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"Drowning in data, yet starved of information" - Ruth Stanat in "The Intelligent Organisation"
The amount of information is exploding! More information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000. One copy of the New York Times has more information in it than the average 17th century person would have come across in an entire lifetime. About 1,000 books are published internationally every day and the total of all printed knowledge doubles every five years.
The increase in data has translated into a barrage of information in our own lives. The average office worker is hit with more than 160 messages a day via e-mail, fax, voice mail and conventional mail, so it's no wonder that workers feel overwhelmed about managing day-to-day communications, according to a new report, "Managing Communications in the 21st Century Workplace." The average U.K. worker receives 48 telephone calls, 23 e-mails, 11 voice mails, 20 letters, 15 internal memos, 11 faxes, 13 sticky notes and eight mobile phone calls per day, according to the study, which reported similar statistics in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., around 42% of executives said they felt "submerged by the number of messages received each day," according to the study.
We can all relate. (Especially if you were a victim of the recent spam e-mail (Re: A Message From The Dean and Re: Turnout 98) Nowadays, it seems as if we spend most of our time answering information requests, leaving little time to do much else.
The proliferation of the Web and electronic messaging will continue to make things worse, as it becomes easier and easier to get your hands on more and more information. More than 75% of all communications are conducted electronically, which is creating a number of problems in the workplace, according to Andersen Consulting and Investors in People. Where you might see chaos, others see opportunity, as technology companies move to simplify the information in our lives.
Lots of companies are racing to integrate voice mail, e-mail, and faxes into a single mailbox. For example, Octel has Unified Messenger, for about $200 per seat, that provides a single window into your e-mail and voice messages. Fortune describes the scenario: "Arrive at the office in the morning, and you can call up a list of messages on your PC screen. Little envelope icons represent e-mail, and tiny telephone icons voice mail. Click on a telephone, and the message plays back through the speakers on your PC or on your phone. With a laptop computer, you simply dial into the office network and download all your messages to the hard drive."
The most interesting feature of Unified Messenger: You can call your messaging system and a computer-generated voice will read back your e-mail messages to you. You can read just the subject lines or have the system speed-read the whole message. You can then forward your e-mails and voice mail, with your own comments, to other people on the system. Octel says it will soon link faxes into the product.
Managing information has spawned an entire industry of "knowledge management" and related products. Companies that can effectively manage the knowledge in their organizations may have a competitive advantage. In particular, global networks and groupware make it possible for more widespread sharing and collaborative use of information. Advances in CD-ROM, text retrieval and data-base management have all created new information management opportunities. The convergence of telecommunications, office systems, publishing, and documentation can be exploited through networking and Intranets.
The same advances in technology that can aid the knowledge management process for companies can help individuals. How will you manage the onslaught of information in your life? Advice such as, "Only read as much as you want" and "Only believe as much as is useful to you to" only go so far. Using advanced technology tools, those who can find the important information in their seas of data will be most efficient and may have an edge.
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