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Are we still seeking a solution to info overload?
The front page story in the New York Times earlier this week - above the fold, top and center, big photo - told the story of five professors who went on a camping in Utah, without email access, for a full week. This was big news, apparently: a few Blackberry users avoided email for seven whole days. (I'm exaggerating a bit, of course - the professors happen to be neuroscientists, so the story explores the cognitive effects of always-on connectivity. Another popular story on this topic was Is Google Making Us Stupid? two years ago in The Atlantic.)
Still, I find the placement of the NYT article interesting. Someone unplugs for a few days and it's literally front-page news. Is it really that uncommon for people to have the basic skills to disconnect? As I said in my review of "Hamlet's Blackberry", there's plenty of writing about the problem - information is everywhere, overload affects us in lots of negative ways - but almost no mentions of a solution.
Information overload is, at root, a problem of distraction. The solution, then, must grant you the ability to focus. As I said in Bit Literacy, the first step is separating action items from everything else - then focusing only on what you have to accomplish today. And then you're done.
