Information Overload is a Distraction

1999-06-09

A recent survey by Pitney Bowes found that the majority of workers are interrupted by communications technology every ten minutes. For “communications technology” read voice mail, email, telephones and mobiles, pagers and (probably) the beep from the calendar manager. This survey confirms the results of other surveys, such as the Avery survey which found that information overload through use of these new media was preventing the job from getting done.

We are, sadly, still at the stage of being driven by these technologies as opposed to driving them. It has been generally accepted that communications technologies hold the key to efficient, knowledge sharing organisations but our use of these technologies still borders on the primitive, as like Pavlov’s dogs we respond to the sound of a bell by switching off from what we were doing. There will be a huge market in the future for intelligent information-sharing and communications facilities, and the sooner it comes, the better.

(First published 9 June 1999)