Regarding cures for information poisoning and info-indigestion

[Brooks Cole]

Lately I've been feeling that one of the greatest challenges to our health as individuals and as a society is the onslaught of information overcoming our time and attention, to sort through it or hold it at bay. I think information poisoning is a legitimate health concern, sucking our personal and collective vitality and rerouting our attention away from essential wholeness.

I love information and media; I am a complete man-machine symbiote. But I can see in myself and my friends the degree to which the unfiltered or under-filtered flow of emails, SMS, tweets, blogs, videos, e-Books, event invitations, friend requests, free offers -- an unmitigated firehose of information onslaught -- is a health concern. If we fail to control our intake of information, It saps our energy and unbalances our well-being every bit as much as if we were eating things that do not support our vitality.

When we turn to email first thing in the morning, we are asking ourselves as Eben Pagan observes: "what urgent but unimportant priorities do other people have for my day that I might need to pay attention to before I address my own inner priorities?" I am so guilty of this.

So, a simple reframing of email time, controlling rather than being controlled by it, devoting specific focused time to it when it serves our personal goals, is one such cure for this kind of information poisoning.

Our startup company HoloGenesis is developing a "discovery engine" that seeks to support individuals in filtering and channeling only the most relevant information and media they want and need.

I would love to hear from other about the strategies they use to master the flow of information...

[mary rose]

Brooks, I saw this message a few minutes ago on my way to do something else, and i felt a need to respond because it is very much related to a sense of well-being today. The statistics are that of all the information available today, 75% has become available in the last 25 years and information is now doubling every 1.5 years. So, how does one keep up with it all and weed out what is really valid when so much propaganda is being disseminated by the monetized political system we are saddled with today. How does one acquire enough valid information upon which to base an intelligent decision.

This may not be the ultimate way, but it is one myself and a few others have found to be valid.About 12 years ago I began what I call a Co-Learner's List with all private members with myself as the facilitator coupled with someone who diligently scanned all of the top news lists on web and then combined them into a distribution list that he sends out during the day. Of the hundreds of articles Paul would send to me, I would scan them for top stories, comment on them, and then forward to the rest of the list members. who would, in turn, make comments and forward them to the rest of the group. List members were composed of "just people" along with high profile scientists, authors, web hosts, financial experts from London, clergy members, a sustainable living proponent from India, an inventor from Australia, -- a very interesting group. And we discussed all types of subjects from food to alien life and everything in between. And the knowledge we acquired over time has been incredible because we got input from some of the world's top research scientists and we got it first-hand. Five or six messages went out almost every day, seven days a week and around the clock because we were from different parts of the world. And, we gradually got to the point where what we discussed was relative to what was most important re: maintaining life on earth as we face the enormous "unprecedented in past recorded history" challenges the human family faces today. And, what came out of this for me and some of the others is that the solution to every challenge we face today lays in human consciousness and taking it to another level so that we think differently about things and thus become open to making lifestyle changes that would otherwise be inconceivable to us.

Then over the past couple years i got busy on Facebook and Plaxo and have between these two social networking sites, compiled a total of about 2200 friends with whom i have communicated with casually on each site, but making close friends with those whom i felt were extremely creative and with whom i wanted to work. Then just recently, i set up a LinkedIn social networking site, and began slowly inviting those whom i identified as being tops in their field and with whom i have established some sort of relationship whereby information is being exchanged, so i now have what i consider to be equal to the "little black book" of yesteryear.

I have also developed a website entitled FutureDawning which is a virtual Learning Center and Think Tank to which i will eventually invite 1 million of the most creative people i can find to help solve the "unprecedented in human recorded history" challenges the world faces today. And as a platform for this endeavor i am currently developing a program entitled "Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS. And this program will act as a sort of matrix within which we can look at and then critically discuss what it is we need to do in order to change our social systems so they work for us in "life-enhancing ways" in order to get us out of our current "death-defining" ways of living, e.g., war, excessive consumption, addictions, monetized political systems, poisoned food supplies, environmental destruction, etc. etc., etc.

What you are doing with HoloGenesis, Brooks will aid my current strategy immensely. I, now thank you and the world will thank you as your vision grows into its full potential. We are in a struggle today the likes of which we have never seen before. And, if we are going to come out of this intact as the human family we need to integrate and organize in a very cooperative way -- there is no room for competition on this new playing field. We are now in the "Age of Knowledge" and it better be shared knowledge that is valid or we are outta here as the human family.

In my humble opinion.

with love and appreciation to all. .

[Brooks Cole]

Mary, I am deeply touched and staggered by your response to my post. Clearly you were well ahead of your time acting as a curator of relevance and a filter of information for your friends and associates.

Some years back, IBM predicted that in 2010 information would double every 11 hours. Regardless of the precise number, it is clear that the sheer amount of information is on a geometric curve incompatible with the finite resources of our time and our minds. It is also clear, to me at least that the sheer volume of this information is not improving the general noise to signal ratio in the information we receive. Much of it is irrelevant at best, and toxic at worst.

