-Updated on Oct.15.2005-

We have never been so well connected and reachable, as we are today. We can reach people anytime and anywhere via voice, email and instant messaging, short messaging, and so on. Today we live in the “connected age”.

The “connected” age is the age of pushed-information and with that, the age of information-overload. Pushed emails, pushed calls or voice-mails, pushed IM, pushed text messages, pushed blogs – online and offline pushed data everywhere.

We are all examples of information overload – lots of emails, voice calls, and lots of weblogs to keep track of; and for many that is in addition to fulltime jobs, and family. It is quite a bit of things to track, quite a bit of multitasking, quite a bit of information overload.

Email has been a large contributor to information overload, especially when you've become an email addict and take your (work) email with you all the time (i.e. BlackBerry). Now blogs have greatly added to the problem of information overload. This is because blogs allows us to better reach and learn from others – we can easily express ourselves, and learn from others – from their insights and opinions and expertise, technical or not. There are a lot of smart people out there with great information and opinions
that is worth reading. The result are more and more weblogs (and information) to keep track of.

The “connected” age is also the age of ease of self-expression. For the first time, anyone can express their opinions publicly (and/or “anonymously”) with ease, and reach a large audience – the Internet and weblogs and search engines are the tools of public self-expression.

Due to the massive amount of people, and the dynamic nature of bloggers and their weblogs, and the massive amount of pushed data in general, we are going to continue living in a world of information overload… While the management of information (overload) is a very interesting area of research,
the right answer to information overload may not be based on technology at all, but on personal discipline — learn when to be connected and when not be so connected…

ceo