November 1, 2005

my information glut part 1: maximalism


Grain Silo by Chris Jordan

I think I simply have too much information. I mean it. Maybe everyone in this era reaches this peak at some time or another and even several times a year (I assume after trying to gorge on knowledge that's too varied, too complex, and too fragmented). Has your life also turned into a forever backlog of RSS feeds that you swear you want to comb through but know it's temporally impossible? (Friends that are pieced together from shards of blogs?) Sometimes it's a greedy grab for knowledge -- as if the more you know, the more power to see things others can't see. And sometimes it's an excessive search for meaning and beauty ...

I've decided to take an information sabbatical -- or at least, cut it into a fraction of my prior daily intake -- meaning, less RSS, less news, less audio, less art, less opinions, less every sort of media. I hope this is a big step in regaining my short term memory (which is ridiculously worthless these days). I will especially (though reluctantly) need to stay away from boingboing and the like. (Aren't metafilters, especially diversionary metafilters the worst! And there are just so many of them ... )

Learning to say no at the right time is just as important as saying yes, right? (As I mentioned earlier).

There's simply too much info taken in with too little framework and clarity of intent. (There I go with the archi-jargon). If everything is fascinating, how is it differentiated? I've been struggling to even think of what to put in this personal little blog of mine, because I've been confounded with new and fascinating bits of knowledge. It's strange, though, because I've always thought I was rather good at putting up high floodgates and saying "NO" (at the expense of sounding like a big snob). But besides the terrible memory, the fragmented learning, and the contradictory goals, I've suffered from really awful writing (the biggest sign of incoherence). It's moments like these I lick my lips at the fantasy of setting my house on fire.

... and start from scratch with nothing.

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