Infoglut: How do you break through the noise?
The factoids have become all too familiar:
"A weekday edition of The New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.
–Richard Saul Wurman, Information Anxiety
"The typical business manager is said to read one million words per week.
–David Shenk, Data Smog
We can't do much about the ocean of information. With six+ billion people on the planet, all generating information of some kind, it will only keep expanding.
In fact, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the amount of information being generated worldwide grows by 30 percent per year. In 2002, they tell us, 800 megabytes of data, roughly 800 books worth, were generated for every man, woman and child on the planet.
Here's what we can do:
As consumers and citizens, we can seek out high-quality, trusted sources of information. And do our best to tune out the rest.
As marketers and internal communicators, we can find innovative ways to break through the clutter, and deliver information that our audiences will find useful.
At Outsource Marketing our values include this: We respect our audiences, and our client's audiences. In doing this, we:
- Tell the truth
- Make it clear
- Speak in a human voice
- Seek permission
- Avoid clutter
- Honor your privacy
Since the late 90's we've been teaching, preaching and writing about information overload and how it affects communications. In January 2000, Outsource Marketing proffered articles for Washington CEO and the Puget Sound Business Journal on the topic. Read "Get Back to Basics to Battle Information Overload, archived on the PSBJ website.
Outsource Marketing's Bill Boyd, ABC, leads a discussion about information overload on communitelligence.com.
Change This, one of our favorite sources, has an interesting article on the overload of choices we face.
This page is a work that will be updated frequently. We pledge this to you:
- To stay on top of trends, developments and research pertaining to Infoglut
- To keep this page short, lively and readable
- To only include what we ourselves find valuable
We invite you to contact us about how we can make this page even more useful to you.
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