Information Overload: Is There Anything We Don’t Know Any More?

Information Overload: Is There Anything We Don’t Know Any More?

September 2014 by Charlotte Metcalf

With the constant data stream, we no longer need to say we don't know something; there's even an expectation that we should know about everything anyone talks about. By Charlotte Metcalf

 

Device squad: is our information addiction changing our behavior?

In the eighties, when I was in my twenties, I worked as a freelance researcher, in television and on a movie about the Spanish Civil War. Every job invariably kicked off with a visit to the library.

I must have read more than 20 books about the Spanish Civil War and my job was to devour them and feed juicy historical chunks to the scriptwriter and director to add authentic color to the movie.

Back then, if you didn’t know something and calling a friend (or more often, my father) didn’t yield the required information, a quick call to The Daily Telegraph Information Service invariably did.

If the speed dial had been invented, their number would definitely have been on mine. I called at least five or six times a week and usually a well-spoken graduate was able to oblige within minutes.

Those of us who remember how long it took to research anything at all may believe that there is a benefit in gathering information slowly but very, very surely

You could ask them anything, from where to buy Dr.Brown soda to when Frank Lloyd Wright built his first house.

It was a time-consuming and expensive way of gathering information and meant having to employ people like me to do it.

Need-to-(appear to)-know

Indeed we’re all scurrying about seeking quick cheat sheets, like exam students relying on CliffsNotes, to pull through and never reading the book itself. And organizations are springing up to cater to our desperate need to appear in the know.

We are spattered daily with information that is too flimsy to sink into our memories and enhance our minds in any meaningful way.

Two years ago, I interviewed leading neuroscientist, Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE. She specializes in the physiology of the brain and is convinced that what she terms this ‘tsunami’ of information is harming our thought processes irreparably.

Baroness Greenfield, like me, grew up in an era when the television was the fulcrum of the home. “It was the equivalent to the piano in Victorian times, a source of shared family entertainment,” she says.

“At the same time, bedrooms tended to be unheated places where you slept and to which you were sent as a child as punishment. Now the home’s geography has entirely changed so children aren’t exiled to their bedrooms but retreat there from choice – and there’s usually some sort of screen in them.”

 

A library in your lap: the way we find information has changed dramatically

We can remember watching A Christmas Story at during the holidays and Johnny Carson with our parents. Now Netflix and Hulu offer such limitless choice that there’s no point gathering to watch anything. It’s all about ‘catch up’ – and what better way to describe our information-peppered lives?

We are all, like Alice, running in place just to keep up.

Susan Greenfield’s book, Mind Change, published last year, describes how the human brain has the superlative ability to adapt to its environment, a process known as ‘plasticity.’

Since the brain is proven to adapt to repeated patterns, she worries that hours spent absorbing and putting out information through screens is bound to have an adverse impact on our brains and memory.

Some people, like The Guardian’s Dean Burnett, says there is no evidence for her claims. But even aside from the empirical robustness of her thesis, a lot of what she says about our obsession with information makes sense.

Bidisha, writer and critic

The internet is definitely affecting the way I think, for the worse. I fantasise about an entire month away from it, with no news headlines, email inboxes, idle googling or instant messages, the same way retirees contemplate a month in the Bahamas. The internet means that we can never get away from ourselves, our temptations and obsessions. There's something depressing about knowing I can literally and metaphorically log on to the same homepage, wherever I am in the world.

My internet use and corresponding brain activity follow a distinct pattern of efficiency. There's the early morning log-on, the quick and accurate scan of the day's news, the brisk queries and scheduling, the exchange of scripts of articles or edited book extracts.

After all this good stuff, there's what I call the comet trail: the subsequent hours-long, bitty, unsatisfying sessions of utter timewasting. I find myself looking up absolute nonsense only tangentially related to my work, fuelled by obsessions and whims and characterised by topic-hopping, bad spelling, squinting, forum lurking and comically wide-ranging search terms. I end having created nothing myself, feeling isolated, twitchy and unable to sleep, with a headache and painful eyes, not having left the house once.