Our approach with the HoloGenesis "Relevance Engine" or "Discovery Engine" is really one of "biomimicry" - to model in the mind's ability to filter information into a "magnetic field" of personal relevance using a combination of information science and social science. The mind, which receives nearly infinite sense data and filters most of it out, it also organizes information according to our thoughts, beliefs, social ties, and the recommendations of those we know and trust. This is our aim at HoloGenesis - to arrive at the perfect balance of what you need to know next based on who you are, who you know, what you're doing, what you believe, what you want to learn, etc. This is what makes Facebook and Twitter as interesting as Google.

I would be thrilled to tell you more about what we are doing in gaining your insight and advice and perhaps invite you to become a test of our software.

Love and light to you, Brooks
415-460-4837


mary rose said:

Brooks, I saw this message a few minutes ago on my way to do something else, and i felt a need to respond because it is very much related to a sense of well-being today. The statistics are that of all the information available today, 75% has become available in the last 25 years and information is now doubling every 1.5 years. So, how does one keep up with it all and weed out what is really valid when so much propaganda is being disseminated by the monetized political system we are saddled with today. How does one acquire enough valid information upon which to base an intelligent decision.
This may not be the ultimate way, but it is one myself and a few others have found to be valid.About 12 years ago I began what I call a Co-Learner's List with all private members with myself as the facilitator coupled with someone who diligently scanned all of the top news lists on web and then combined them into a distribution list that he sends out during the day. Of the hundreds of articles Paul would send to me, I would scan them for top stories, comment on them, and then forward to the rest of the list members. who would, in turn, make comments and forward them to the rest of the group. List members were composed of "just people" along with high profile scientists, authors, web hosts, financial experts from London, clergy members, a sustainable living proponent from India, an inventor from Australia, -- a very interesting group. And we discussed all types of subjects from food to alien life and everything in between. And the knowledge we acquired over time has been incredible because we got input from some of the world's top research scientists and we got it first-hand. Five or six messages went out almost every day, seven days a week and around the clock because we were from different parts of the world. And, we gradually got to the point where what we discussed was relative to what was most important re: maintaining life on earth as we face the enormous "unprecedented in past recorded history" challenges the human family faces today. And, what came out of this for me and some of the others is that the solution to every challenge we face today lays in human consciousness and taking it to another level so that we think differently about things and thus become open to making lifestyle changes that would otherwise be inconceivable to us.
Then over the past couple years i got busy on Facebook and Plaxo and have between these two social networking sites, compiled a total of about 2200 friends with whom i have communicated with casually on each site, but making close friends with those whom i felt were extremely creative and with whom i wanted to work. Then just recently, i set up a LinkedIn social networking site, and began slowly inviting those whom i identified as being tops in their field and with whom i have established some sort of relationship whereby information is being exchanged, so i now have what i consider to be equal to the "little black book" of yesteryear.

I have also developed a website entitled FutureDawning which is a virtual Learning Center and Think Tank to which i will eventually invite 1 million of the most creative people i can find to help solve the "unprecedented in human recorded history" challenges the world faces today. And as a platform for this endeavor i am currently developing a program entitled "Moving Into: TOTAL WELLNESS. And this program will act as a sort of matrix within which we can look at and then critically discuss what it is we need to do in order to change our social systems so they work for us in "life-enhancing ways" in order to get us out of our current "death-defining" ways of living, e.g., war, excessive consumption, addictions, monetized political systems, poisoned food supplies, environmental destruction, etc. etc., etc.

What you are doing with HoloGenesis, Brooks will aid my current strategy immensely. I, now thank you and the world will thank you as your vision grows into its full potential. We are in a struggle today the likes of which we have never seen before. And, if we are going to come out of this intact as the human family we need to integrate and organize in a very cooperative way -- there is no room for competition on this new playing field. We are now in the "Age of Knowledge" and it better be shared knowledge that is valid or we are outta here as the human family.

In my humble opinion.

with love and appreciation to all. .

[mary rose]

Brooks and All, My apologies for not responding to your post earlier, but i underwent eye surgery for cataract removal and a new lens implant on the 23rd of Sep. and have had some complications which have prevented me from using the computer very much. And, I am going in for further testing on Monday, so am going to be very brief here.

Would love to talk further with you in regard to what you are doing, and will give you a call as soon as i feel i can relax enough from this eye ordeal to be able to converse coherently.

The figure you provide of 11 hours does not surprise me at all. A video relative to this subject of information overload that i can no longer find (due to overload) revealed that by the time a product is designed and ready for distribution it may well be obsolete. And we are going to have to rethink our whole education system with one of many reasons being that manufacturers will have to provide job training as the product is being built as there is no room for any lag time.

Which brings up another question: statistics show that due to advances in technology in the year 1997, it only required 30% of the current available worldwide labor force to produce all of the goods and services for the 6+ billion of us on the planet. And, as we rapidly move into nanotechnology and bio-mimicry in order to reduce the draw down on scarce resources, the numbers of those involved as human labor will be reduced to 3 - 4% of the currently available labor force since all most all of the work will be accomplished by advanced technology. So the question arises as to how the rest of the humans on the planet will survive without "jobs" as we know them today.

Very much looking forward to more information on this. .