Too Much Information?
The reason I love the web so much is that information is so easily accessible without even having to leave your desk (or couch!). It’s everything you want to know at your fingertips. You could even say that the web has too much information, although not every source is reliable. But is too much information always a good thing?
Now, in no way do I think there should be any less information than that which is already out there. I love it, and for everything that I need to do (design/development related), I can find useful information to get the job done if I become stuck on something. And for that, I am thankful to have that kind of access.
Everyday I make it a priority to surf the web and find at least a couple articles that are relevant to what I do. It’s almost turned into an addiction, and I need my fix of reading each day. It keeps me learning. But as I was reading today, I realized…….will I remember all of this information? In other words, how can I keep all of this info stored in my head, because there is an awful lot of it.
I am 99% sure that about a year ago today, I found some kind of useful article to read, and has that information left my knowledge bank? How can you keep track of all of the good articles and information without having a huge bookmarks list? It just seems to be so much to keep up with.
Now this won’t stop me from doing my normal reading each day, but it was just a thought that I had, that I felt like writing about. To try an keep track of useful articles I find now, I just throw them in my ‘distractions’ section on the sidebar of this site. I can’t imagine how many articles I’ll have in another year. I probably won’t go back to read themall but at least I know they are there if I need them.
But what other ways can you manage the intake of information?
6 Comments
I don’t know about Windows or Mac users, but Beagle for Linux has saved me countless times when I have a vague recollection of a site I visited 3 weeks ago that I want to find again. It indexes my Firefox and Konqueror histories(among other things), and lets me find whatever I’m looking for.
It’s nice for sites that don’t warrant a bookmark yet, but I’ll probably need again down the road somewhere.
I used to use my feedreader daily. Now I never touch it. I have the sites I enjoy bookmarked and I visit them manually to check for updates.
Too much information for me can often feel overwhelming. Being select with what you read and learn is definitely the fastest way forward and leads to the best experience
Being select would definitely be th way to go, but I sometimes I feel like I miss out on some info if I don’t try to grasp all of the info in my feeds!
I know exactly how you feel. The possibility that I’d miss something has actually become almost too hard to bear. Sometimes I think of chucking a few of my now nearly 400 feeds, but I just can’t. Not just yet.
As for keeping interesting articles, that is terribly hard. And the feeling that you’re forgetting things is perhaps harder than missing stuff. It’s like the blogger’s Alzheimer’s or something.
BlinkList has proven to be quite useful there. Of course, there is no way I could remember the 1,000s of blinks I have there, but with a couple of good tags, I usually manage to find stuff on certain subject that I forgot I had.
On the other hand of course, there has to come a time to realize that even with x-amount of feeds and bookmarks, you still miss stuff, every day and all day. Realizing that should make it easier to let go. Well, a little bit at least.
Wow, 400 feeds, I’d be pulling my hair out at this point! I only have about 50 feeds and that’s hard enough to keep up with while having to work all day and tired by night. I don’t feel so bad now!
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