Abundance

It’s all very paradoxical: that the ability to constantly communicate has made us bad communicators, that instant access to all forms of entertainment would leave us with so few touchstones, that surveilling kids doesn’t necessarily make them safer, that the absence of limitations also often means the absence of creativity — and that the particular... See more

Segal’s Law

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“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.”

Ancient societies followed a single narrative. Modern societies are cacophonies of competing narratives. Without trust, more data doesn’t make us more informed but more confused.

Bottom line: When the amount of information available to be filtered is effectively unlimited, as is the case on the Net, then every improvement in the quality of filters will make information overload worse.

in a world of abundance, the real question is not what we can do but rather what we should. What if the aperture of what was available was then, and instead, narrowed down and limited? Imagine a service that offered only one item within your desired category.

Situational overload is not the problem. When we complain about information overload, what we’re usually complaining about is ambient overload. This is an altogether different beast. Ambient overload doesn’t involve needles in haystacks. It involves haystack-sized piles of needles. We experience ambient overload when we’re surrounded by so much... See more

What happens when something remarkable becomes abundant? When our favorite restaurant or coffee house becomes a chain, or a new social product becomes ubiquitous, we tend to crave something new...something more scarce. Why? It’s a natural desire to immerse ourselves in stories that move us and express identity through uniqueness. When something... See more