Skip to main content

Department of useless information

The way information is consumed has changed. When we were young, we sat in front of the TV and absorbed all it blared. Or read books.

Since I was more of the latter, I had a storehouse of information - which I labelled - Department of Useless Information. This information was not useless - it did enable me to win quizzes and suchlike till I met bigger hoarders of information who I could not defeat.

Today, the way information is consumed is over the internet and the Department of useless information gatherers have never had it so good. Except for the arrival of non-googleable quizzes.

That means that the internet is a great place to build curiosity - almost like the library of yore - provided of course one uses it for the right things.

So, the kid potters around on youtube - mostly on science sites like ASAP science and Ted-ed and suchlike.

Soon comes with a question after a round of retail therapy by the parent.
Are you happy with the purchase?
Well, ya, kind of.
Ok.
It wont last very long. Research that happiness of a purchase doesnt last for more than 12.5 seconds.

And another day

Did you know cats can increase the happiness of a person by about 30%?

Yet another day

How many books do you read in a year?
Maybe 25 to 30?
Oh so you are average.
What?
Yes, apparently people on an average read about 25-30 books a year.

What will this do to the future of content? Will movies become shorter - given that short form content is in vogue? Today the feature film running length is about 120 odd minutes give or take a few. Will it become shorter?


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...

Anti networking year

I dont usually go out of my way to network. But over the last few years, I ensured that I spend some time creating new connections. It is a small fragment of my time that goes into it, but what I realised was that some of those networking events were not really working out. I also took time to post about the things I do (mostly on Linkedin) and here (nobody reads this - this is more of a note to myself).  It seemed to be the same set of people saying the same set of things. So, this year I have decided to step back.  Unless it is a truly unique event, I wont be going to any event - and thats how the unconference happened.  Unless it is a really significant update, I wont be posting about it.  And spend time creating and doing the things I like to do. Perhaps read more. Or write more. It is April now and I have done well so far.  Managed to read a few books. Actively working on a few creations. And then some. Lets see.  So for all I know, I might write less ...