The internet enables you look up anything you want and get it slightly wrong. It's like a never-ending, trashy magazine sucking all time, space and logic into its bottomless maw. And, like all trashy magazines, it has its own tone, slang and lexicon. I was tempted to construct this piece in textspeak, Tweet abbreviations or increasingly abusive one-liners to demonstrate the level of wit the internet has facilitated – one that is frighteningly easily to mimic and perpetuate. What we need to counteract the slipshod syntax, off-putting abusiveness, unruly topic-roaming and frenetic, unreal "social networking" is good, old-fashioned discipline. We are the species with the genius to create something as wondrous as the internet in the first place. Surely we have enough self-control to stay away from Facebook.

Infobese adjective

'… the digital deluge is affecting everybody, and not in a good way. Our survey … suggests that nearly half of the UK's office workers are suffering from Infobesity, the over-consumption of information. It's making us unhappy, is bad for our health, and hurts our productivity.'

HUFFINGTON POST 17TH JULY 2014

'The dilemmas of an infobese parent … Margarine, or butter? Routine, or demand feed? Have inoculations, or chance it? In a world where everything you could ever wish to know is literally at your fingertips, are we paralysed by knowing too much.'

AQUARIUS MAGAZINE 10TH SEPTEMBER 2012

Too much information. No, not a personal revelation causing embarrassment to the listener, but a 21st century malaise with a brand new moniker. If you're a constant consumer of the relentless feast of information which is available in the digital era, then you could be an unsuspecting sufferer of a condition described as infobesity.

Infobesity appears to be an epidemic. It's practically impossible to be a web user without succumbing to occasional … bouts of randomly looking at things which serve no significant purpose

We live in a world in which information is king, and the days of waiting to receive it or leaving the house to find it are long gone. Whether at home, work or on the move, anything we might conceivably wish to know is right there, just a few key presses or mouse-clicks away. The Internet offers a never-ending onslaught of facts, figures, images and info ad nauseam, which, it's been observed, we have a tendency to indiscriminately digest without hesitation. But the problem is that, just like eating one too many doughnuts, gorging ourselves silly on all of this stuff is not always a good idea. It can make us sluggish, indecisive and unable to concentrate on the task at hand. This is a state of affairs that's informally been dubbed infobesity – the tendency to crave and digest information even when this isn't always necessary or effective for our needs.

Perhaps even more disturbingly, infobesity appears to be an epidemic. It's practically impossible to be a web user without succumbing to occasional, if not frequent, bouts of randomly looking at things which serve no significant purpose for you, and thereby wasting time and effort which might have been better spent in other ways (guilty as charged!). These days, it seems, it's all too easy to become infobese, with many of us falling prey to a 'junk food' diet of non-essential and sometimes low-quality information.

Background – infobesity

The creative coinage infobesity is a blend based on the words information and obesity (the condition of being overweight in a way which is unhealthy). The noun obesity dates back to the early 17th century, and is based on the Latin form obesus meaning 'having eaten until fat'. The related adjective obese came along about 40 years later, via a process technically known as back-formation (where a shorter word is formed from a longer word which already exists in a language). Mirroring this pattern, infobese is used as a counterpart adjective to infobesity.

The term infobesity draws a parallel between excessive consumption of information and the negative consequences of unhealthy western diets. Another blend following the same principle is globesity – a combination of global and obesity, characterizing the developed world's widespread problem of being dangerously overweight.

Back on the theme of information, rather than food, consumption, in business circles there's also been a buzz recently surrounding a phenomenon known as content shock. On the basis that the human capacity to absorb information isn't completely limitless, this expression describes the situation of people reaching saturation point – a scenario with potentially serious consequences for so-called content marketing (marketing strategies which acquire customers through the creation and sharing of published content).

