Tag Archives: lists

Information Funneling: Identifying Important Data Feeds

library-cartoon

The challenge of an information seeking mechanism is to learn efficiently a large repertoire of diverse skills given its limited resources, and avoid being trapped in unlearnable situations.  – Gottlieb et al, 2013

A quick digression from explaining systems in terms of physical / social / psychological structures. Here, we build off Part 1 of What Does the World Look Like to expand upon how I identify data streams that I’ve deemed useful which I leverage to construct my digital environment. We use the centralized, decentralized, and distributed networks framework from an earlier post to better visualize these structures.

The purpose of this exercise is to minimize overlap between data feeds. For example, in keeping to date with news sources, it is not optimal to read both The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. While there is value in digesting multiple perspectives, the gain is but marginal; it would be a better use of time to allocate my time with digesting feeds from a different network structure (ie, a node within a distributed network, such as a blog), than simply digesting more information from another authority.

Legend:
Non-Italicized = Sites I Use
Italicized = I’m cognizant of the existence but do not actively access

I still log what does exist (in italicized text) to take a tally of the sources that do exist in order to be aware of what data is available for a specified function (that I’ve chose not to mark as my personal preference).

The following is what I’ve dubbed as my “system” – the information feeds I allow myself in the world of distributed networking.

Primary Tools and General Reference

How I View My Digital World

Diagram: My Digital Existence in the Context of Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed Networks

networks

Primary Data Feeds

Centralized Networks

Decentralized Networks

Distributed Networks

Active
Blogs updated frequently

Referential
Relatively inactive blogs that do contain useful information to reference

Aggregation / Community

Investor Reports

Tertiary Data Feeds
Not actively referenced…a means by which to optimize productivity (ie, not scroll through Facebook)

Entertainment & Culture

Food Delivery / Other
Includes sites I use (or mean to use); select services I have chose not to use explicitly omitted (eg, Amazon Fresh, Google Express) 

  • Caviar
  • DoorDash (btw, 1.99 delivery til sept 26!)
  • Eat24 (Yelp)
  • Grubhub
  • Instacart
  • Munchery
  • Postmates
  • Seamless
  • Sprig
  • Uber Eats (have not yet tried)

[1] Screen to screen latency – a concept that I’ve dubbed which describes the potential lag in digesting information by virtue of switching from one medium of consumption to another (such as disengaging from a desktop computer, then walking over to a couch, then re-accessing the website on a tablet).

Significance: the higher the latency associated with receiving information, the greater the possibility that the information is never consumed (ie, an agent is too lazy to google search a website on his tablet, gets distracted, and never reads the article he / she accesses via desktop computer in the first place)

Useful tools which address this problem

  • Google Chrome: enables the access of open tabs across any device (as long as the user is logged in to Google Chrome on each device)
    • Primary drawback: Corporate PC does not allow me to log in to Google Chrome; perhaps this is a limited prohibition in the context of my life (and Chrome has already solved the problem) – but is still an issue now, nonetheless
  • Pinboard: lite means by which to record notes and bookmarks
  • WordPress: highly customized pages through which I can organize (curate) my own bookmarks (like I currently do on my blog)

[2] The link above points to reddit.com/subreddits/mine, which enables me to easily link to subreddits I follow. The complete list of subreddits I subscribe to is listed below (I later plan to sort the followings links in order of greatest to least by # of subscribers):

Other notes to self:
http://www.thisisyearone.com/steve-jobs-on-focus/