Paperless Office, Where are You?

Interesting insights contained on http://www.mindjack.com/:

“Tiffany Wilken in her essay on the myth of the paperless office reiterates, ‘paper usage seems to be increasing, rather than decreasing. What gives?’ Though we take advantage of digital technology for info-searchs, email, chats, and games, we don't quite trust it. We've all been burned by our computers at one time or another. In the back of our minds is the haunting doubt, ‘What if my computer crashes and I lose all my files?’ A hardcopy back-up still feels safer than something on hard-disk.

“The major obstacle to reaching the paperless office may be sociotechnical, according to a report funded by the Electronic Document Systems Foundation. People like the smell of opening a book. We may simply prefer paper…” !

Death by Powerpoint

What audiences find irritating about Powerpoint:

speaker read the slides 60%

text too small to read 51%

text too wordy 48%

poor slide color choices 37%

moving text or graphics 25%

irritating sounds 22%

complex charts 22%

A Quote Worth Pondering

"Technology reduces the amount of time it takes to do any one task but also leads to the expansion of tasks that people are expected to do." – Juliet Schor

Blackberry = Freedom?

How telling! Fours year ago this observation appeared in Men's Health: “You rush out and buy a Blackberry thinking that you'll be able to email and phone people from wherever you happen to be. Suddenly, everywhere will be your office. Within about a week the reality sets in. You're fiddling with the thing all day long, including right before you go to bed. It would be a useful device if you'd turn it off at about 6 p.m. and didn't turn it on again until about 8 a.m., but that's never going to happen.”

Dependency on Tech Gadgets

An article four years ago in USA Today said it all: “Personal computers, cellphones, and high-speed Internet are considered essential to getting by for millions of Americans who are showing early signs of addiction to the next wave of high-tech toys…”

The article went on to say that “many people… consider high-tech gadgetry essential to modern life,” and quoted psychologist Bob Greenfield who observed, "Part of the reason is the hype, the commercial selling of it. Some people feel the products will improve the quality of their lives. But do we really need to be connected in every way, shape or form?"

Boycott Multitasking

Just for today, give yourself the benefit of working on one thing at a time. You may have to switch gears, such as when the boss comes in, the important phone call comes through, or you receive a message that requires immediate action, but when you switch gears, switch them entirely: give your complete and undivided attention to the pressing issue at hand. All told, this is the most effective way to work and you'll be your happiest.

Meanwhile, if you notice yourself falling into patterns that resemble multi-tasking, try these solutions:

* Take a 15-minute break once during the morning, once during the afternoon.

* Don't eat at your desk, get away so that you can recharge your battery.

* Invest in equipment or technology that offers you a significant return, i.e. pays for itself within one year or less, and saves at least two hours a week of your time.

* Hold regular meetings with your team to discuss how everyone can be more efficient, without multi-tasking. Focus on the big picture of what you're all trying to accomplish. Often, new solutions to old problems will emerge and activities that seem urgent can be viewed from a broader prospective.

* Furnish your offices with plants, pictures, and art or decoration that inspires creativity and hold brain thinking.

Today's Forecast: Data Smog

In his 1997 book Data Smog: Surviving The Information Glut, David Shenk remarkably predicted our current state of social affairs:

"The law of diminishing returns, applied to the growing speed and abundance of information, will produce infoglut that will no longer add to our quality of life. Infoglut is already beginning to
cultivate stress, confusion, and ignorance," he said. "Information overload threatens our ability to educate ourselves, leaves us more vulnerable as consumers, and less cohesive as a society, and diminishes control over most of our lives."

Here are Shenk's first 12 Laws of Data Smog:
1. Information is now plentiful and taken for granted.
2. Silicon circuits evolve more quickly than human genes; a future information overload disease is called Nerve Attenuation Syndrome.
3. Computers are neither human nor humane.
4. Putting a computer in every classroom is like putting an electric power plant into every home; education cannot be fixed with a digital pipeline of data.
5. The sales goal of the information industry is information anxiety; by 1995, computer users considered their machines obsolete in just two years.
6. Too many experts spoil the clarity; the paralysis of analysis.
7. In a glutted environment, the most difficult task is finding a receptive audience.
8. As info supply increases, our common discourse and shared understanding decrease, and people turn to niche media and specialized knowledge.
9. The electronic town hall allows for speedy communication and bad decision-making; government is too responsive to an ill-informed citizenry.
10. Personal privacy has replaced censorship as the prime concern of civil liberties.
11. In our increasing distraction and speediness, the lies will move so much faster than the truth, they will too often become the truth.
12. On the info highway, most roads bypass journalists, reducing the power of the press
and enhancing the power of public relations.

Ipod and Lightning

Getting struck while wearing your iPod: "Doctors at Vancouver General Hospital in Canada said a 37-year-old jogger wearing an iPod was left with a Y-shaped burn on his chest, neck and face after the man and a nearby tree were struck by lightning in 2005. The lightning then jumped to the jogger."

