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The term “information overload” was introduced about 35 years back.

Wikipedia defines information overload as a term coined by Alvin Toffler which refers to an excess amount of information being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult for the individual because sometimes we cannot see the validity behind the information. As the world moves into a new era of globalization, an increasing number of people are logging onto the internet to conduct their own research and are given the ability to produce as well as consume the data accessed on an increasing number of websites. As of February 2007, there were over 108 million distinct websites and increasing. Users are now classified as active users because more people in the society are participating in the Digital and Information Age. More and more people are considered to be active writers and viewers because of their participation. This flow has created a new life where we are now dependent on access to information. Therefore we see an information overload from the access to so much information, almost instantaneously, without knowing the validity of the content and the risk of misinformation.

In his latest book, Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind, author and autistic savant Daniel Tammet writes:

“Many people lack a coherent worldview with which they can evaluate and assimilate new information. The problem of information overload, therefore, may not be the quantity of it but our inability to know what to do with it. One possible explanation for this is the common confusion between information and ideas. In his book, ‘The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking’, history professor Theodore Roszak makes the point that the mind thinks with ideas, not information. Ideas are of primary importance because they define, make sense of, and create information. Roszak goes further still by arguing that the greatest ideas, such as the Founding Fathers’ ‘all men are created equal,’ do not contain any information at all. Rather, such ideas are the result of an innate human sensibility that reaches beyond strings of data to recognize and synthesize transcendent patterns of thought. A personal worldview then helps put information back into perspective, giving it an intuitive place in our minds like the books in a library.”

As a marketer, business owner, consultant, or executive, do you have a coherent worldview of today’s marketplace? Do you have a model that allows you to filter and make sense of new information, examples and tools? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Because when I ask people to help me understand their rationale for particular decisions and activities, I typically hear rationalizations.

So do we need information overload or ideas? Or a synthesis of information from the various pieces of data? Information synthesis thus can be described as below:

Synthesis, is the point at which everything is brought together. All separate notes, facts, outlines, scraps of paper and observations are tied together into a finished product, which could take any number of forms. Sounds simple, but to a layman, this process can feel overwhelming. Synthesis provides the researcher the opportunity to take information and present a new product or share a new concept. Not only is synthesis a way to repackage information found in the academic research process, it is a chance to engage in new ideas, thoughts, communication and research.

In Web search, the user first issues a search query and the search engine returns a list of ranked pages. The user then browses some top ranked pages to find what s/he is interested in. This classic paradigm is sufficient if one wants to find a specific piece of information, e.g., the homepage of a person or the pdf file of a research paper. If the user is interested in an open-ended exploration or the complete information about a search topic, it leaves much more to be desired. It will be very useful if the system can combine individual pieces of information from multiple pages to form a coherent picture of the search query. We call this kind of search - Deep Search, and the process of discovering and integrating different pieces of information, information synthesis.

Does this open the floodgates for new opportunities? Tomorrow’s search engine then needs to be based on information synthesis and not information overload. Google, are you listening?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Usability, User Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.