This blog is about one of the great paradoxes of our time, the simple fact that an increase in technology does not necessarily translate to an increase in productivity. It is also about dealing with this problem by changing the way you use technology and tools and, more importantly, your behaviour. However, this approach depends on a key assumption: that you understand the technology.
I have come to realise that the majority of people are unconsciously ignorant of the tools and technology, or are beginning to be consciously ignorant. Therefore I thought it would be a good idea to start with the basics and review some of the common technology that is leading to information overload or infomania. I believe that a good, solid understanding of the underlying technology will help you overcome the associated problems.
In this way I hope to move people from being unconsciously ignorant, to being consciously ignorant, to being consciously knowledgeable.
As so much of the information overload we deal with originates from social media, I thought that that was the most logical place to start.
According to Wikipaedia.com social media are
“primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Avatars United (social networking), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing) and Twitter (social networking and microblogging).”
As you would have noticed by now, I believe that videos are the most effective way to illustrate my posts. I would like to share with you the most beautifully crafted series of videos by a two person team called Common Craft that illustrate these common technologies and tools so well that I don’t have to say much, but you be the judge.
From a business perspective, social media is something you cannot ignore. The following presentation illustrates another perspective on social media and very clearly tells you why you cannot ignore social media.
In the following posts I will introduce blogs, RSS, microblogging, social bookmarking, social networking and social bookmarking.
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