Original Concept

The idea was to design and create a system of tools to be used to better simplify, manage, and mitigate information overload.

Information Overload

We call our system A New Kind Of Book (ANKOB). The PREFACE tab above provides an overview of the possibilities that await.

ANKOB is an interactive and dynamic "book" that contains the tools of TEXT, GRAPHICS, AUDIO-VIDEO, LINKS, and MIND MAPPING. 

When coupled with the world of SOCIAL MEDIA, the mind boggles when considering the scope of what's possible.

An ANKOB is a "starting line" where YOU get to finish creating the "book". 

It becomes a new book. YOUR <new> book contains even more information with the addition of your notes, your thoughts, and your ideas. All reflecting your needs and desires relative to the subject at hand.

How Information Overload Can Break Your Tools

Broken tools can often transform you into a steaming pile of foolishness that desperately needs fixing.

When your senses are so overloaded you can't see or smell a fox in the middle of your hen house … you need deliverance! 

You need fixin'. [It happens to the best of us.]
 

So, there you are trying to mind your own business when people get the irretrievable urge to redirect your attention to something they think is more important.  

And, it usually is ...  to them.

 

Pretty soon you're fooled into wasting vast amounts of time earnestly sifting through​ Himalayan-sized piles of information effluvia. 

All sorts of stuff dedicated to get you thinking your efforts might actually be important to you. 

Well, are they?
 

Yes, we agree most of us too often believe a golden nugget of important information is right over there. Do you see it?

The intense hounds above sense it. They have no doubt. [Mr. Wiley Fox from the land of Redirection Redoubt well understands the art of camouflage.]
 

WILEY FOX

Think it would be smart and have good tools that help separate the sense
from nonsense? The wheat from the chaff? The nuts from the bolts?

Tools making it easier for gathering information,  categorizing, and managing your world? Above all, making learning more efficient and easier.

(Why, why you might even be more productive in today's economy.)

That's where A New Kind Of Book (ANKOB) comes to the rescue. It's a concept supported by all things related to overcoming Information Overload.

Come walk with us for a moment or two.

See what a genuinely intelligent guru has to say about the New Rules For The New Economy in the context of information overload.

Comes now KEVIN KELLY.

Kelly recently posted the following piece on his web site. It speaks to the fact that information overload will continue to generate ensuing drama as far as one can see into the future.

​EVERYONE will be faced with an ever-increasing number of value-judgments,
choices, and decisions to make regarding the handling of information.

An excerpt: 

As more of the economy migrates to intangibles ... more of the economy will require standards. But consumers will groan under the load of decisions . 

There is a yin-yang trade-off in the new economy. 

• The yin, or positive side, is that consumers keep most of the gains in productivity that are
earned by technology.

Competition is so severe, and transactions so "friction-free," that most of each cycle's
betterment goes not to corporate profits but to consumers in the form of cheaper prices and
higher quality.

• The yang, or downside, is that consumers have a never-ending onslaught of decisions to
make about what to buy, what standard to join, when to upgrade or switch, and whether
backward compatibility is more important than superior performance. The fatigue of sorting out options and allegiances, or recovering from them, is under-appreciated at the moment, but will mount.
 

The joy of the new economy is that the next version is almost free; the bane is that no one wants the hassle of upgrading to it, even if you pay them to do it. The fatigue will only worsen . The net is a possibility factory, churning out novel opportunities by the screen-full. 

Unharnessed, this explosion can drown the unprepared.
 

Standardizing choices helps tame the debilitating abundance of competing possibilities. This is why the most popular sites on the web today are meta-sites that sort the abundance and point you to the best. 

Since the network economy is so new, we as a society have paid little attention to how standards are created and how they grow. But we should notice, because once implemented, a successful standard tends to remain forever. And standards themselves shape behavior. 

​Another excerpt:

In the network economy, the more plentiful , the more plentiful things become ... the more valuable they become. This notion directly contradicts two of the most fundamental axioms we inherited from the industrial age.
 

First hoary axiom:  Value comes from scarcity. Take the icons of wealth in the industrial age--diamonds, gold, oil, and college degrees. These were deemed precious because they were scarce.
 

Second hoary axiom: When things are made plentiful, they become devalued.
For instance, carpets. They were once rare handmade items found only in houses of the rich.
They ceased to be status symbols when they could be woven by the thousands on machines.
The traditional law was fulfilled: commonness reduces value.
 

The logic of the network flips this industrial lesson upside down. In a network economy, value is derived from plenitude, just as a fax machine's value increases as fax machines become ubiquitous.
 

Power comes from abundance.  Copies are cheap. Let them proliferate. Ever since Gutenberg made the first commodity – cheaply duplicated words – we have realized that intangible things can easily be copied. This lowers the value per copy.
 

What becomes valuable is the relationships--sparked by the copies--that tangle up in the network itself. The relationships rocket upward in value as the parts increase in number even slightly. Windows NT, fax machines, TCP/IP, GIF images, RealAudio – all born deep in the network economy – adhere to this logic. But so do metric wrenches, triple-A batteries, and other devices that rely on universal standards.
 

The more common they are, the more it pays you to stick to that standard.
 

We have an even older example in the English language. Wherever the expense of churning out
another copy becomes trivial (and this is happening in more than software), the value of standards and the network booms. In the future, cotton shirts, bottles of vitamins, chain saws, and the rest of the industrial objects in the world will also obey the law of plenitude as the cost of producing an additional copy of them falls steeply.

ABOUT ONE PARTICULAR TOOL

One supporting tool we suggest using are VISUAL (MIND) MAPS. These Maps can act as a "control room" or "dashboard" to oversee the management of your Information Overload. (We'll be posting much more about mind maps in the future.)

​ 

They help organize your thinking at critical moments and enable you to view the world through a far more productive and intelligent prism. 

Basically, Mind Maps open the door to let your mind actually work the way nature intended. Randomly, RADIALLY; not linearly.

“O.K., how will VISUAL MAPS actually help me manage dreaded Information Overload?”
 

MIND MAPS …. 

Helps organize your thinking at a critical moment.

 

Enables you to view the world through a far more productive and intelligent prism.

 

Opens the door to let your mind actually work the way nature intended. 

Randomly, RADIALLY; not linearly.

Presents an opportunity to enhance your memory

retention by an order of magnitude.

Frugal.

Saves you an enormous amount of time. 

You don't have to wade through tons of supporting information; you can quickly glean the wheat from the chaff. 
(And, mix metaphors like there's no tomorrow.)

Visual maps in conjunction with ANKOB's can enhance your management of Information Overload by perhaps an order of magnitude. 


Acquiring new knowledge via A New Kind Of Book, mind mapping, and the serendipity of Social Media may well lead you down a path that ...

• Helps generate an optimistic view of the world in spite of what's going on all about you.
   
• Supports clear thinking after others slather your consciousness with nonsense uber alles.
   
• Enhances your ability to cope with relentless CHANGE.
  
  Many people insist on dramatically exercising their resistance to change by walking bent-over and backward into the future.
  
  The poor souls have no idea of what pervert might be in the neighborhood ready to rent them asunder.
  
  
  

  

  Pitiful sight, that.

This can be where your new way of learning and managing information overload starts. 

This can be when it begins. Why not NOW?

We'll delight in showing you how.

A New Kind Of Book (ANKOB) --- Perhaps the start of a New Industry when you begin creating your own New Kind Of Book(s).