Tape Noise Diary

Writing in the Age of Distraction

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the “information overload” problem again and the whole Tim Ferris thing of going on a “information diet”. I still want to test out the “information fast” thing, but I don’t know if I’m hesitating because I’m simply procrastinating on it or because I don’t really have a “problem” of overabundance of information. There’s all these topics and issues about useful information vs distracting information. The entertaining vs the valuable. Anyway, I’m cooking up a draft about this subject.

Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow has an article over at Locus Magazine that’s similar to the train of thought I’m having about this topic:

The single worst piece of writing advice I ever got was to stay away from the Internet because it would only waste my time and wouldn’t help my writing. This advice was wrong creatively, professionally, artistically, and personally, but I know where the writer who doled it out was coming from. Every now and again, when I see a new website, game, or service, I sense the tug of an attention black hole: a time-sink that is just waiting to fill my every discretionary moment with distraction. As a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches, I know just how short time can be and how dangerous distraction is.

Will Work for Praise: The Web’s Free Labor Economy

Great insights on “crowdsourcing” and how web companies make people work for free. From the Business Week article:

Beyond brand-hungry strivers, masses of free laborers continue to toil without ever seeing a payday, or even angling for one. Many find compensation in currencies that predate the market economy. These include winning praise from peers, earning an exalted place within a community, scoring thrills from winning, and finding satisfaction in helping others.

The Shape of Things to Come

Clay Shirky gives predictions on media. Here’s his take on the Newspapers’ future:

Jeff Jarvis said it beautifully: “If you can’t imagine anyone linking to what you’re about to write, don’t write it.” The things that the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast have are good storytelling and low costs. Newspapers are going to get more elitist and less elitist. The elitist argument is: “Be the Economist or New Yorker, a small, niche publication that says: ‘We’re only opening our mouths when what we say is demonstrably superior to anything else on the subject.’” The populist model is: “We’re going to take all the news pieces we get and have an enormous amount of commentary. It’s whatever readers want to talk about.” Finding the working business model between them in that expanded range is the new challenge.