With all the hubbub of the World Cup, a new internship, and my attempt to do P90X this summer, I fell a little behind on the ol' bloggola. This brings me to a topic that I've been pondering for a while now...
In this world of Google and Wikipedia, we've hit information overload. I am a techie at heart, a far deviation from my handy father and Polish agrarian roots, and even I'm overloaded on a daily basis. My question is, how do we sort through and process an ever-growing Mariana trench of content? I feel like the diver in that new viral video, where he takes an underwater free fall down a trench, descending deeper and deeper until there's no external sense of direction, only the internal perception of the body moving down. OK, well, it's not quite that vivid, but you get the point. Unlike that video, there's no "bottom" in the internet age. We can become as well-read on any topic as ever, only to find 20 new opinions, facts, spins, and analyses the next day. Google's pagerank feature does a good job of showing the most relevant content for a given search, but even that only goes so far.
Take baseball. I don't have the illusion that my opinion is worth any more than the electronic paper this is written on. However, there's about 50 other Cardinals blogs out there and hundreds if not thousands of Tweeters and microblogs. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to process all of that information, much less on a daily basis like they want you to. I barely have time to make it through an Economist magazine each week. There's only so much information our brains can process before they explode.
What does that mean? Well, I think the volume of content available means that we must pick and choose our priorities. It definitely lends to having a niche. For minor league baseball, I trust Future Redbirds, because they are on top of the news on that forefront constantly. As writers or bloggers, I think the information revolution has underscored the importance of brevity. Quick reading means we can get the information we need to make our own conclusions. The faster I can get this insight, the faster I can move on to the next.
All in all, the internet is a deathly scary place when it comes to content. That's why you'll start seeing "First Impressions" blogs from Rockin' the Red: quick, easy reading that doesn't take itself too seriously. Also, I'm going to start including The Gist on longer blogs that simply give the main points of the post. All this to help those with busy lives, like myself. Then I can have some time to stop and smell the roses.
The Gist of It: Too much information on the internet makes it hard to stay current. Look for shorter posts that help you get the baseball you want and get on your way.
Original Story:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Rockin...
In this world of Google and Wikipedia, we've hit information overload. I am a techie at heart, a far deviation from my handy father and Polish agrarian roots, and even I'm overloaded on a daily basis. My question is, how do we sort through and process an ever-growing Mariana trench of content? I feel like the diver in that new viral video, where he takes an underwater free fall down a trench, descending deeper and deeper until there's no external sense of direction, only the internal perception of the body moving down. OK, well, it's not quite that vivid, but you get the point. Unlike that video, there's no "bottom" in the internet age. We can become as well-read on any topic as ever, only to find 20 new opinions, facts, spins, and analyses the next day. Google's pagerank feature does a good job of showing the most relevant content for a given search, but even that only goes so far.
Take baseball. I don't have the illusion that my opinion is worth any more than the electronic paper this is written on. However, there's about 50 other Cardinals blogs out there and hundreds if not thousands of Tweeters and microblogs. I don't know about you, but I don't have time to process all of that information, much less on a daily basis like they want you to. I barely have time to make it through an Economist magazine each week. There's only so much information our brains can process before they explode.
What does that mean? Well, I think the volume of content available means that we must pick and choose our priorities. It definitely lends to having a niche. For minor league baseball, I trust Future Redbirds, because they are on top of the news on that forefront constantly. As writers or bloggers, I think the information revolution has underscored the importance of brevity. Quick reading means we can get the information we need to make our own conclusions. The faster I can get this insight, the faster I can move on to the next.
All in all, the internet is a deathly scary place when it comes to content. That's why you'll start seeing "First Impressions" blogs from Rockin' the Red: quick, easy reading that doesn't take itself too seriously. Also, I'm going to start including The Gist on longer blogs that simply give the main points of the post. All this to help those with busy lives, like myself. Then I can have some time to stop and smell the roses.
The Gist of It: Too much information on the internet makes it hard to stay current. Look for shorter posts that help you get the baseball you want and get on your way.
Original Story:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Rockin...