"Witnesses reported that he was thrown approximately 2.4 metres from the tree, they said. His eardrums were ruptured, his jaw fractured and he suffered first- and second-degree burns from his chest -- where the device was strapped -- up into his ear channels, along the trail of the iPod's earphones. He also had burns down his left leg and foot, where the electricity exited his body, blowing his sneaker to smithereens in the process."

"While lightning usually flashes over a victim's skin, the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that the headphones of an iPod can act as a conductor, directing a bolt of electricity straight inside the listener's ear - rupturing eardrums and leaving severe burns."

So, there are times when it pays to NOT be connected to the information, communication, sight, and sound network that engulfs us all!

The Peek-a-Boo World

Professor Neil Postman in his 1985 landmark book Amusing Ourselves to Death offers a brilliant portrait of how television consistently offers us a false view of reality. Here is an excerpt from the start of Chapter 5, "The Peek-a-Boo World":

"Television has become, so to speak, the background radiation of the social and intellectual universe, the all-but-imperceptible residue of the electronic big bang of a century past, so familiar and so thoroughly integrated with American culture that we no longer hear its faint hissing in the background or see the flickering grey light. This, in turn, means that its epistemology goes largely unnoticed. And the peek-a-boo world it has constructed around us no longer seems even strange."

"There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have changed. Our culture's adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now almost complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane."

"It is my object in the rest of this book to make the epistemology of television visible again. I will try to demonstrate by concrete example... that television's conversations promote incoherence and triviality... and that television speaks in only one persistent voice — the voice of entertainment. Beyond that, I will try to demonstrate that to enter the great television conversation, one American cultural institution after another is learning to speak its terms."

"Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. This is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago."

A Chilling Merger

Evolution's Radical Future

The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. By Ray Kurzweil. Viking Press
excerpts from James Gardner's review:

On the fusion of human and machine intelligence: In the post-Singularity era, techno-futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts, there will no distinction between human beings and their technologies. As we merge with our machines, we will become something more than merely human.

The Borg-like hybrid entity that is our evolutionary destiny will, in Kurzweil's words, "match and then vastly exceed the refinement and suppleness of what we regard as the best of human traits." But, alas, from the "perspective of unenhanced biological humanity" this future state of affairs "will appear to rupture the fabric of human history."

The only thing that will remain unequivocally human in such a world will be what Kurzweil regards as the defining trait of our humanity: the instinct to "extend [humankind's] physical and mental reach beyond current limitations."

Jeff's take on all this: walk on any college campus today and you can see the fusion has already begun. There are legions of students who do not differentiate themselves from their technology (cell phones). Totally scary!

Cell Phones Decrease Freedom

"Cell phones-and, indeed, all wireless devices-constitute another chapter in the ongoing breakdown between work and everything else. They pretend to increase your freedom while actually stealing it. People are supposed to be always capable of participating in the next meeting, responding to their e-mails or retrieving factoids from the Internet. People so devoted to staying interconnected are kept in a perpetual state of anxiety, because they may have missed some significant memo, rendezvous, bit of news or gossip. They may be more plugged in and less thoughtful.
--Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek columnist

Lincoln Info Worth Knowing

In 1849, a future president patented an ingenious addition to transportation technology as report by Smithsonian magazine.

Upon hearing the name Abraham Lincoln, many images may come to mind: rail-splitter, country lawyer, young congressman, embattled president, Great Emancipator, assassin's victim, even the colossal face carved into Mount Rushmore. One aspect of this multidimensional man that probably doesn't occur to anyone other than avid readers of Lincoln biographies (and Smithsonian) is that of inventor. Yet before he became the 16th president of the United States, Lincoln, who had a long fascination with how things worked, invented a flotation system for lifting riverboats stuck on sandbars.

Less Chatter in the Sky!

Break out the champagne. The AP reports that the Federal Communications Commission “has officially grounded the idea of allowing airline passengers to use cellular telephones while in flight. Existing rules require cellular phones to be turned off once an aircraft leaves the ground in order to avoid interfering with cellular network systems on the ground. The agency began examining the issue in December 2004.”

“Federal Aviation Administration regulations also restrict the use of cellular phones and other portable electronic devices onboard aircraft to ensure against interference with the aircraft's navigation and communication systems. In an order released Tuesday, the FCC noted that there was ‘insufficient technical information’ available on whether airborne cell phone calls would jam networks on the ground.”

Great Expectations

"Technology reduces the amount of time it takes to do any one task but also leads to the expansion of tasks that people are expected to do." --Juliet Schor

PC Wins Out over Spouse

Demetria Gallegos, writing in the Denver Post Staff, says that a new study indicates that most people spend more time with technology than they do with their family. A survey conducted by Kelton Research, and commissioned by http://www.support.com/, a site that offers tech support found that 65% of respondents spent more time with a computer than with their spouse or significant other.

More than 80 percent of those polled said they were more dependent on their computer than they were three years ago. The survey was conducted in December and January, involving 1001 participants nationwide.

Cell Phones Plague Family Life

A study published in the "Journal of Marriage and Family" finds that cell phone and pager use has become a vehicle for job worries and problems to interfere with family life for both men and women. Cell phone technology is linked to increased psychological distress and lower family satisfaction in general for working men and women.

Upshot: Manage your cell phone after hours or it will quickly manage you.

