Losing the RSS-feeds battle
I confess to an increasing amount of guilt over the increasing amount of information clogging my Bloglines account. At present, I’ve got 2,373 unread posts sitting in there, with another 82 marked as new—a pretty optimistic thing to do, if you think about it, since I’m never going to get through the unread stuff to make it back to the stuff I marked.
This past year, I managed to dramatically improve my email read-and-respond habits, keeping my inbox clutter to a minimum (less than 100 new). Yet in order to give the 2,373 Bloglines posts even a cursory glance would take hours, hours I don’t seem to be willing to dedicate.
The situation is rapidly getting worse. The unread number is growing faster than the posts are being consumed. Soon it will be the size of a small planet, and then it will blot out the sun.
The only thing protecting the Earth right now is my waning defense against the many other blogs out there that I should be subscribing to, but am not.
I agonize over existential questions. Is it better to devote my pure attention to a chosen few than to scatter my online moments amongst so many blogwinds? If a blogger posts and nobody reads it, does it still use bandwidth?
The price I pay for access to infinite information is a greed to devour it all. I must be informed. I cannot let a development pass by unnoticed. I need to become ever more knowledgeable until I know one million things.
Can you save me before it’s too late?
December 7th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Hi,
Are you using the Bloglines beta interface?
–Phil.
December 8th, 2007 at 1:20 am
I noticed years ago that there’s a very tangible feeling that accompanies ‘information overload’.
It’s a feeling similar to being overstuffed after a holiday meal, though not washed in comfortable triptophans. Or it’s a feeling like the end of a healthy session at the gym. I can’t put my finger on it, but ‘information overload’ is a real experience.
I later read an article by a neurologist suggesting that during a flurry of concentration and learning, our brain delivers extra oxygenated blood to itself. This causes a slight decrease of blood flow to the limbs and trunk of our bodies. Thus, we can become a bit unsteady and even noticeably queezy when confronting heavy new inputs.
But later I thought, if I’m feeling odd because my brain is using the good blood and hormones stuff for when I feel overloaded, this is also the precise same time that I’m doing the greatest amount of information processing too!
So, I try to be patient with myself when I feel overloaded. At least I’ll try to be accommodating to myself rather than rapidly seeking to return to a normal comfort level. My poor brain requires a little accommodation or I’ll be ignorant always, and that’s for sure.
I hope I’m being clear. The rule of thumb of this story is, ‘When we feel that we’re overloaded, we’re also deeply learning at the very same moment’.
There’s an equation for this: Information Overload equals Information Retrieval.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Hi Phil,
I don’t think I am; why? Should I be?
Brian,
Thanks for the ‘no pain, no gain’ support. If you’re right, I’m learning so deeply it’s not even funny. I’m like Neo in The Matrix when they plug the jiu jitsu program into his brain.