A good in-depth article on information hoarding:

Linder argues that as we become squeezed for consumption time, we’ll consume more expensive things over cheaper things when possible to make use of more goods on a total-cost basis. But when the cost of goods is zero, what happens then? As behavioral economists (most vociferously, Dan Ariely) have pointed out, we find the promise of free things hard to resist (even when a little thinking reveals that the free-ness is illusory). So when with very little effort we can accumulate massive amounts of “free” stuff from various places on the internet, we can easily end up with 46 days (and counting) worth of unplayed music on a hard drive. We end up with a permanent 1,000+ unread posts in our RSS reader, and a lingering, unshakable feeling that we’ll never catch up, never be truly informed, never feel comfortable with what we’ve managed to take in, which is always in the process of being undermined by the free information feeds we’ve set up for ourselves. We end up haunted by the potential of the free stuff we accumulate, and our enjoyment of any of it becomes severely impinged.

Linder being the author of The Harried Leisure Class, apparently. A book I haven't read and probably won't.

There's also this rather insightful essay by Nicholas Carr. Which I did read through to the end, finding myself agreeing with him, at least on the effects of too much information on my own person. (Whether Google's 20% time is engineered purposefully for evil is another question. I hear from many "Googlers" that it's 20% after your requisite 80-hour week, and David Hansson recently pointed out that it's supposed to be 20% more time doing the exact same things only with a different name, and that getting away from the computer sometimes might be a good idea.)

There is this counterpoint, if you can call it that, by John Batelle but I found it a little too "rah rah INFORMATION AGE!" for my liking.

A couple weeks ago, at RailsConf, I tweeted that I was skipping Joel Spolsky's keynote and why.

Judging by the few responses I got, most people took this to be a joke. It's not.

I try very hard to watch what I put into my head. To a greater or lesser degree of success. All kinds of research is out there that begins to explain what affect information has on our not-21st-century brains and there are many reasons to believe in a mental architecture that functions on the principle of shit-in/shit-out (SISO). (I say "shit" instead of "garbage," because garbage often times has some redeeming value (depending on the type).)

And, secondly, research has shown that the majority of what Joel Spolsky writes is pretty embarrassing, and so is the software he produces. Based on what I know of the man, I didn't have high hopes for his talk, and it sounds like I wasn't far off the mark.

But it's not just about some personal vendetta against Spolsky. Put simply, I already take in too much.

Case in point: I want to reference an author's assertion about failure that I read recently.

It was probably in a book. That is, one of the five or so books I've read this past week.

Or, shit. Was it on a blog?

You can see my predicament. I know I read the thing. I remember what it said.[1] I said "Aha!" and "that's interesting" and "I'm not entirely sure I agree," and I probably dog-eared it or used one of my marker stickers which I keep everywhere, but that doesn't mean much.

My "tagging" behavior has the side effect of leaving the best of the books I read looking like technicolor porcupines from Flatland. It will just as likely take me 20 minutes to find that quote, if I ever do.

I put too much information into my head. I devour it like it's... I can't even think of an adequate food metaphor because I just don't like eating that much. My tummy is a wild beast that only accepts my yoke when I treat it with the gentle respect it deserves. Never in my wildest dreams could I spend an entire 8-hour day eating without wishing like hell I could stop, or at least barf.

With information, however, I start to read just one blog or just for 15 minutes and come to, hours later, with a stiff neck and cotton mouth, wondering dazedly where the time went. And what's worse, I know full well this is what will usually happen, but I do it again anyway.

Fact: I'm never happier than when I strictly limit my intake of information, especially from pointless, shallow, or actively horrible sources. But, like all diets, I forget about actually feeling better, and sometimes I waste an entire day reading utterly useless shit. But tomorrow's a new day, right? I'll start fresh tomorrow. Or maybe right now.

In the mean time, I am more irritable, more distractable, more physically uncomfortable (info binging for me is a physically static thing) and thus more mentally sluggish, and, to top it all off, vastly less productive.

