Fixpert

Remember when the internet used to be slow and frustrating to navigate? Remember when it was hard to find any useful content online? Me too.

For better or worse, lack of good content and slow connections don’t seem to be issues anymore. These days I can easily flush an hour or two down the drain checking my RSS feeds and posting interesting finds to my del.icio.us account. All of this information is important and relevant to my career, the problem is, I’m not actually reading anything. There is such a huge amount of content online that I am interested in, that I can serially bookmark but never dive in and absorb any information.

If you’re nodding yes as you read this post, then you might enjoy this panel discussion about information and attention from SuperNova 2005 called Your Attention Please. Here’s a brief description from that page:

In a connected world it is becoming very difficult to filter out the information that really needs our attention from that which is irrelevant to us. The panel…tries to come up with answers to the problem of overwhelming information, only some of which deserves our attention. They talk about the tools, practices and new technology being developed to effectively use data which matters to the end user.

Ironically, when I first listened to this presentation, I was walking my dog out in the woods on a beautiful sunny day, but rather than listening to the chirping of the birds, I was listening to this podcast on my iPod. It was such an interesting discussion I didn’t want to stop listening, but it suddenly made me feel a bit conscientious about what I was doing.

Trusted Filters

The discussion of trusted filters was one of the most interesting parts of this presentation in my opinion. With so much content online, we rely on trusted filters to sift through all the information and make recommendations for us. Thus the beauty of sites like digg and slashdot, and del.icio.us’s most popular page. Communities essentially “vote” for good content, and the best content rises to the top. These are all great examples of community-based trusted filters. But again, if you’re just continuously bookmarking and not reading, what’s the point?

If you listen to the Attention podcast, let me know what you think.