 

 

wilfing

noun [uncountable]

the activity of browsing the Internet without any particular purpose

wilf verb [intransitive]

wilfer noun [countable]

'… almost a quarter of the country's internet users spend 30% or more of their internet time wilfing – that's the equivalent to spending an entire working day every fortnight browsing the net aimlessly.

'Pete Cohen, life coach and TV personality said: "Not allowing ourselves to wilf takes a mixture of planning and willpower."'

CHANNEL 4 NEWS, UK 12TH APRIL 2007

'This new breed of users are called wilfers. They surf the web without any real purpose, often forgetting what they were there for in the first place.'

BIZREPORT 11TH APRIL 2007

Are you surfing away many precious days of your life by randomly browsing the web? If so, then you count among the millions of Internet users worldwide who seem to be addicted to the newly identified habit of wilfing.

A recent survey of 2,400 Internet users commissioned by UK financial website moneysupermarket.com found that more than a quarter of respondents admitted to habitually wilfing – being drawn into websites that they hadn't originally intended to look at.

Background – wilfing

We might go online with a specific purpose in mind but the potential choices and distractions are so many and varied that they cause us to lose track of what we were looking for.

The term, coined by survey author YouGov plc, an Internet-based market research firm, is derived from a rough acronym of the phrase ' W hat was I l ooking f or?'. It has already spawned a related intransitive verb, to wilf, and those of us who regularly indulge in the practice are also correspondingly referred to as wilfers. The theory is that, even though we might go online with a specific purpose in mind, the potential choices and distractions are so many and varied that they cause us to lose track of what we were looking for. Shopping, travel and news websites are allegedly among the most likely to cause people to wilf.

Research reveals that wilfing typically occupies us for the equivalent of two whole days every calendar month. It also shows that men are more likely to admit to being wilfers than women, and that Internet users under the age of 25 are three times more likely to wilf than those over 55. Unsurprisingly, a lot of wilfing takes place at work, contributing significantly to the problem of cyberslacking, which was in the British news again recently because of concerns about the use of social-networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace during office hours.

As well as its time-wasting influences, wilfing can have other destructive consequences: a third of the men questioned in the survey admitted that their tendency to wilf had had a damaging effect on their relationship with a partner. It's even possible that some regular surfers are suffering from Internet Addiction Disorder or IAD.

The cure for wilfing is straightforward in principle: adopt a specific surfing goal and set yourself a time limit. In practice, it's much more difficult: a matter of willpower and the determination to resist a potentially infinite pile of distractions. Let me just hastily add at this point though that, if you regularly enjoy reading BuzzWord, then that doesn't count as wilfing – you did ' (know) what you were looking for '! And if you stumbled upon this page by accident? Go on, have a read, you've nothing better to do!

 

 

cyberslacking also cyberloafing

noun [uncountable]

using a company's Internet connection during working hours for activities which are not work-related, such as shopping, playing games and sending personal e-mails

cyberslacker or cyberloafer noun [countable]

cyberslack or cyberloaf verb [intransitive]

Cyberslacking adjective

'For bosses, cyberslacking is becoming a pervasive and perplexing problem in the new wired workplace …'

NEWSWEEK 29TH NOVEMBER 1999

'With the virtual world becoming a reality in every office and a large number of workers having constant access to the Net, cyberloafing, if one may call it that, is no more an aberration, but a problem …'

THE TRIBUNE 3RD DECEMBER 2001

' Cyberslackers are costing Britain's small businesses almost £1.5bn per year … A survey has found that many workers at small and medium businesses are wasting time with e-mail messages and websites that have nothing to do with their jobs.'

BBC NEWS 1ST NOVEMBER 2002

How many of us could honestly say that we spend every moment of our working hours engaged in some work-related activity? We're all guilty of an odd personal phone call or two, or a quick chat, and the Internet now gives us a whole new opportunity to divert our attention from work. We can shop, book a holiday, play games, write to friends or read the news. Could you, indeed, be guilty of just such an activity as you read this article? If so, you have been caught engaging in cyberslacking!