Which brings me to my point.

Informational...

• bingeing
• purging
• hoarding
• hygiene
• pollution
• gentrification

Information doesn't want to be free—that's the pathetic fallacy in action. But it does seem to have a life of its own, reflected in the above words, because of our seeming obsession with it.

Discuss.

Further reading:

• Summon Monsters? Open The Door? Heal? Or Die?
• Never Hate. Only Destroy.
• Life Interrupted
• Is Google making us stupid?
• Google: Making Nick Carr Stupid, But It's Made This Guy Smarter
• Intermittent variable reward
• Information overload
• Continuous partial attention
• Supernova 2005: Attention

[1] The author was arguing against the idea that we learn from our failures and others' successes, and saying it was a totally backwards idea—claiming that, in fact, we learn from our successes and others' failures. I am, as I said, skeptical, but it was thought-provoking.

I'm still on the quest to make this blog more like a blog—I think the articles are eventually going to be treated differently.

I am a huge believer in the power of books. Books are the one thing I own "in excess;" my favorite charity is book-related and bookstores tend to create in me that "kid-in-a-candy-store" that electronics or clothes stores do for other people. Since I rarely talk about books, I assume that it may be a bit mysterious where some of my rants or ideas come from, but they're like as not coming from books and/or observations of the Real World. Books have made me the person I am.

Lately I've gone on a real book-buying spree (more so even than usual). Shipping Twistori helped me shake burnout, so I can only assume that's why I'm ripping through them like a sugared-up 6-year-old through a department store.

So, here's a list of the books that are currently stimulating my grey matter:

#1: The Architecture of Happiness

A book on the way architecture (and art, and really, design) can claim to affect the human condition, and how it does so. By Alain de Botton.

I've loved Alain de Botton since I stumbled across his novel "On Love" while volunteering in The Book Thing. It was well-printed, bright pink and had nice typography—that's why it caught my eye. (I'm a designer, what can I say?) It was also brilliant. And I later found out that he wrote books on philosophy. I own all of them and have devoured every one.

This one, his latest, is his hardest to read. It's not that it's not well-written—no, it's incredibly good. But it's so densely packed. It seems like I've dogeared or marked almost every third page for something deeply insightful or interesting, some thought that made me go "Aha!", to which I wish to return.

This makes it not an ideal bedtime book. It has to be savored, read while fully awake, and in small doses so it can sink in and steep.

#2: Death March

By Edward Yourdon.

It's about projects. The kinds of projects you'd assume it would be, with a name like Death March. Remarkably compelling—I was hooked from the snarky, real, and tell-it-like-it-is front page. He doesn't bow to the common convention of turning tail and licking the boots of management, hoping to impress it.

So far, he advocates all-out war-like tactics to get projects done, if you find you really must—but his first advice is to quit the job because death march projects are a symptom of a very deep, very insidious, very unshakeable disease infecting the corporation.

I've really just started this one but so far I am very impressed.

#3: Cryptonomicon

An unbelievable novel of cryptology, technology, startups, war, and of course, humanity. Neal Stephenson is one of my most favorite fiction authors and Crypto holds up very well to repeat readings. (My absolute favorite of his has to be The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, however.)

Like all very good fiction, there are universal truths, insights and lessons to be learned from this one. Stephenson is an expert on humanity and he gets the facts on the other topics spot-on, too. (I originally read it, by sheer coincidence, along side The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography and it was a total braingasm to read about the real history/science in the latter and then see it talked about in the novel.)

Crypto is thus also not a very good bedtime book because it really gets my mental gears turning.

#4 Guards! Guards!

By Terry Pratchett.

It's like the book version of a funny TV show. This is older Pratchett, back when he still had a sharp edge, but not as insightful as some of his other novels (e.g. Small Gods). I've never really found Pratchett to be laugh-out-loud funny, but it's a nice break because with all of the other items on my list my brain is exploding. And I'm really, really running out of sticky notes.