Overload! (eBook)

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and chief analyst of Basex, a research firm focusing on issues companies face in the knowledge economy. His points of view and commentary have appeared in Time, the New York Times, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Spira is a founding board member of the Information Overload Research Group, an industry consortium. He is author of Managing the Knowledge Workforce: Understanding the Information Revolution That's Changing the Business World and coauthor of The History of Photography (named a best book of the year by the New York Times).

Foreword: Fighting the Good Fight against Information Bloat.

Preface.

A Note to the Reader.

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

How We Got Here.

The Age of the Knowledge Worker.

Mark Rivington's Day.

A Global Economy.

Part I: How We Got Here.

Chapter 1: Information, Please?

Chapter 2: History of Information.

The Information Revolution and the Book.

eReaders Rising.

After the Book...Getting the Word Out.

The New News Cycle.

Chapter 3: Welcome to the Information Age.

Is Software Holding Us Back?

The Tools We Use.

Mid-Nineteenth Century Tools: Groundwork is Laid.

Twentieth-Century Tools: The Foundation for the Information Revolution.

Breakthroughs in Productivity.

Online Collaboration Makes Its Entrance.

Enter Charlie Chaplin.

Enter the Office Suite.

An Office for the Twenty-First Century.

The Problem of Too Much of a Good Thing.

The Collaborative Business Environment.

Chapter 4: What Is Information?

Quantifying Information.

Why Information Is Exploding.

How Information Is Going beyond Network and Storage Capabilities.

Structured Information versus Unstructured.

Data Mining to the Rescue?

Chapter 5: The Information Consumer.

Chapter 6: What Is Information Overload?

Meetings: Too Much of a Good Thing?

How Long Has This Been Going On?

More Information - Isn't that What We Wanted?

Information Overload and the Tragedy of the Commons.

The Ephemerization of Information.

Chapter 7: The Cost of Information Overload.

Chapter 8: What Hath Information Overload Wrought?

Aspects of Information Overload.

Information Overload-related Maladies.

Chapter 9: The Two Freds.

Entitlement.

Mad about Information.

Work-life Balance.

Chapter 10: Beep. Beep. Beep.

How Much Texting is Too Much?

Sample Text Phraseology.

The Search for Whatever It Is We Are Looking For.

Chapter 11: Heading for a Nervous Breakdown.

Thinking for a Living.

The Roundtable.

How the Other Half Lives.

The New Busy Is Heading for a Nervous Breakdown.

Part II: Where We Are and Where We Are Going.

Chapter 12: Managing Work and Workers in the Twenty-First Century.

Chapter 13: Components of Information Overload.

E-mail Overload.

Unnecessary Interruptions and Recovery Time.

Need for Instant Gratification.

Everything is Urgent - and Important.

Chapter 14: E-mail.

The Cost of Too Much E-mail.

E-mail and the Network Effect.

Reply-to-All.

Get Rid of "Reply-To-All?"

Profanity in E-mail (Expletive Deleted).

A Day without E-mail.

What to Do With 2.5 Billion E-mails.

Deleting E-mail, Deleting Knowledge.

Chapter 15: The Googlification of Search.

Does the King of the Watusis Drive an Automobile?

Chapter 16: Singletasking.

Attention.

Three Types of Attention.

Automaticity.

The Supertaskers among Us.

Chapter 17: Intel's War on IO.

Recent Information Overload Initiatives.

Quiet Time: A Time for Thought and Reflection.

No E-Mail Day.

E-mail Service Level Agreement.

Chapter 18: Government Information Overload.

The Government's Information Problem.

Collecting Data to Our Detriment?

A Culture of Secrecy.

Too Much Information (almost) Hits Home.

Chapter 19: The Financial Crisis and Information Overload.

No Information Overload in 1907?

Information Overload in the Market.

Chapter 20: The Tech Industry and Information Overload.

The Industry Comes Together?

Information Overload Awareness Day.

What Software Companies Are Doing.

Chapter 21: What Works Better When.

Social Networking Tools in the Enterprise.

What Should I Use When?

10 Tips to Help Lower Information Overload.

Epilogue: 2084: Our Future?

References.

About the Author.

Overload Stories: The Web Site.

Index.

"Rich with helpful, pragmatic advice, Overload! provides details, tips, and strategies that the world's leading organizations, including IBM, Intel, Morgan Stanley, and the U.S. Air Force have employed." (LeadershipNow.com-Review)