Week 2

COM 300 Week 2 Reflection

Article #1: "We Have the Information You Want, But Getting It Will Cost You: Being Held Hostage by Information Overload" by Mark Nelson It's interesting to me that even though technology has advanced this far, we still don't have the tools to support resource identification effectively. It's because the quantity of available information has increased SO rapidly that we haven't been able to keep up. I wonder if we ever will... When looking for information, if you don't use the right tools, you never see applicable information. When doing homework I used to use Google to search but came up with SO much information that it was overwhelming instead of helpful. I become more search savvy as my education at UW has increased. Using the libraries online tools has really made my life easier. Even learning simple search symbols like "" or using "and/or" has been helpful.

This article has really shocking statistics like every day 20,000,000 works of technical information is being recorded (probably way more today). It goes on to point out that VOLUME is the "big" (ha-pun) problem with information overload. Of course we can't forget about accuracy, literacy, usability, and trends. I was already pretty familiar with the above areas especially for trends as I mentioned the symbols used in searches earlier. This paper is pretty outdated with its earlist source being in the early 1990's.

Dicussion Questions:
-How can you avoid information overload especially when using the internet?
-Will be we ever have effective tools to support resource identification?

Article #2: "Information Overload, Retrieval Strategies and Internet User Empowerment" by Christopher Carlson This article focuses on the need to improve individual information retrieval skills... According to Carlson, instead of trying to improve search engine's technical capabilities, the user should empower themselves. I agree and disagree with this idea. I agree that everyone should try and increase their literacy and reduce their anxiety but I do not think that we should stop trying to improve search engine's technical capablities.

Understanding how search engines work in general and where their databases come from is first. Then, knowing how PARTICULAR search engines work will optimize retrieval results since differenent search engines employ different tools. For example, Yahoo's search engine varies in comparison to MSN's search engine. Carlson's statistics are more recent than Nelson's and my favorite was that over 150 hours per year is wasted on looking for lost information. I know I would rather spend that time doing other things: shopping, dancing, playing WOW... Hehe. :)

Discussion Questions:
-The obvious-What is information overload?
-Where should the line be drawn for excessive technology based solutions?
(moved on 11 april)