Info on Demand: Boon or Bane?

Apple announced the iPhone at its annual Macworld expo. Steve Jobs called the iPhone a "revolutionary mobile phone" that will feature an iPod, phone and "Internet communicator."

Self-Induced Lost Opportunities

"For all the hand-wringing about Generation M, technology is not really the problem... It's not so much that the video is going to rot your brain, it's what you are not doing that's going to rot your life."

– David Levy, Ph.D., University of Washington Information School

Info You Don't Need While Driving

Imagine losing your life because someone is moronic enough to believe he can navigate a 3000 pound, potentially lethal vehicle while diverting his attention to a device with tiny buttons… Erik Lacitis, writing in the Seattle Times, explains how BlackBerry tapping caused a car-crunching chain reaction on Iinterstate Highway 5:

A 53 year-old man “fiddling with his BlackBerry, was cruising down Interstate 5's express lanes Tuesday morning in his minivan, oblivious that traffic ahead had come to a dead stop…” “His minivan smashed into a car, setting off a chain reaction that included three other cars and a Community Transit bus, which was carrying 28 passengers.

“No one was seriously injured, but the accident near downtown Seattle underscores the dangers of driving while preoccupied with electronic gadgets, other passengers and even ‘driver grooming,’ according to a state study.”

“The driver of the first car rear-ended by the minivan was a 36-year-old Lake Forest Park woman whose 5-month-old son was in a car seat in the back seat. The woman and her son were in satisfactory condition and staying overnight for observation at Harborview Medical Center, according to a spokeswoman.”

This is sheer madness and the essence of ineffective information and communication mismanagement

Getting Our Information Faster

According to J.D. Power and Associates in their “2006 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study,” broadband has finally passed dial-up for Internet home access. Some 56% of residential ISP customers subscribe to broadband, and 44% to subscribe dial-up.

Websites: 100 Million, so Far

• The Web has reached 100,000,000 sites
• In August 1995 there were 18,000 sites

A Nation of Internet Addicts?

The U.S. could be rife with Internet addicts as clinically ill as alcoholics, an unprecedented study suggested. Based on a telephone survey, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine concluded that more than one of every eight U.S. residents showed at least one sign of "problematic Internet use." The findings of this survey was consistent with those of previous, less rigorous studies.

The typical Internet addict appears to be a single, college-educated, white male in his 30s, who spends about 30 hours per week on non-essential computer use. Some people hide their Internet surfing, or go online to cure foul moods in ways that mirrored alcoholics using booze, using the Internet to “self-medicate."

Way Too Many TVs

NEW YORK (AP) -- The average American home now has more television sets than people. That threshold was crossed within the past two years, according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said.

Half of American homes have three or more TVs, and only 19 percent have just one, Nielsen said. In 1975, 57 percent of homes had only a single set and 11 percent had three or more, the company said.

And this was Before 9-11

“Biggest U.S. spy agency choking on too much information”

By Correspondent David Ensor, 07/01

FORT MEADE, Maryland (CNN) -- The largest U.S. spy agency, the National Security Agency, is in crisis, overwhelmed by too many targets, too much information and the challenges created by increasingly sophisticated technologies.

The NSA is headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, about halfway between Washington and Baltimore. With its 38,000 employees, it is more than twice the size of the CIA, and at least twice as secretive.

"It produces, probably produces, 80 percent of the intelligence the United States uses," said James Bamford, author of "The Puzzle Palace." The agency's mission is to listen for threats to U.S. national security and it faces an increasingly daunting task.

E-Mail: Something's Gotta Give

Each day, wordwide, 50 billion e-mail messages are sent. This is equal to seven messages for everyone on the planet, although the vast majority of people are not online. In 2001, e-mail traffic was less than 12 billion.

More than 88% cent of e-mails are spam including about 1 per cent which are virus-infected. So that means at least 44 billion spam messages are sent EACH day and 4.4 billion of them contain viruses. Has junk email become an issue for you? You’re not alone!

The Strain of Cellphone Use

HealthDayNews.com: Cell phones and pagers, part of the technological revolution that was supposed to liberate everyone, is tethering people to their jobs to an unprecedented degree, to the point where family life is suffering. The study limited the blame to cell phones and pages, and not computer-based communication such as e-mail. Cell phones and pagers were linked to increased psychological distress and reduced family satisfaction for both sexes.

The research, by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociologist Noelle Chesley, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. "The use of cell phones and pagers was linked to increased distress and a decrease in family satisfaction over time," said Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology. "There is clearly a link between using the technology and experiencing increased access."

Smart Homes Coming?

In ten or twelve years, perhaps, “smart” homes with computers built into the walls will become affordable. Such computers will respond to voice commands, offer a random-access data base, provide instant simulation via artificial reality, and free us to effectively use information, not be abused by it.

For now, we're stuck in the mire of the over-information era, subject to the daily overglut. The best hope to hold off the din is to recognize all its disguises. If we cannot apply, reflect upon, or effectively store information, more than ever, we need to guard against being deluded with
excess data.

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In other words, goof off all day, hide your activities, and later claim that you’re overwhelmed at work.