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by Clayton D'Arnault, founding editor @ digitialculturist.com - D'Arnault explains his feelings on I/O, it's causes and the effects it's having on both himself and others.
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">information overload</h1> <h2>[WHAT]</h2> <ol> <li>] by Clayton D'Arnault, founding editor @ digitialculturist.com - D'Arnault explains his feelings on I/O, it's causes and the effects it's having on both himself and others</li> </ol> <h2>[WHY]</h2> <ol> <li>] </li> </ol> <h2>[WHERE]</h2> <ol> <li><strong>] READ THE FULL ARTICLE</strong></li> <ol> <li>] <a href="https://digitalculturist.com/drowning-in-a-sea-of-information-563a3160efbb#.evdupcx6i" target="_blank">https://digitalculturist.com/drowning-in-a-sea-of-information-563a3160efbb#.evdupcx6i</a></li> </ol></ol> <h2>[WHEN]</h2> <ol> <li>] 2016-09-02</li> </ol> <h2>[EXAMPLE]</h2> <p>?obsessively checking, collecting, and consuming content until I close my eyes and try to disconnect my brain for the night. This behavior is called Infomania, which is defined as “the compulsive desire to check or accumulate news and information, typically via cell phone or computer.”</p> <p>Information overload is a mentally, and physically, taxing condition. Symptoms include sluggish thinking, a flitting mind, and stifled creativity.</p> <p><strong>CAUSES</strong></p> <p>With every minute that passes, the holy grail of information quickly becomes an inescapable vortex of information. To give you an idea of how much debt I’m in personally, the following is a recent ledger of my own information vortex:</p> <p>LIST EXAMPLE - info ( rss feeds, social media sites, tabs open, bookmarked links, newsletter subscriptions, audio podcast subscriptions)</p> <p> internet as a whole - is frigging huge</p> <p>the average brain is mentally unable to retain all the information it is exposed to on a daily basis. In fact, we only meaningfully store and use 50% of that daily information</p> <p><strong>EFFECTS</strong></p> <p><strong>- making us stupid</strong></p> <p>Nicholas Carr, the best-selling author of The Shallows, argue that it’s making us stupid. Carr believes that technology and the Internet are instruments of intentional distraction. As they speed up the flow of information, the mind adapts to keep up by hastening cognition, which in turn shortens the attention span. This leaves no time for the mind to meaningfully absorb the information and leads to a frayed cognitive state.</p> <p> I wouldn’t say technology is making us stupider, but that technology’s promises of effortlessness is making us complacent.</p> <p><strong>- diminished concentration</strong></p> <p>“The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” It seems that my infomania has taken a toll on my sense of concentration. I can’t focus on an article for more than a few minutes at a time without checking my phone or opening a new Chrome tab and disappearing into a click hole of links.</p> <p><br />on average, readers are rarely able to complete an entire article. In a study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, it was found that:</p> <p>“…the average page view contained 593 words. So, on average, users will have time to read 28% of the words if they devote all of their time to reading. More realistically, users will read about 20% of the text on the average page.”</p> <p>Today we are plagued by external and internal interruptions. At some point while you’re reading this, you’ll probably receive some sort of mobile notification to pull your focus away (external). Or maybe you’ll lose interest altogether and move on or check your phone and catch up on social media (internal). Let’s face it, you’ll probably end up checking your phone subconsciously on multiple occasions while reading this article, even if you don’t have a clear purpose for using your phone. Don’t believe me? According to Business Insider, an average iPhone user unlocks their phone 80 times per day, while an Android user unlocks theirs 110 times a day, which translates to once every ten minutes or so?—?for no reason, other than out of habit. To add to that, the average attention span in 2015 was 8.25 seconds?—?.75 seconds less than a goldfish (9 seconds), probably one of least conscious life forms I can think of.</p> <p><strong>- chronic distraction</strong></p> <p>Notifications of the information I’m missing out on constantly pepper my attention, enticing me to disappear into the depths of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and Digg, to uncover more thoughts, ideas, and inspirations. Because of this, I can seldomly focus on one task without getting lost in another as my mind flits from one idea to the next without warning. One moment I’m working on this piece in a fit of inspiration, the next I’m researching a new topic for another piece, and ultimately end up working on the logo design for one of my projects.</p> <p>It turns out that a person switches tasks every three minutes (with roughly half of these switches caused by self-interruption) and entire projects every ten and a half minutes on average. Conversely, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus on a task or project. Couple this with our unnervingly short attention span?—?it’s a wonder that we get anything done around here.</p> <p>With each additional item added to the list, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage my priorities, as my attention flutters back and forth between tasks. Each new idea causes my priorities to shift, pushing yet another task further away from completion.</p> <p><a href="http://jessicaabel.com/2016/01/27/idea-debt/" target="_blank">idea debt</a> -</p> <p><strong>- an absent mind</strong></p> <p>( contd )<strong><br /></strong></p> <p> </p> <h2>[HOW-TO]</h2> <ol> <li>]</li> </ol> <h2>[REFERENCE]</h2> <ol> <li>] SRC=hn(166)/<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11859395" target="_blank">comments</a>(60) </li> </ol> <h1 style="text-align: center;"> </h1>