. Part II.

Information overload probably isn’t the problem we think it is.  Or is it?

The article below, entirely quoted, is from part of the online supplement to the November/December print issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications program at New York University and is the author, most recently, of Here Comes Everybody, about how new means of communication are changing the social environment. CJR’s Russ Juskalian recently spoke with Shirky about knowledge, the Internet, and why we shouldn’t worry about information overload.

CS: Yeah, that’s certainly part of it. I mean, the thing that people say about young people is just that they understand the technology so well. Well, I teach in a graduate program, I see twenty-five-year-olds all the time. They actually don’t understand the technology particularly well. I think I understand quite a lot of it quite a bit better than they do, which is the reason why I’m teaching there and they’re students. The advantage they have over me is that they don’t have to unlearn anything. They don’t have to unlearn the idea that a card catalog is a helpful thing to have. That you need a librarian to find things. That you have to figure out where you’re looking before you what you’re looking for. None of those things are true anymore. And so one of the problems that old people like me suffer from is just we know too many solutions for problems that no longer exist. And it kind of freaks us out to realize that all the things we mastered don’t really add up to much value anymore.

It’s not so much that young people are smart and old people are scared. It’s that young people don’t have to unlearn all the stuff that old people do have to unlearn if we want to understand this world. And unlearning is just about the least fun activity in the world. So, you know, it’s easy to understand why people don’t want to sign up for it. But it’s also kind of pathetic that the people going around talking about information overload don’t stop to factor in the idea that if the twenty-year-olds aren’t complaining about information overload, it probably isn’t the problem we think it is.

My references:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/

http://www.cjr.org/overload/interview_with_clay_shirky_par.php?page=all

All original content © 2008 Patricia A. Petow. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Information overload. Part I.

Book Review

An advance look at a repeat “torture study” in an academic setting has been posted today by The Bay Area News Group under the headline, “Shocking revelation: Santa Clara University professor mirrors famous torture study.” The study will be published in the January issue of the journal American Psychologist. See, http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_11283475.

The willingness of participants to inflict shocks is one of the topics in Influence: Science and Practice, 5^th ed., by Robert B. Cialdini, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University. The original series of experiments was conducted by a professor named Stanley Milgram and published as “Obedience to authority,” in 1974.

I highly recommend your reading Influence. The book examines the principles of influence in chapters on reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social truths, liking, authority and scarcity. Cialdini substantiates his assertions with descriptions of controlled psychological research as well as interviews, quotes and systematic personal observations.

My short take on Influence is we need to get real with ourselves and be wary of everybody else.

Cialdini concludes with an analysis of why we don’t use “all of the relevant available information.” (Issues involving the war in Iraq are in my head as I read this section.) In his discussion of the need for shortcuts or “modern automaticity,” Cialdini observes that the modern era is called the information age, not the knowledge age. He argues that “[i]nformation does not translate directly into knowledge. It must first be processed—accessed, absorbed, comprehended, integrated, and retained.”

“Shortcuts Shall Be Sacred”

Cialdini says that we have created a “paralysis of analysis” by the intricacy and richness of modern life, the abundance of change, choice and challenge. The response, he says, is that “we will revert increasingly to a focus on a single, usually reliable feature of the situation.”

Cialdini states that compliance professionals who use the triggers of influence are likely to be successful. He warns that the use of triggers by practitioners can be exploitive when the trigger is not a natural feature of the situation but is fabricated and those fabrications must be opposed.

Cialdini’s exploration of reciprocation, commitment and consistency, social truths, liking, authority and scarcity provides the information that we need to process.

Would you increase the electric shocks because an authority figure told you to do so?

All original content © 2008 Patricia A. Petow. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Waltham Mass Social Sec. Phone not 617-993-3051 at local office

617-993-3051, the telephone no. of Attorney Patricia A. Petow has been incorrectly listed by Google Maps as the telephone no. of the local Waltham Social Security office.

617-993-3051 is not the telephone number of the Social Security Waltham, Massachusetts local office.

617-993-3051 is the telephone number of Attorney Patricia A. Petow, who concentrates her private law practice in Social Security & SSI Disability claims.

The Waltham, Massachusetts local office of Social Security can be contacted by calling the 1-800-772-1213 nationwide Social Security toll-free telephone number.

As of Monday, December 8, Google Maps, incorrectly listed 617-993-3051, as the Waltham, Massachusetts local office of Social Security for searches that included the phrase, “local office,” Waltham, Massachusetts and Social Security.

Otherwise, when searching for Waltham, Massachusetts Social Security, the Google Map lists the 1-800-772-1213. If you go to the Social Security website and click on “Find a Social Security Office,” and you know the zip code for Waltham, Massachusetts, Social Security, you get the 1-800-772-1213 telephone number and a Mapquest map.

You can reach Attorney Patricia A. Petow at 617-993-3051 or by email at ppetowusa@yahoo.com. Her website is www.petow.com

All original content © 2008 Patricia A. Petow. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Waltham Mass. Social Security Wrong Phone No. Local Office

617-993-3051 is not the telephone number of the Social Security Waltham, Massachusetts local office.

617-993-3051 is the telephone number of Attorney Patricia A. Petow, who concentrates her private law practice in Social Security & SSI Disability claims.

The Waltham, Massachusetts local office of Social Security can be contacted by calling the 1-800-772-1213 nationwide Social Security toll-free telephone number.

Since Monday, December 8, Google Maps, has incorrectly listed 617-993-3051, as the Waltham, Massachusetts local office of Social Security for searches that included the phrase, “local office,” Waltham, Massachusetts and Social Security.

Otherwise, when searching for Waltham, Massachusetts Social Security, the Google Map lists the 1-800-772-1213. If you go to the Social Security website and click on “Find a Social Security Office,” and you know the zip code for Waltham, Massachusetts, Social Security, you get the 1-800-772-1213 telephone number and a Mapquest map.

You can reach Attorney Patricia A. Petow at 617-993-3051 or by email at ppetowusa@yahoo.com. Her website is http://www.petow.com

All original content © 2008 Patricia A. Petow.  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.