gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards"

i had been thinking about information bulimia at the corporate level, but I guess it is just as relevant to the individual

I call it "information bulimia", a disorder common amongst information intermediaries, characterized by episodic binge data collection followed by uncontrollable vomiting and purging, leading to information leakage and theft."

"Information Bulumia". HA!!!! Good one.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/fflifestreams_pr.html

My thoughts have been more about "organization anorexia" as a result of obsessive cost control as a replacement for flow/throughput management. More at http://www.focusedperformance.com/2005_08_01_blarch.html#112445463524783762

Wow. Both are very cool links. Thanks Guys =)

Reminds me of the Metaphysics of Whitehead (http://www.hyattcarter.com/whitehead's_metaphysics.htm) - In a summary barely recalled from my undergrad dyas, big picture thinking is nec. to understand what is pertinent to our understanding of the/a universe.

Bill, interesting link!

Liked the "He wants to move beyond space - to time. David Gelernter is looking for his pipe." :)

But what happened to the "Lifestreams" project? Last I found was an update from 2000...

*Functioning effectively in the flow* has been a regular topic of discussion amongst me and my colleagues for a couple of years now ... we'd best all get used to adapting as best we can.

It's a huge issue ... we've got a century of mental models and structure in all of our important (or should I say omnipresent ?) institutions that have socialized us into thinking things are *static*, and that the next change .. in strategy, or a re-structuring, or a policy or program .. will *get it right* THIS TIME.

;-)

And .. as David Weinberger said not too long ago ..

"The cure for information overload is (paradoxically) ... more information"

The Lifestreams model is very beautiful.

On the downside, the company that tried to bring this idea to market, Scopeware, didn't make it. It was a desktop client that visually expressed the time stream metaphor in 2.5D which I don't think works, aside from the fact it's hard to get penetration via rich clients. Also, in the way many great ideas fail, it failed because it was too different from what existed. IMO searchboxes and tagging get it right by building on existing metaphors rather than supplanting them.

I think another David is where to look now if you're interested in data streams, namely David Allen. His GTD workflow seems to appeal *enormously* to software types (that or software types have recently figured they need to get their act together just like everyone else does ;). Eventually some hacker with an ounce of taste will produce a killer workflow app on top of todo-lists/calendars (they all suck), and I bet it will look like GTD.

What lifestreams did for me personally was get me to to give up on classifying my digital stuff into different buckets - it doesn't help much later on. Now I only sort information where search is inadequate (like in email). It's great that Google are tackling all the world's information, but I have a ton of stuff right here already. I could really do with a Google minibox that fits on a USB key.