Clay Johnson, writing about the nature of notifications in software:
Left at the default, we create an economy of sensational notifications, with the brightest minds of our generation trying to figure out how to get us to click on the next command for our attention. Can you imagine what would happen if they were instead focused on providing us content worthy of it?
Do our reading environments encourage active reading? Or do they utterly oppose it? A typical reading tool, such as a book or website, displays the author’s argument, and nothing else. The reader’s line of thought remains internal and invisible, vague and speculative. We form questions,… Continue reading →
Information consumption also has a consumption chain, just like food does. Most news, for instance, comes from a set of facts on the ground, that get processed, and processed and processed again before it ends up on your television set boiled down into chunks for… Continue reading →
The US Postal Service story is not a unique situation. It is the situation. And we are going to be living with this situation for many years to come. We are crossing a huge chasm from an industrial society to an information society. And there… Continue reading →
A while back I moved into a new apartment in Portland. It’s in a great neighborhood and a terrific building. One of the best parts is the top floor view of Lone Fir Cemetery across the street. It’s a cemetery that saw its first burial… Continue reading →
And a week or so later, when you try to remember what you said at this party, that really terrific thing, you rack your brain, but can’t quite come up with it. That’s Twitter. The blog, on the other hand, is slow, reliably reference-able, and… Continue reading →
The Information Sage. The Washington Monthly does a wonderful feature profile of Edward Tufte.
Attention Economy. “If everyone has everyone’s attention the value of attention is nullified.” This is why we should save, invest, and be conscientious of the attention we give things.
I spent Sunday evening catching up on my Instapaper list. Through pure serendipity I had two articles back to back that go quite well together. First on the list was Dan Conover’s post “Standards-based journalism in a semantic economy.” Total brilliance. From the post Dan… Continue reading →
Scott Berkun theorizes about information overload: There is a notion the world is polluted with information. And that reckless publishing or creation is bad. This might be true, but that ship has sailed. We won’t be eliminating information from the world. Therefore: Hypothesis: It doesn’t… Continue reading →