Let's tame information overload, not add to it

The Internet is buzzing this morning with news Facebook may be planning to open certain sections of user homepages. If true, it will allow developers to create third-party applications that offer new ways to take in the news and status updates our friends churn out. More ways to digest more information? Stop the ride, I want to get off.

Facebook's intentions were quietly revealed earlier this month when users were asked to vote on whether they would accept changes to the existing privacy and data control policies. Users will need to make adjustments to their privacy settings in order to grant new apps access to content, but 70% say they're fine with that.

"Should players such as Seesmic Desktop and FriendFeed roll out an integrated service, we will be a major step closer to a single stream of realtime events," says TechCrunchIT's Steve Gillmor. "This in turn will rapidly accelerate a convergence around micromessaging similar to the one around email when it achieved a critical mass following AOL’s opening up of the limited educational and government mail systems to average users."

He's probably right, but the possibility makes me want to curl up in a fetal position in the corner. We're still trying to find ways to cope with the daily deluge of email, now we have to add micromessaging to the mix? While the integration of social media tools in daily life has practical applicability, we are headed down a slippery slope where instant and constant access to information has the potential to overtake our lives.

The Boston Globe reports a trending backlash against the "always on" expectation in today's world. Some people are discovering that after the initial novelty of social networking wears off, it's not worth the psychological toll of being perpetually plugged in.

As NetworkWorld's Craig Mathias succinctly puts it, "...there's simply too much really raw data being made available at a frightening pace. Not only does this lead to information overload and an incentive to drop out so as to focus on activities of greater perceived value, but also much of the data presented is of apocryphal and perhaps even destructive origin."

The power of interpersonal connectivity and real-time news access that services like Twitter and Facebook give us comes at a cost that can't be overstated. Blackberrys and iPhones make it possible to take the Internet with us everywhere we go, and that means we can constantly check email, news, and what our friends are up to wherever we are. That's not necessarily a good thing.

Do we, as a society, really want or need perpetual access to information? I'm old enough to remember the days before cell phones, pagers, and 1,000 cable television channels, and you know what? We survived. It seems to me that mankind can also survive without 24/7 access to the minutiae of everyone's lives. Data points about what others are up do is suddenly being treated as information critical to our daily lives. If we spend all our time reading our friends' status updates while we're apart, what will we talk about when we finally get together over dinner?

Here's an example of what I mean: I ran into a neighbor over the weekend and, because we're connected on Facebook, I already knew what she'd been doing all week and she knew I'd just gotten back in town after a short trip. It took a few minutes of fumbling before we could find something to talk about. This morning, a friend remarked that, if it wasn't for social media tools, he wouldn't have realized his brother is on vacation is this week. Is this really how we want to interact with each other?

Mathias is also correct when he suggests that we probably don't want to rely on social networks to get our news. I am a huge proponent of crowdsourced reporting, but there's a certain legitimacy to having our news vetted for factuality. We all know by now how fast word travels on Twitter and, though it can be riveting, it's also responsible for the spread of false or inaccurate information.

Don't get me wrong, I am infatuated with social networking and its potential. I'm also guilty of spending more time
interacting with people online than I ought (though I can at least tell myself it's all in the name of research for work). I'm even guilty of checking Twitter on my Blackberry during my fourth viewing of "High School Musical" with my kids. I'd love to blame developers and engineers for making it so darn easy but, in reality, it's users -- including me -- that need to learn to apply the brakes.

It seems to me that it's time to prioritize just how much news and information we actually need, rather than find ways to manage the heaps of data piled upon us. Maybe it's also time to stop creating applications just "because we can" and find more ways to the put incredible brainpower of developers to work dreaming up new ways to maximize the power of social media beyond Mafia Wars.

At the risk of sounding like Suzy Sunshine, I'd love to see more third-party social networking apps that make the world a better place, and fewer that simply add to the increasing noise in our lives. We complain that we're overworked and overloaded in one breath, and look for more people to add to our social media dance card in the next. I don't need or want a way to manage more information than I ought to be assimilating in the first place. Do you?