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Too Much Stuff
Aug. 21st, 2006 10:44 amWhenever we conduct surveys of our customers, one of the predominant responses is that people feel as if they are suffering from information overload. Of course, this doesn't stop us bombarding them with more offers of information. Because, well, everyone thinks that their information is more valuable, that you can read that, and not read all that other stuff which is superfluous.
I'm suffering it from myself. We have become a very efficient society when it comes to making stuff -- I am probably twice or three times as productive as I could have been just a decade ago. And there is much more out there to read.
I reckon that The Guardian on Saturday had at least 30 "columns", many more book reviews, club reviews, music reviews, letters, leaders, "specials", plus bits on travel, work, money, and so on. Add in the Financial Times and the Sunday Times and, well, just reading those could take up most of your spare time.
Then there is TV. Even without satellite, I have a backlog of movies that I have put onto DVD. Plus the collections that I have bought but I haven't got round to watching. Then there is music. Maybe they aren't producing more CDs than they used to, but it feels like they are. Throw in blogs, YouTube and, of course, BOOKS (remember books?) and it's quite clear that the amount being produced is such that I wouldn't be surprised if we were approaching the ratio of readers to writers in certain specialist intellectual fields of less than 1:1.
And the solution of the producers? Well, one would have thought that a logical conclusion would be to produce less, but free economics doesn't work like that. If the people don't appear to want more, then it is the job of the producers to persuade people that they need it, not to say "well, let's just give up and have an easy time of it on the beach". In terms of supply and demand, overall production and consumption ratios don't follow the standard rules of capitalism. Production inevitably goes up, and the demand must be forced up to match the increase. If demand still isn't enough to make the business sufficiently profitable, then costs must be cut. Anything, in fact, than reducing the stuff produced to match demand. Fewer people are watching TV these days (certainly fewer people are watching the major channels) but the response is not to make less TV -- it's to make cheaper TV.
All of it is exhausting me. Because there are only 24 hours in the day, and I want to read all those books, and watch all those movies, and hear all those CDs. In the past, the problem was having the money to buy these things. Now the problem is finding the time to consume them, having bought them.
DVD producers have solved this by selling things which people don't watch. Full seasons of CSI? I mean, are there people who only watch ONE THING?
The depressing thing is, if something is good, I like to watch it again, or listen to it again. But that doesn't mean that I block myself off from the new. I want to consume that as well.
In the poker canon, we have gone from a desert to a plethora of riches in just a few years. That doesn't stop a lot of what is being produced from being crap, but, unless you are willing to devote your life to the game in some kind of Trappist way, no-one can possibly read anything any more.
So, I no longer bother with Gutshot or The Hendon Mob, or, well, no more often than once a week. The number of blogs I visit daily is shrinking at a hell of a rate, and a few have been cut from the RSS feed-through. The "weekly newsletters" I receive from the BBC -- little more than thinkly veiled "please listen to my show" missives -- have been cut. And so on. Stuff has to be cut away.
Now, I'm in a paradox here, because this informationy-stuff is the kind of thing that I produce. If other people feel like me (and why shouldn't they?) then my subscription levels should drop in coming years. The only way I can fight this is to produce better and better copy -- which, over the past few years, I have succeeded in doing. But it's a struggle.
I'm suffering it from myself. We have become a very efficient society when it comes to making stuff -- I am probably twice or three times as productive as I could have been just a decade ago. And there is much more out there to read.
I reckon that The Guardian on Saturday had at least 30 "columns", many more book reviews, club reviews, music reviews, letters, leaders, "specials", plus bits on travel, work, money, and so on. Add in the Financial Times and the Sunday Times and, well, just reading those could take up most of your spare time.
Then there is TV. Even without satellite, I have a backlog of movies that I have put onto DVD. Plus the collections that I have bought but I haven't got round to watching. Then there is music. Maybe they aren't producing more CDs than they used to, but it feels like they are. Throw in blogs, YouTube and, of course, BOOKS (remember books?) and it's quite clear that the amount being produced is such that I wouldn't be surprised if we were approaching the ratio of readers to writers in certain specialist intellectual fields of less than 1:1.
And the solution of the producers? Well, one would have thought that a logical conclusion would be to produce less, but free economics doesn't work like that. If the people don't appear to want more, then it is the job of the producers to persuade people that they need it, not to say "well, let's just give up and have an easy time of it on the beach". In terms of supply and demand, overall production and consumption ratios don't follow the standard rules of capitalism. Production inevitably goes up, and the demand must be forced up to match the increase. If demand still isn't enough to make the business sufficiently profitable, then costs must be cut. Anything, in fact, than reducing the stuff produced to match demand. Fewer people are watching TV these days (certainly fewer people are watching the major channels) but the response is not to make less TV -- it's to make cheaper TV.
All of it is exhausting me. Because there are only 24 hours in the day, and I want to read all those books, and watch all those movies, and hear all those CDs. In the past, the problem was having the money to buy these things. Now the problem is finding the time to consume them, having bought them.
DVD producers have solved this by selling things which people don't watch. Full seasons of CSI? I mean, are there people who only watch ONE THING?
The depressing thing is, if something is good, I like to watch it again, or listen to it again. But that doesn't mean that I block myself off from the new. I want to consume that as well.
In the poker canon, we have gone from a desert to a plethora of riches in just a few years. That doesn't stop a lot of what is being produced from being crap, but, unless you are willing to devote your life to the game in some kind of Trappist way, no-one can possibly read anything any more.
So, I no longer bother with Gutshot or The Hendon Mob, or, well, no more often than once a week. The number of blogs I visit daily is shrinking at a hell of a rate, and a few have been cut from the RSS feed-through. The "weekly newsletters" I receive from the BBC -- little more than thinkly veiled "please listen to my show" missives -- have been cut. And so on. Stuff has to be cut away.
Now, I'm in a paradox here, because this informationy-stuff is the kind of thing that I produce. If other people feel like me (and why shouldn't they?) then my subscription levels should drop in coming years. The only way I can fight this is to produce better and better copy -- which, over the past few years, I have succeeded in doing. But it's a struggle.
