Information Overload

I saw Iron Man this weekend. I definitely recommend the movie, but this is not a review. The part of the movie that got me thinking the most was the previews. The good previews are the ones that give us a brief explanation of the story without giving away any plot twists or the ending. The bad movie preview is the one where they give us a recap of the entire movie so you know the basic beginning, middle, and end, without having to see the movie. In other words, there is a formula and this movie follows it. Now while I like to see good movies, I like to see bad movie previews. The reason being, is that usually bad movie previews are for bad movies. And now I know the whole movie plot, so I don’t need to see it to know what happens.

I think the average person is expected to absorb more information now than ever in history. Because of the ease of finding information, we’re exposed to more information, and thereby required to know more to be accepted. Whether it is in a social setting or business setting, you’ve got to have mental access to lots of info.

So how do we deal with this information requirement? Blogs have helped. They’ve consolidated important news into niche chunks that we can absorb in small segments and get overall knowledge of an industry or topic. RSS feed readers have helped consolidate the blogs into one central location but it’s still a challenge to absorb all this information. I think the answer lies in the formula. Movies have formulas. Why can’t other types of mental input have formulas as well. I think to some degree they do, and it’s important that bloggers, or other information-deliverers, use the bad movie preview approach when delivering this information. By providing us with our the overall gist of a concept that we can fit into a standard mental formula, then we can extrapolate information from the post without reading it. That would save time and provide a mechanism to improve memory retention.

I think I’ve developed a mental formula for the majority of Techcrunch posts which talk about Web 2.0 companies. That allows me to skim them and still retain the information (most of the time). I’m not sure if this mental formula can be created for any type of medium after repeated use. What I do know is that this formula creation is extremely important for my own personal knowledge absorption.