Wednesday, 20 November 2002
live! in person! it's jill/txt
I'm waching Jill Walker give a talk at HUMLab in Sweden right now. (Click on the image to see the larger version.)
They've set up a realmedia stream, and a chat environment, so I'll be able to type questions later that the audience can see on the screen.
The talk is in a Scandinavian language that I don't understand (not sure if it's Norwegian, Jill's native language, or Swedish). But because Jill's provided notes on her talk, and is talking about blogs that she's displaying, I can follow along reasonably well.
It's an amazing thing, all this technology. I can be watching Jill in Sweden, chatting with the audience there via text chat, IM'ing my 8-year-old son, talking on the phone with a colleague, waving hello to colleagues in the hall outside my office, and writing this blog entry, all at the same time. It's not information overload, it's interaction overload. I don't do well at splintering my attention in this way, so I'm going to close my door, close iChat, hang up the phone, and turn my attention to Jill and the chat.
no original thoughts
After I finished blogging Jill's talk at HUMlab, complete with my expression of concern about "interaction overload" vs "information overload," I did my daily blogsurfing. And what should I find on Steven Johnson's blog but a reference to fabio sergio's connectedland essay, which contains the following line:
From a world where people's main issue has been managing information we might be thus evolving to a connected world where problems will also come from managing interaction. With content. With other people. With the devices that allow us to interact with content and people.
On the one hand, I love that these ideas seem to emerge simultaneously from multiple sources--it's a validation that I'm making the connections in a way that makes sense to people besides me. On the other hand, I hate that I seem unable to produce an original thought. My skills tend to be in putting the pieces together, in seeing the big picture and then filling in details. But much of what I piece together seems to have been put together--with more grace and style--by others first. <sigh>
