Blogger and author J Wynia came up with a great analogy for how we are constantly bombarded with such a wealth of information that we often drown in it. He is writing a book entitled “Drinking From the Firehose” about how to deal with the daily deluge of email, mailing lists, SPAM and RSS feeds.
J also has a novel approach to resolving the dispute over whether a glass is half full or half empty. It takes an open mind to come up with this stuff.
Categories: Analogies
Watch this 30-second demo to see how I keep my my inbox clean and my messages filed.
Email programs have not changed much in the past decade, but the amount of email we get has grown by a tremendous amount, significantly impacting our email productivity. The average information worker gets far more mail than s/he can cope with, and an increasing number of people suffer from "email overload". In this blog, Itzy Sabo analyzes the causes of email overload, discusses strategies to cope with the constant bombardment, and provides practical tips for getting the most out of our email programs. More...
Email: isabo@claritude.com
4 responses so far ↓
Michael // March 6, 2006 at 12:18 pm |
I think the analogy of “drinking from a fire hose” goes back to David Shenk who used it in his book “Data Smog”. Although rather old still a nice read.
Cordelya // March 6, 2006 at 5:33 pm |
Quote: Information Overload
“Information overload is like drinking from a firehose” I got it from Email Overloaded. Further credits can be found by following the link….
Chris // March 8, 2006 at 8:06 pm |
drinking from a firehose has been an analogy for the tough courses at MIT since at least the seventies, perhaps much much earlier.
Andrew Lampert // May 23, 2007 at 8:02 am |
I know Mitch Kapor has also been attributed with the quote ““Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.”
Not sure whether that predates David Shenk’s use of a similar phrase in his book. Obviously, it doesn’t predate the alternate usage of the phrase at MIT suggested by Chris.