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Discomgoogolated?
Not so long ago, before most of us had ubiquitous access to communications services, one might be driving to work in the morning to radio announcements such as ‘and can a Mr Jones from Norwich please call home, you’ve left your briefcase again…’
While helping avoid the public embarrassment this used to cause for those of us with slightly absent minded tendencies, now, apparently, many of us get stressed if our Internet access is taken away. Not only that, Google has become so synonymous in our culture with the Internet that it even features in the new term given to this stress – ‘discomgoogolated’.
To Dr David Lewis, the psychologist who worked on the study and discovered the disorder by measuring heart rates and brainwave activity, a big culprit is the proliferation of broadband - 'a galaxy of information is just a mouse click away and we have become addicted to the web… when unable to get online, discomgoogolation takes over.'
As timing would have it, there are some ‘tough choices’ facing the UK for the next generation of broadband proliferation. Figures ranging from £5bn to £28bn are being mooted to further cable up those of us who live and work in the UK, and one wonders if the possible consequences of mass-discomgoogolation in the future are being factored into the options!
All a little grist to the socio-technical perspective mill of course, and perhaps some timely food for thought for socio-economic Internet planning beyond the obvious infrastructural questions...
Posted by Carl Bate on September 8, 2008 | 
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Comments
# on September 9, 2008 7:42 AM, Balaji Sreecharan said:
With proliferation of information at a rapid rate there has been an increase in the number of web based applications that promise to help us get more organized with our information.
But how many of these new tools / applications promise to reduce the time spent by each of us in looking for what we need? billions of pieces of content getting connected...leading to varied search results / information choices...too much of choice in information, I think is leading to more confusion today than yesterday.
# on September 9, 2008 11:22 AM, Carl Bate said:
Hi Balaji - a very interesting point and I think at the heart of this are some pretty deep perspectives about the nature of information itself, as well as the people-centric nature of the Web.
While perhaps we should leave some of the deeper explorations to Cafe Philo, there'll be a couple of related posts up shortly to share a little established and emerging practical thinking on these topics - hope these might interest.
# on September 9, 2008 3:07 PM, Chris Yapp said:
Carl,
HP Research have given some insight into the reaction to discomgoogolation. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7562475.stm
It takes a village?
# on September 9, 2008 3:28 PM, Carl Bate said:
Chris, fascinating.
To my mind, these 2 pieces of research point to a usage trend toward the _combination_ of 'mile wide inch deep' information from a universe of unknown sources, and 'inch wide mile deep' interaction with our own trusted, intimate villages.
I feel a possible boston matrix coming on to aid strategic planning of evolution of information services.
Take the original matrix and replace 'market share' on the horizontal axis with 'village access', and 'market growth' on the vertical with 'outsider access'. Voila, possible insight to information cash cows, stars, problem children and dogs. What d'ya think?
# on September 12, 2008 6:04 PM, Mark Kerr said:
Another analogy could be the marketplace. It seems to me that the real value of the Internet is not in providing us with more information ' supply'load but in massively iincreasing the 'liquidity' of the information market. As humans we only have the same bandwidth to absorb information, make decisions, make friends, etc as in the stone age (ie before 1992). (i.e. 'Demand' is finite). But we have many more choices, and can change our information sources much more quickly. Hence the phenomenon noted in the research of the rapid rise and fall in popularity of websites. With such a liquid marketplace, information 'stocks' are very volatile.
# on September 15, 2008 10:05 AM, Carl Bate said:
Mark, interesting - and doubly so perhaps when seen in the light of the analysis of market systems in the current climate.
Thanks all for the dialogue about this and I hope to post some reflections soon.