Hypermedia

Advancements in technology have leveled the playing field. Creating, for the most part, egalitarian access to much of the collective knowledge of mankind. Digital technology has afforded a more dynamic version of Vannevar Bush's memex than perhaps he could have ever imagined. As parts of Vannevar Bush's prophetic hypermedia vision of the future become reality, how has it affected us?

Bush envisioned small devices that could carry a disproportionately massive amount of data accessible to anyone. A digital version of Bush's vision has been realized but not without a cost. We live in a society of increasing complexity. Understanding it has been aided by the access provided by digital technology, but at the cost of overwhelming options to do so. For example, it's not as simple as going online to get information. Information comes through a lot of different channels and their own unique filters. While the access available is immediate, the rate of gain of that information (Hick's Law) is reduced by the decision making required in the process (1). Or to say it more plainly, we're horribly distracted by all of our options.

Spawned from digital connectivity, social networking has

created a culture of over-sharing and a willing abandonment of privacy. While social networking has great merits, it's turned all of us into publishers at the peril of how our published content and even our associations can affect our careers, our relationships and even our safety.

But this isn't meant as a condemnation of Bush's advocacy of mass information. I'm of the opinion that these are the growing pains of the information age. In time we'll learn how to best leverage the new power we've acquired. To do so however we must always be thinking about how to simplify along the way. All along, keeping in mind the best experience for the end user. Going back to Donald Norman's analog versus digital argument, we need to reverse the trend of adapting to digital technology to digital technology adapting to us.

1. Hick's Law, From Wikipedia

Retrieved October 10, 2009, from Wikipedia website:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick's_law