Posted by Reilly Atkinson on November 07, 1999 at 21:29:09:

In Reply to: Re: Information Overload posted by Denham on November 07, 1999 at 09:59:17:

Denham -- While I may be pushing a string in a slightly different direction than yours, I can assert with minimal equivocation that information overload for humans is an established empirical fact. This research has lead to the Rule of Seven - your short term memory cannot easily handle more than seven words or numbers or ideas or .. for quick memorization or analysis. The work of experimental psychologists and cognitive scientists has been very effectively used by the well known Prof. E. Tufte (Princeton) in his books and seminars on effective graphical presentation -- surely a form of knowledge management, building more effective languages.

During the 1960s the Air Force and the commercial airlines did a large number of pilot information and oveload studies. Some of these were done at Tufts in the Human Factors Engineering Dept., and I was fortunate enough to be a kibitzer. A lot of this work came out in Gov. reports, quite a bit came out in papers in various IEEE journals. The point of the studies was to determine how much and what data/information could a pilot actually use. At what point did the level of input become a danger? How did the pilot, or pilot copilot team make decisions? Researchers put decision making under a microscope to see how "it" worked in great detail. This research played a non trivial role in the development of the automated air-to-air collision warning system TCAS -- what mode of presentation, how much and what info, how much automation to use and so forth.As far as I know, this type of research still goes on.

I bring this up as it strikes me as an example of empirically driven "knowledge managment" for life and death situations -- for commercial and military aircraft. Perhaps this empirical approach might yield some positive benefits.

What do you do when all your filtering still leaves you with thousands of pages to digest, evaluate and to make sense of?

Regards
Reilly

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Information Overload Denham 22:37:07 11/07/99 (3)
  • Re: Information Overload Reilly Atkinson 13:31:46 11/08/99 (2)
    • Re: Information Overload Mezei 18:46:00 11/08/99 (1)
      • Re: Information Overload Reilly Atkinson 12:18:52 11/09/99 (0)

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