Today we have the exact opposite problem: information overload. There's so much of it, instantly accessible, that the challenge becomes sorting through it and figuring out what's actually worthy of attention. That goes right back to your other post about the paradox of choice.
Perhaps dedicating yourself for three days to find a specific piece of information makes you appreciate it that much more.
Indeed. But don't worry, I'm sure AGI will sort this mess out for us. Possibly by eliminating us altogether, but that's nothing for our tiny little human brains to concern themselves with.
Information overload is such a problem. I have had several medical problems. Upon receiving a diagnosis my rule is that I allow myself to look online for 5 minutes. Other than that, I get my info from my doctors. After that, I may do a little more research, but only use the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and John's-Hopkins sites. Period.
Yeah I can totally understand that. Sounds like a solid strategy to give yourself a hard limit for research and only focus on reputable sources. Otherwise you'll be deep down a neverending rabbit hole of more and more information. It's enough to go crazy. And then you need to look THAT up, and suddenly it's a whole thing.
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine had a chest CT. As always, she deciphered the radiologist's report and did her usual deep dive on the internet. Before she went back to the doctor, she determined that the area of concern was likely cancer and that the next step would be a lung biopsy and that the prognosis could be quite dire.
She called me on the way home from the follow-up doctor's appt. It wasn't cancer. It wasn't even especially concerning. They will repeat the CT in six months. She said, "I didn't realize how freaked out I was. I feel so much lighter now." Duh.
I know we all have different ways of dealing with things, but I refuse to scare myself with research until/unless I know that there is truly something to be scared about. And this is coming from a breast cancer survivor. I stuck to my policy and it served me well. Also, I don't need to read a bunch of other people's scary stories about their experiences.
I can't even begin to imagine what the future holds for us re: information, but here's something amusing . . .
Several years ago I was chatting with a guy who went to the same college that I did. For some reason, he was complaining about Millennials and shaking his head and kind of mocking the ones he worked with. So I asked how old he was. He said, "30." And I said, "I think you are a Millennial." Teasingly, of course.
Back to our school - I told him that the library he used when he was there was built when I was there. And that they had just put in the first computers to access the new fangled internet thingy to be able to access information from libraries all over the place, which seemed totally bizarre to me. I told him that no one had their own computers in their dorm rooms yet. His eyes got SO big and he said, "How did you do your papers?" To which I replied, "The card catalog, typewriters, and a word processor if we were really lucky. David, you ARE a Millennial." 😂
I spent a lot of time reading old newspapers and magazines via microfiche at the public library in the late `70s. Each discovery relevant to whatever I was working on for High School was a small victory, a piece in a puzzle.
Those were some hard-fought little victories, weren't they? I really cherished those little nuggets of knowledge about the past- they were rare and hard to come by!
I’m 31 and vaguely remembering seeing one of those when I was really young in the library. Crazy how much development in tech can happen so quickly. I never experienced the era of having to use encyclopedias for school work.
I started using these during the 80s, and then had a couple of years in the 90s when I got to use them for papers and such. I can still feel those knobs and the gears whizzing.
You having me thinking about my years as a graduate assistant working for a national repository...grabbing microfilm for all the old professors who made the trip down to the basement.
I think a lot of folks would be surprised at how long microfilm and microfiche stuck around. Were you doing this during the 90s? I think there's this sort of false memory forming that the internet came along in like the mid 90s and everything changed overnight.
You may be shocked to learn I was doing this until 5 years ago...it’s the best way to archive newspapers! I’m an archivist now and I literally can not think of a better way to preserve flimsily paper materials.
I have so much old paperwork from decades of accumulation... my inner packrat forced me to keep it, but as technology in this space moves forward, I'm starting to believe this decision was well justified. I can see a time when I can scan stuff in way, way easier than even today, then search it with an LLM. I think we're going to have our minds blown in the near future.
Today we have the exact opposite problem: information overload. There's so much of it, instantly accessible, that the challenge becomes sorting through it and figuring out what's actually worthy of attention. That goes right back to your other post about the paradox of choice.
Perhaps dedicating yourself for three days to find a specific piece of information makes you appreciate it that much more.
Yep, that's definitely a trade-off. The information I worked really hard to get is like a little treasure, close to my heart.
Unfortunately, that phenomenon also has strong negative connotations: you tend to overprioritize things you learned earlier in life.
