The Smog of Data
Thursday, April 21, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time
Colleges are among the most wired environments anywhere. Most professors say the Internet has enhanced teaching and scholarship. At the click of a button, scholars can connect with students, comment on colleagues' work, and locate and obtain research materials. But at what cost?
Do academics risk losing the time and ability for contemplative thought? Is information overload changing the very nature of the intellectual enterprise? What are its effects on personal relationships? Could electronic communication obliterate all previous forms, or are such claims mere hyperbole? What can scholars and administrators do to see through the smog of information?
» Knowing When to Log Off (4/22/2005)
David M. Levy is a computer scientist at the University of Washington's Information School and the author of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age (Arcade Publishing, 2001). With a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, he is working to create a Center for Information and the Quality of Life.
Jeff Young (Moderator):
Hello and welcome to The Chronicle's live discussion with David Levy, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. Our topic is information overload and whether scholars and students are taking enough time for deep reading and contemplation in an era of so much information technology. Some readers have pointed out that this live chat is perhaps ironic, in that we could be adding to the noise. But our hope is to raise the issue and spark some discussion of strategies to prevent data smog.
Thanks for joining us David...
Question from Steve Andresen, grad. school wannabe:
Hello, Your concern about the downside of wealth interests me.
The existence of these academic blogs, the online discussions, this opportunity to ask you a question, can be nothing but a good thing.
Personally, I would recommend every student gets and cares for a blog as a document of their accomplishment, as a place to develop their ideas, as a way to connect. The thinking about what to put on such blogs can be done. That's another thing that an education could teach. How to think about the things you do on the internet.
Or am I too naive? Should I be concerned about too much of a good thing because some of us can't handle it?
David M. Levy:
The whole question of how we best make use of our scholarly resources, whether blogs, email, or journals is of great interest to me. I think it's too early to tell which of the new forms are going to survive. Blogs are of course interesting but they are still quite new.
Question from David Landers, Saint Michael's College:
I am just curious what other institutions are doing to address the concerns we all should have about the advance of technology on our campuses. It seems that we are already behind in the learning curve with issues of confidentiality, pedagogy, broadband, de-personalization due to reliance on IM, grammatical presentations in our classes based on that IM "language" and not the King's English, parents contributing to student plagiarism through their "editing" "proof-reading" turning into co-authoring without citations? Technology itself is not the issue - what WE do with the technology is and it seems almost impossible to play "catch up" today when it comes to technology.
David M. Levy:
I can't really speak to what other institutions are doing. This seems like a question more directed to others and I hope others will jump in and provide us with some information.
Jeff Young (Moderator):
Those of you joining us, please feel free to send in your own thoughts or strategies for filtering information or finding time for contemplation.
Question from Mark, Thomson Learning:
On average, how many emails do faculty receive daily? Do universities have good spam filters? Quite frankly, I don't feel over-whelmed by information, rather I feel empowered because I enjoy interacting this way; I welcome the organizational challenge of managing the information influx.
David M. Levy:
I don't think the issue is really how many messages we receive or how good our spam filters are. The question is how able are we to manage all of the tasks and responsibilities in our lives, which includes e-mail. But you raise an important point: One size does not fit all. Not everybody feels overwhelmed. You're a good example of that. People have different strategies of coping with information, different styles of working and different capacities to multi-task.
What I've been talking about, while certainly not a universal concern, is one that many of us share, not only in universities, but in corporate life, and in home life as well.
Question from Jennifer Ruark, The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In addition to encouraging students to spend some time "unplugged," how can we teach them to sift through all the information they're assaulted with and develop the ability to discriminate between what is reliable and what is not?
David M. Levy:
You raise a crucial question that many people are thinking about. We're discovering that an essential part of literacy is now the ability to discriminate between these kinds of things. My guess is we ought to be teaching this earlier than at the university level -- that it ought to go back at least to high school and maybe earlier.
Question from Jeff Young:
David, could you talk more about the Center for Information and the Quality of Life that you are planning? I think you said before you'd like it to be a living laboratory? How might that work?
David M. Levy:
My plan is to create a workplace, a physical workplace at the University of Washington, which will be part of the information school and will be populated by faculty, students, and staff. What I hope to do there is to use all of our collective abilities to continue to experiment with new ways to work.
