Concepts are fundamental in the hyperinformation society and to deal with them critically is crucial to personal and professional growth, but being overwhelmed is an infallible recipe for failure and frustration.
The purpose of this rant is to reassure the reader that it’s not our fault! - we are just experiencing the symptoms of hyperinformation, and we can achieve at least an ‘honorable draw’ and some peace of mind if we learn more about the nature of the threat.
2. “The Rosseaus, Marxes,
Tolstois — men of
thought, mind you,
‘impractical’ men,
‘idealist’ have done
more to decide the food
you eat and the things
you think + do than all
the millions of
Roosevelts and
Rockerfellars.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/24/f-
scott-fitzgerald-responds-to-hate-mail/
10. … while in daily businesses, cloud
computing, branding, outsourcing,
trendwatching, social networks,
biotechnology, micro-payments,
long tail, remote work...
11. … are causing drastic economic
shifts and disruptions in business
models (disruption is in itself a
new and scary concept).
12. Due to its abstract rational nature,
it is often difficult to understand
the complex structures and scopes
of conceptual construction.
27. … but the competition between
them for people’s attention and
adoption can have devastating
side effects on our lives:
28. … We get confused and anxious, intolerant,
paranoid, bigoted and even violent, among
other psychological damages due to
excessive and indiscriminate consumption
of these cocktails of ideas...
29. … that sometimes are selfish, manipulative,
contradictory - intrinsically or among themselves
- and eventually malicious and untrue.
31. The emergence of the Internet is at
the heart of the matter: its speed
and multifaceted ‘many-to-many’
architecture enables a frantic and
chaotic conceptual diffusion.
32. Despite the apparent formal order
within its tags, indexes and lists, web
design serves better the www than
ordinary people's mental balance.
33. Servers, cloud engines and infrastructure make
the web a bloody global UFC arena where only
the strongest or most clever concepts triumph.
34. For content producers the web is like a
gigantic ideological supermarket since a
huge amount of information is needed to
fill the channels that multiply non-stop.
35. But for the consumer, alas, the
internet looks more like an all-
you-can-eat restaurant,