We might go online with a specific purpose in mind but the potential choices and distractions are so many and varied that they cause us to lose track of what we were looking for

The activity of cyberslacking is endemic in any office where employees have unrestricted access to the Internet, and it has been a feature of working life for several years now. The term itself first entered the public eye in the late nineties, notably in a Newsweek article of November 1999, which highlighted research claiming that nearly a third of US workers' time on the Internet was devoted to non-work related activities. At the end of 2003, it was estimated that cyberslacking cost the US economy 250 billion dollars in lost wage expenses.

Corporate concern about cyberslacking is not always confined to time-wasting. Many large firms have had to accept legal liability when employees have searched for pornography or other inappropriate material on office computers. This has led to the formation of a whole new multi-million dollar industry known as Employee Internet Management (EIM), which encourages companies to invest in software for monitoring or restricting personal Internet use.

Background – cyberslacking

The term cyberslacking and an alternative form, cyberloafing, emerged during the late nineties among a proliferation of words created by productive use of the prefix cyber- to describe things relating to computers or the Internet, e.g. cybercafé, cyberspace. The verbs slack and loaf both mean 'to spend time avoiding work'. The term cyberslacker, acknowledged in August 2003 by editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, and its alternative form, cyberloafer, are used to describe employees who engage in the practice. Cyberslacking can also be used as a participle adjective, e.g. cyberslacking employees, and there is some evidence for use of cyberslack and cyberloaf as intransitive verbs.

Digital detox

noun

taking a break from the use of electronic devices such as computers, mobile phones, e-readers and MP3 players

But this is Digital Detox Week, when we are being asked to take a break from electronic entertainment to find out what we really enjoy.

Facebook narcissism noun [uncountable]

an extreme interest in your own life, appearance and problems, caused by obsessive use of the Facebook social networking service

Facebook narcissist noun [countable]

'Pouty photos and endless updates are signs of Facebook narcissism … Obsessively updating your status and posting pouty profile photos on Facebook could make you an online narcissist.'

NEWS.COM.AU, AUSTRALIA 30TH AUGUST 2010

'Do you regularly update your Facebook status, write wall posts, or publish overtly sexy profile photos? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you may be a Facebook narcissist …'

CNBC 27TH AUGUST 2010

In November 2010 it was announced that among those to jump on the social media bandwagon was none other than the Queen herself – yes, the British monarchy had launched a Facebook page. Though, unsurprisingly, it is not permitted to add the Queen to your 'friends' list, it is possible to 'like' her page. However anyone thinking this is an opportunity to air their anti-royalist views is wasting their breath, since after an initial ripple of negativity, all comments are now being moderated.

Research suggests that, among 18-25 year-olds in particular, greater activity in the social media domain is linked to egotism and, interestingly, low self-esteem

Whatever your reaction to the monarchy, the fact that it has dipped its toe into the waters of social networking is another indication of the importance society now places on having an online identity. It is being argued by some, however, that the creation and maintenance of our social media persona can cause a kind of inward-looking, self-obsessed attitude – a phenomenon recently dubbed Facebook narcissism.

Recent research suggests that, among 18-25 year-olds in particular, greater online activity in the social media domain is linked to egotism and, interestingly, low self-esteem. It seems that young people use Facebook and other social media as a means of enhancing their self-image, regularly embellishing their profiles with photos of themselves and constant updates on what is happening to them – their feelings, worries, achievements, level of popularity, and so on. The argument is that Facebook has the tendency to fuel narcissistic attitudes to life – a situation of being excessively interested in yourself or your appearance. Those individuals who have fallen into this trap, unwittingly or otherwise, are correspondingly dubbed Facebook narcissists. At its most extreme, Facebook narcissism results in users presenting a kind of 'perfect' image of themselves which bears little resemblance to their personality in the real world.

Predictably, there have been conflicting attitudes to the concept of Facebook narcissism, with some people arguing that those who become Facebook narcissists do so only because they are self-obsessed in real life, and that there are plenty of social media users who do not behave in this way, simply using the platform as an effective and enjoyable way to communicate with others.

