Comments on: Measuring information consumption

By: HMI Bonus Material: Video Game Screenshots « Roger Bohn's Blog

HMI Bonus Material: Video Game Screenshots « Roger Bohn's Blog — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:47:34 +0000

[...] and personally), so I’m helping the team try to make sense of our findings that video games make up a huge proportion of our data consumption (when bytes are used as the [...]

By: UCSD Study: Decline in Reading is a Myth, Thanks to the Internet | Future Changes

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:46:06 +0000

[...] More on Roger Bonn’s blog. [...]

By: Thierry VENIN

Thierry VENIN — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:22:40 +0000

Thank you very much for the answer, the post and the links.
I work with a French CNRS laboratory on IT influence on work-related stress.
My thesis is that IT technologies (more and more mobiles) create time compression (kind of a real-time pandemia), a multitasking pressure, a confusion between private and professional environments, an unlimited quantity of information and a huge appeal to be always connected.
We are driving this research following 4 axis :
- seminars with managers which allow qualitative exchanges and experiences
- a quantitative survey (1,000 managers) with a French executive managers trade union
- a software that experiment an IT flows gate and self-organization tool, running for now for about 30 managers (our gola is to get one hundred experimenters). This allow a very qualitative work with experimenters of two kinds: a group (one half) we know and meet at work and “around” and volunteers that get it over the web (the other half).
- the creation of a non governmental organization trying to link european trade-unions (both employers and employees) on the subject of IT influence on work-related stress and collective possible control measures in corporates to help putting technologies at human service
I try to maintain a blog (sorry it is only in french for now) around this research (www.cooldone.com/blog)
So, the HMI report and it’s work environments extensions, the links with information overload are very very useful for our own work.
Thank you very much for sharing and for your reactivity!
Thierry Venin

By: art2science

art2science — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:45:22 +0000

My Research Assistants and I are working on your questions. Regarding “cognitive changes” I am referring to the literature on information overload and “induced attention deficit disorder.” I will make a brief post about the latter. For the information overload lit, check out the comments on the following blog post: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/12/28/2b2k-notes-on-the-history-of-information-overload/ Simply put, being awash in information 12 hours a day affects our thinking. I’ve personally noticed I spend less time “contemplating” in the last few years, due to the iPod!

By: Thierry VENIN

Thierry VENIN — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 16:48:41 +0000

Dear professor Bohn,

thank you for this very interesting study.
I’m involved in a french research about digital increasing flows better control, and your report is precious for our work.

I have three questions:
- In 4.3.2 the HMI report says that the rise on interaction is an “overwhelming transformation” that causes some cognitive changes. “These changes may not all be good, but they will be widespread”.
This is a very interesting track for me but I stay hungry for more. Could you please explain a bit more what is meant here and eventually indicate links about this research track?
- The endnote 18 gives MS productivity links that don’t seem to work… Is there another way to get these documents?
- The HMI report tells several times that complementary researches will exist notably about information flows at work. How could I stay tuned with? Is there a RSS link available somewhere?

Best wishes and happy new year for the HMI research team,
Thierry VENIN

By: UCSD Report: “How Much Information?” « Okonomibloggy

UCSD Report: “How Much Information?” « Okonomibloggy — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:29:09 +0000

[...] report raises some interesting questions and issues. On his blog, Roger Bohn answers several critics who argue that the measures of information consumption aren’t really meaningful. For example, [...]

By: Tom Arrison

Tom Arrison — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:08:35 +0000

Congratulations and thanks to Professors Bohn and Short on a very worthwhile effort. I think the discussion over methodologies and definitions is useful in itself.

Hopefully, support will continue for this work so that the approach can be further refined, and we will have some ability to track trends over time through regular updates. I thought that the earlier UC Berkeley efforts that focused on data creation and storage were valuable as well.

By: Mary Wickline

Mary Wickline — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:54:12 +0000

It seems to me that this study should be named “How Much Bandwidth” — the amount of “information” in a book or article vs the amount in a movie or game is not really comparable this way.

By: art2science

art2science — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:38:18 +0000

A very provocative point. For our study, we defined information as “(artificial) data reaching a person.” There are many other valid definitions of information, and the limitation to artificial sources was done to make the problem tractable. I could not figure out a rigorous way to quantify “natural” sources of information, though I have not given up. Depending on the definition, it might indeed be that our ancestors received more information!

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:22:35 +0000

But I’m still confused. Am I not receiving information by sitting outdoors and looking at the natural world; or by talking to another person? Isn’t it likely that someone in the 16th century was taking in just as much information as we are now?