What a complex mess!
Indeed. But don't worry, I'm sure AGI will sort this mess out for us. Possibly by eliminating us altogether, but that's nothing for our tiny little human brains to concern themselves with.
Information overload is such a problem. I have had several medical problems. Upon receiving a diagnosis my rule is that I allow myself to look online for 5 minutes. Other than that, I get my info from my doctors. After that, I may do a little more research, but only use the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and John's-Hopkins sites. Period.
Yeah I can totally understand that. Sounds like a solid strategy to give yourself a hard limit for research and only focus on reputable sources. Otherwise you'll be deep down a neverending rabbit hole of more and more information. It's enough to go crazy. And then you need to look THAT up, and suddenly it's a whole thing.
Exactly. I don't want to torture myself that way.
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine had a chest CT. As always, she deciphered the radiologist's report and did her usual deep dive on the internet. Before she went back to the doctor, she determined that the area of concern was likely cancer and that the next step would be a lung biopsy and that the prognosis could be quite dire.
She called me on the way home from the follow-up doctor's appt. It wasn't cancer. It wasn't even especially concerning. They will repeat the CT in six months. She said, "I didn't realize how freaked out I was. I feel so much lighter now." Duh.
I know we all have different ways of dealing with things, but I refuse to scare myself with research until/unless I know that there is truly something to be scared about. And this is coming from a breast cancer survivor. I stuck to my policy and it served me well. Also, I don't need to read a bunch of other people's scary stories about their experiences.
That's a really good policy, Whitney!
Working with the microfiche machines was one of the pleasures I found in one of my library jobs.
David, what year was this? Was the machine hooked up to a computer?
I can't even begin to imagine what the future holds for us re: information, but here's something amusing . . .
Several years ago I was chatting with a guy who went to the same college that I did. For some reason, he was complaining about Millennials and shaking his head and kind of mocking the ones he worked with. So I asked how old he was. He said, "30." And I said, "I think you are a Millennial." Teasingly, of course.
Back to our school - I told him that the library he used when he was there was built when I was there. And that they had just put in the first computers to access the new fangled internet thingy to be able to access information from libraries all over the place, which seemed totally bizarre to me. I told him that no one had their own computers in their dorm rooms yet. His eyes got SO big and he said, "How did you do your papers?" To which I replied, "The card catalog, typewriters, and a word processor if we were really lucky. David, you ARE a Millennial." 😂
Ha! Oh, the card catalog. How I used to loathe thee!
I spent a lot of time reading old newspapers and magazines via microfiche at the public library in the late `70s. Each discovery relevant to whatever I was working on for High School was a small victory, a piece in a puzzle.
Those were some hard-fought little victories, weren't they? I really cherished those little nuggets of knowledge about the past- they were rare and hard to come by!
I remember those good old days, and I much prefer how easy it is to access information today.
Ah, the "good" old days. :)
I’m 31 and vaguely remembering seeing one of those when I was really young in the library. Crazy how much development in tech can happen so quickly. I never experienced the era of having to use encyclopedias for school work.
Absolutely, and things are moving even faster now. What's gonna disappear in the next 31 years?
It was in the 1990s. There was no computer, so you could only advance through manual hand-cranking. Long before it was all digitized.
I started using these during the 80s, and then had a couple of years in the 90s when I got to use them for papers and such. I can still feel those knobs and the gears whizzing.
You having me thinking about my years as a graduate assistant working for a national repository...grabbing microfilm for all the old professors who made the trip down to the basement.
I think a lot of folks would be surprised at how long microfilm and microfiche stuck around. Were you doing this during the 90s? I think there's this sort of false memory forming that the internet came along in like the mid 90s and everything changed overnight.
You may be shocked to learn I was doing this until 5 years ago...it’s the best way to archive newspapers! I’m an archivist now and I literally can not think of a better way to preserve flimsily paper materials.
It's all searchable now too, right?
Not the machines we had (public college lol) but there is definitely better equipment out there.
I have so much old paperwork from decades of accumulation... my inner packrat forced me to keep it, but as technology in this space moves forward, I'm starting to believe this decision was well justified. I can see a time when I can scan stuff in way, way easier than even today, then search it with an LLM. I think we're going to have our minds blown in the near future.
Oh yeah! Just splurge on a nice hard drive and turning it digital is easy