In a bizarre twist however, it was recently reported that in the US, Facebook narcissism was being exploited by federal agencies concerned with fraud detection and national security issues. Apparently, the narcissistic tendencies exhibited by users as they talk about their activities, friendships and concerns, provide an excellent opportunity for surveillance of the daily lives of those suspected of fraudulent or other criminal activity.

Background – Facebook narcissism

The debate about a connection between narcissistic tendencies and the use of social media has been bubbling away for the last couple of years or so, but the expression Facebook narcissism only really hit the spotlight in August 2010, in the context of a widely-reported study conducted by researchers at Canada's York University.

Social networking and its possible connection to egotistic attitudes has brought the word narcissism – conventionally perceived as a more formal, high-register term – into the mainstream. The word narcissism dates back to the 19th century and is based on the Greek Narkissos, which in mythology was the name of a beautiful youth who fell in love with his own reflection.

clickjacking

noun [uncountable]

the malicious activity of taking control of an Internet user's actions by making them click on hidden links

clickjacker noun [countable]

clickjack noun [countable] verb [transitive]

'Only today, there are reports that hundreds of thousands of Facebook users are falling victim to so-called clickjacking attacks through links to subjects such as "World Cup 2010 in HD" or "Justin Bieber's phone number".'

MARKETING WEEK 3RD JUNE 2010

'A free plug-in called NoScript, built for the Firefox web browser, includes pop-up warnings about potential clickjacks …'

BBC NEWS 3RD JUNE 2010

'You probably won't get what's being advertised: … Instead, what you'll get is clickjacked … But if the clickjackers behind this whole thing ever decided to tie in some malware – maybe to spy on your online banking or credit card transactions, for example …'

TECHNEWSWORLD 5TH JUNE 2010

 

Identity theft, phishing, worms, Trojans … what a hazardous path we Internet users have to tread! And now there's yet another new thing to worry about – the phenomenon of clickjacking.

the way we navigate the Web centres on our ability to click, so it's no surprise scammers have been concentrating on ways to manipulate our clicking habits

Everything about the way we navigate the Web centres on our ability to click, so it's no surprise that scammers have been concentrating on ways to manipulate our clicking habits. Clickjacking occurs when users click on a button that appears to perform another function – in other words, they are tricked into clicking on something they hadn't intended to, because the link they are really clicking on is 'hidden' by something that looks innocent. The scam works by presenting the user with a web page incorporating fake links or buttons, which has another page loaded over it in an invisible layer. Users think that they are clicking on the buttons that they can see, whereas in fact they are performing actions concealed on the invisible page. To illustrate, a user might see a 'play' button for a video, but hidden underneath it is a product page from a web retailer. When the user 'plays' the video, he or she is actually clicking on a link to unwittingly buy the product.

A high-profile example of clickjacking occurred in the context of social networking website Facebook. Users clicking on links to recent popular topics like the 2010 World Cup, the BP oil leak or the new Shrek movie, have unwittingly been clicking on a hidden button telling Facebook that they 'like' the web page. This then gets published on their own Facebook page and shared with online friends, spreading the links virally.

Though episodes like this are essentially harmless, it's not difficult to see that clickjacking could be exploited for more malicious purposes, such as acquiring and manipulating sensitive information like personal details, passwords, logins etc.

Background – clickjacking

The word clickjacking first appeared in 2008, coined by Internet security experts Robert Hansen and Jeremiah Grossman. The term is, of course, a blend of the words click and hijacking (=illegally taking control of something). Modelling itself on the pattern of hijack, the derived form clickjack also exists, which can be used as a countable noun, to refer to an instance of clickjacking, or a transitive verb, usually occurring in the passive form, as in get clickjacked. The derived noun clickjacker is used for perpetrators.