Experimenting with architecture, design and use of information technology and even with various embodied work practices. Can we, in other words, by using ourseves as guinea pigs, how can we begin to work out a work environment that is more conducive to a contemplative mode of working.
My hope is that by creating such a laboratory in the middle of mainstream work, we can benefit by having most of the pressures and goals we have in the day to day work world, so its not a simulation -- its the real thing. But it's also an experiment to see how much flexibility there is in the system.
In such an environment, failure would be part of the learning.
Suppose we wanted to do something radically different about vacations, but are constrained by the university. Even if that were to happen that we were unable to play around and make changes in those ways we would learn something by hitting the limits of the system.
Question from Steve Laton University of Rochester:
I couldn't agree more with your claims concerning the quantity of information available (and the means through which we access it) and the dearth of contemplation. Be how do those of us who firmly believe in the freedom of information, the democratization of knowledge and the general principle of equal access, make a cogent argument against this trend? Doesn’t the “information overload” problem have its roots in many principles our society holds dear? Thanks, Steve
David M. Levy:
I think I see your point. We certainly don't want to solve the problem of information overload by muzzling people. A lot of what I'm talking about though has to do with how we respond to the information coming at us all the time.
Perhaps and analogy with food might be useful. We know that lots of people in the US now are overweight. The amount of food available to us, including junk food is fairly exceptional. I wouldn't want to solve the problem of people being overweight by limiting the amount of food available or, for example, preventing people from eating junk food. But I think we need to look at what constitutes wise consumption and what causes us as individuals to overconsume, whether it's food or information. And we need to look at how we can deal with it, both on an individual level and on a societal level.
Question from Tom Flaherty, Central Connecticut:
I don't feel that the volume is as big a problem as the immediacy. Somehow, an email or (worse) IM communication seems to demand a quick response, unlike the paper letters and memo's of yore. An email not answered in 15 minutes, no matter how un-urgent, causes great upset. It definitely makes the day more hectic. Reflection can only be had by turning away from the beast entirely (and being accused of being non-responsive, uncooperative and all manner of unfriendly things).
I wonder how many of us are actually immediacy-addicted. I know that I am.
David M. Levy:
I agree that immediacy is a major issue. It certainly is for me in my own life as well. Katie Hafner had an article in the Circuits section of The New York Times about the problem of attention. How people seem to be living with a shortened attention span. And I remember her quoting somebody who claimed that as an exercise when he heard the beep announcing that a new message had just come in, he [forced] himself to wait a whole 30 seconds before looking at it and responding. I agree with you that there does seem to be an addictive quality.
But I think we ought to be a little more balanced in looking at this issue. There's something quite exception and wonderful too about the ability to respond quickly. The problem comes when we're no longer able to discern clearly what needs immediate response and what doesn't. That's when we get into trouble.
Comment from Ellis Godard, CSU Northridge:
So many questions - I'm overloaded. ;)
Question from gary rutgers:
What is the role of the University library and librarian in helping students and faculty deal with information overload?
David M. Levy:
University libraries and librarians have a really important role in helping students and faculty deal with information overload. Part of their job is to organize and provide access to materials that are particularly relevent to the needs on any one academic campus. So they provide an important filtering function. But at the same time, university libraries offer reference services, which means that students, faculty, or staff who are looking for information can get the assistance of expert searchers who are perhaps better equiped to navigate the Web as well as make use of relevant print materials.
Question from Danny Adams, Norfolk State University:
I wonder if the faculty member, 10-15 years from now, who cautions students about limiting their engagement with technology (frequency, tool arrays, etc.) . . . Would not such a faculty member be considered a relic and over-the-hill? Worse yet, would not such proclivities warrant scrutiny by the University?
David M. Levy:
The issue, as far as I'm concerned isn't which technologies we use or even how much we use them. The issue for me is whether we are staying true to the deepest aims and concerns of the university -- the commitment to scholarship, to education and to ongoing learning.
All I'm trying to suggest is that some of the ways we are now opperating with the newest technologies are antetheical to our deepest commitments. And I would hope that 10 to 15 years from now, people will be just as concerned about universities fulfilling their mission.
Question from Michael Greisman, The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Do you expect job positions to appear for "techno-secretaries" who could reduce the load on academics by filtering out the spam and fluff, and by summarizing the material that they actually should be reading? Technically-capable assistants could do more for overloaded academics than just setting up the computer and the network.
