At Lift 07 there was a panel on technological overload. The video of the panel is available here.
Fellow blogger Mlle. A. pointed out that this kind of discussion isn’t new.
A couple of days ago she sent in an article by Ann Blair on “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700″ published in 2003 in the Journal of the History of Ideas.
As more and more books were published, academics worried about keeping up: they discussed the effects of reading manuals and encyclopedias or reading “only in parts”. And discussed strategies to classify information, added indexes and used cut and paste to arrange the information they received.
Blogging isn’t new either:
“Reading is useless, vain and silly when no writing is involved, unless you are reading (devotionally) Thomas a Kempis or some such. Although I would not want even that kind of reading to be devoid of all note taking.”
Interesting stuff.
3 Comments
Another proof of information overload - took me since Feb. to link you up to that article….
(the whole issue -vol.64, no.1, 2003- is dedicated to aspects of early modern information overload; I am quite tempted to write a paper on the parallels to modern information overload and reading strategies…maybe a follow-up project for Lift08? I wouldn’t assume that those who built feedreaders actually were aware of all those parallels.)
The subject is not new, but imho its importance is getting bigger with each day passing. There is a big issue for our society (and our economy), we are reaching a point were it will soon be legitimate to ask whether technology really makes us more productive.
Laurent:
I agree. This is a big issue.
I liked the panel at Lift 07. Lots of food for thought.
Mlle A.:
looking forward to reading your paper…