Brilliant post from Nicholas Carr differentiating between situational overload and ambient overload (the comments are also worth a read). He argues against the Clay Shirky talk that advanced “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.”
I agree with Carr – better filters mean that rather than just finding the good stuff we find ourselves overwhelmed with good stuff. In health I find increasingly I am guiding users to places where they won’t be buried under an avalanche of interesting material about their topic. In the mean time there are still needles in haystacks – check out this video of a GP trying to locate a fact in some NICE Guidance. I wonder what they will make of the new NICE pathways promised for May of this year?
(Incidentally Shirky is speaking at the MLA in Minneapolis - wouldn’t it be great to have a something of a similar ilk at a future HLG conference!).
