Simplify, simplify, simplify
The following is an excerpt from my School of Information application essay:
Our society is inundated with information. We crave it. We’re addicted to it, and we know it. Blackberrys are called CrackBerrys, some states have found it necessary to make it illegal to check email while driving, and I was personally disappointed to find out that my preferred RSS feed reader can update no more frequently than twice an hour. Too many of us live in a state of “continuous partial attention,” never fully applying ourselves to a given task because one eye is always on the inbox or browser window. The societal issues this causes — car accidents, reduced productivity, inferior workmanship, loss of true interpersonal connection — dictate that information professionals must play a role in addressing this epidemic of information addiction. Technology alone cannot solve these problems; indeed, while the problems I describe have been exacerbated by technology, they predate electronic information technology, as related by Henry David Thoreau in his 1854 classic Walden: “Hardly a man takes a half hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, ‘What’s the news?’ as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast.” Just as technology helps feed this craving for information, so, too, can technology help reduce the craving.
