web2.0 makes my brain hurt

Frazzled, mind boggling interludes of extremely quick, efficient, inefficient, targeted, untargeted, focused, unfocused, relevant, irrelevant searching & information retrieval in the wacky wild web2.0 world...

web2.0 has really done it.

pushed me to the brink of losing control. control over being able to efficiently manage the flow of information into my brain. control over the process of determining what is relevant, what is irrelevant, what to filter, what to focus on, what not to focus on. its really starting to make my head hurt. am i alone here? does anyone else feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, feeds, mashups, blogs, news, email, etc that streams past our eyeballs on any given day?

it's getting out of control. to the point, where my ability to search, filter, scan, browse, repeat -- which is a pretty damn efficient process -- is becoming unmanageable. even with a master's degree in library and info science, I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle here.

let me explain.

today, web2.0 makes it incredibly easy to search for, locate, identify, and acquire useful, rich, relevant, and enlightening information

information that can EASILY be turned into knowledge.

in virtually any domain, on virtually any topic.

[except in china, where companies like msft, goog, yhoo bow down to the govt and censor the flow of information, but don't get me started on that rant. grrrrr]

the problem is that there are no boundaries.

web2.0 makes it too easy to learn just about anything about anything. quickly.

add to this, the "social" aspects of web2.0 and the new genre of socialsoftware (e.g. del.icio.us, flickr, digg, techcrunch) that harnesses the power of the"collective intelligence"

and you get really cool, interesting pages, that can take hours and hours and hours to fully explore/digest.

real time wasters.

don't believe me.

look at your watch.

then check out the links below

http://del.icio.us/popular/lifehack
http://del.icio.us/popular/cool
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/
http://digg.com/topstories

did you come back?

look at your watch again. how much time did it take you to browse these 4 simple links?
get my point?

clearly, web2.0 is opening some pretty interesting doors.

in fact, reminds me of late 1996/1997 just as the .com boom was starting to take off. this web2.0 crap is also the reason why I don't get much sleep anymore.

this is exciting stuff. its too interesting for me to ignore. the mashup phenomena that we are witnessing right now is one of the most interesting unintended trends on the web right now.

on the flip side, web2.0 is also introducing a bunch of new problems, which began as the primary topic of this post - most notably -- how to deal with information overload, which isn't really a new problem at all.

today, we simply have a much more powerful set of tools available at our fingertips that compound the issue.

information seeking discipline is key. focusing on the task at hand. taking it to completion, without being distracted. this is the biggest challenge we face today. dealing with distraction. I really think it comes back to discipline in the end. guess I need to work on that some more.

to conclude this frazzled, somewhat unintelligeable, inconclusive rant on how web2.0 hurts my head, I'll leave you with some final thoughts that just might help fight the info overload battle in this brave new web2.0 world.

you know what, screw it, my head hurts. best of luck web2.0 surfing. maybe another time, I'll elaborate on my "rules of survival as an information seeking specialist in the web2.0 world."

until then, happy filtering.

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