David M. Levy:
I most definitely do not expect techno-secretary positions to appear at the university. Over the last 20 years or so, we've been seeing, both in corporate and academic life, a serious reduction in the number of support positions available.
During the time I was at Xerox PARC, I had to live with a decreasing amount of administrative support and in my current academic position we have one very capable administrative support person helping most of the faculty in the information school. This is a trend I don't see being reversed. And as we are being expected ourselves to rely on technology more and more, the hope is, at least for some people, that we will have smarter tools, certainly better than the current spam filters. But I don't expect us to get more human support for our tasks.
Question from David Landers, Saint Michael's College:
What do we do when our computers crash? We had almost three days of viruses that attacked the faculty and staff computers - the career staff in my office literally couldn't do their work as they rely on using their computers to send/receive resumes, arrange interviews, etc. With so much of our work today "time sensitive" what, other than taking a nice relaxing walk around campus do we all do when our computers don't work?
David M. Levy:
How about reading a good book?
Question from Ken Braly, no institution:
In your research, do few/some/many people say they are affected by too much information? How do they say it affects them?
David M. Levy:
I dont think we have any diffinitive answers to your good question at this time. I generally don't focus just on the problem of information overload, but on a set of related phenomena -- not just overload but the way our attention is fragmented, the general busyness of life and the general speed-up.
Some of the negative effects people talk about include health problems. For example it's clear that stress, the stress of feeling overworked can have all kinds of effects on the body and the mind. There was an article on this in the NY times around Labor day. Heart problems, stomach problems, depression and anxiety are all possible effects of stress.
People also raise concerns about whether their productivity is decreasing and whether they're doing the same quality of work -- whether quality suffers under these circumstances.
Also ethical concerns, especially in such a speeded up environment. I often quote Richard Ford writing in the NY times several years ago, where he says "The pace of life feels morally dangerous to me."
These are some of the concerns that many people raise.
Question from Joelle, University of Utah:
Hi. I'm one of "the overwhelmed," yet I do appreciate the opportunity to participate in this discussion today. I agree that technologies have threatened the quality of my research, and I have found that I must unplug to find my creative self. I'll offer two concrete strategies that help me keep things such as email under control: 1. Most days, I read email only twice--first thing in the morning and again at the end of the day. I purposely delay my responses to give myself time for a thoughful reply and to let people who email me know that I will not jump immediately to answer. This takes a surprising level of discipline. (Perhaps I am addicted to immediacy.) 2. When I attend conferences, I leave an extended absence greeting on my office telephone, and I avoid email altogether. Instead, I use a notebook and a pen, and I write the old-fashioned way. After a couple of days of "going acoustic," I feel like a creative person again.
David M. Levy:
Thanks for sharing a couple of the strategies you use to achieve balance. My hope is that as more of us talk about these issues, that we can begin to find more constructive solutions that will allow us to use our information technologies to their best advantage and to use other means when they are actually more appropriate.
Question from Steve - U of Rochester:
David,
Do you think this accessibility of information threatens the teaching profession itself (based as it is, in part, on the culture of contemplation)? I’m wondering if our professional claims to expertise co-exist in tension with the freely and instantaneously available information out there (especially those of us in the humanities) in such a way that a laptop and a DSL connection could signal the end of the lecturer?
David M. Levy:
It's a good question. And I'm not sure what to think about it. It's possible that the increasing availability of information through laptops and DSL will actually have the opposite effect, that we'll come to see all the more clearly the critical role that teachers play in our culture. As I look at some of the trends and arguments of the last decade or two, it often looks like we start with some very black-and-white assumptions. For example, the death of the book, which was a major theme of the 1990s -- I think now most people realize the book isnt' going to go away, even if it's role is changing a little bit.
It could just be we are early enough in this technology revolution in the universities so that we're more likely to hear predictions about the death of the teacher, when I'm suggesting at least the possibility that the opposite may happen -- that teachers who are real teachers, who help students to learn in real and significant ways will be even more sought after.
Jeff Young (Moderator):
Well it's time for us to wrap up and let everyone get back to work.
Thanks to David Levy for joining us today and sharing his thoughts. And thanks to everyone for participating.
David M. Levy:
Thanks to everyone for their great questions.
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education