Clickjacking follows two earlier neologisms centred around the activity of mouse clicking: click fraud, which is the dishonest activity of clicking on online advertisements in order to generate a charge per click, and clickprint, referring to an Internet user's unique pattern of online behaviour.

phishing

noun [uncountable]

the criminal activity of persuading people to give personal information such as passwords and credit card details by directing them to a fake website which has been made to look exactly the same as the website of a legitimate bank or other organisation

phisher noun [countable]

phish verb [transitive]

Phished adjective

'"We arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of phishing, a scam where someone sends out emails purporting to come from a bank, on this occasion Smile," said an NHTCU spokeswoman …'

PRESS ASSOCIATION 29TH APRIL 2004

' Phishers send emails which purport to be official notices from banks or retailers saying that an account needs to be updated or informing about a new product on sale …'

THE GUARDIAN 30TH APRIL 2004

' … check your bank's website for more information on Internet security. If you think you have been phished, contact your bank immediately.'

STRAITS TIMES, SINGAPORE 29TH MAY 2004

'Twelve arrested for laundering phished funds … '

NEWS.ZDNET.CO.UK 5TH MAY 2004

'Every internet user in Britain must have received a phish by now.'

THE GUARDIAN 3RD JUNE 2004

In recent months, a major new Internet crime wave has emerged. An increasing number of consumers are being conned into divulging financial information to fraudsters via the practice of phishing. An official-looking e-mail, allegedly from a bank, ISP, etc, is sent to potential victims, requesting updated personal information on some pretext or other, such as technical problems or internal accounting errors. Via a link in the e-mail message, the user is then directed to a web page which asks for financial information. The fake web page can look convincingly similar to a legitimate source, since any HTML page on the web can easily be copied and modified as necessary.

British police recently estimated that phishing crimes cost UK banks in the region of £60 million

British police recently estimated that phishing crimes cost UK banks in the region of £60 million during 2003, and in the United States the economic toll was even worse, costing American banks and credit card companies an estimated $1.2 billion.

The noun phishing typically appears in compound phrases such as a phishing scam/e-mail, and the countable noun phisher has been coined to refer to perpetrators of the crime. There are two phish homographs: a transitive verb usually used in the passive as in you've been phished! – i.e. ' you have fallen victim to a phishing scam ' – and a countable noun most commonly used to refer to the e-mail that triggers the deception. A participle adjective phished is also quite common, as in phished e-mail/site/data.

Background – phishing and phish

The term phishing has been around in computer hacker culture since the mid-1990s, where it originally referred more generally to the practice of acquiring password information in order to infringe security barriers. Its use specifically in the context of Internet-based financial crimes is more recent. The word is derived from a deliberate misspelling of fish in its verbal sense of trying to obtain information. The analogy of 'trying to catch (a fish)' is often carried over as well. For instance, the use of phish as a noun to refer to the e-mail which tricks the victim is related to the idea of fish as 'bait'. Discussions of the practice often also include fishing references such as phishing lines, a phishing expedition, get caught/hooked by a phish.

sheeple

noun [plural]

people who are easily persuaded and tend to follow what other people do

'I hope I can pass on a few thoughts … to encourage people to see that they are living in a conditioned illusion and we can change it any time we want. We can be people and not sheeple. '

DAVID ICKE IN A DISCUSSION OF HIS NEW SCI-FI CHANNEL SHOW JUNE 2002

The term sheeple is often used to describe people who act in direct reaction to saturation advertising, going out and buying the 'must-have' fashions and fads of the moment

The term sheeple, which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1984, has been used increasingly in the last couple of years due to the enhanced marketing potential afforded by online and satellite channel media. It is often used to describe people who act in direct reaction to saturation advertising, going out and buying the 'must-have' fashions and fads of the moment. Sheeple is also used more generally to refer to people who don't tend to think for themselves but basically follow the crowd or believe what the media tells them. In a June 2002 Guardian newspaper article, it was used in reference to individuals who had taken part in a survey resulting in the claim that 'four out of five Americans had said they would give up some freedom for greater security'.

The citation at the beginning of the article is from an individual who is a rather extreme believer in alternative ways of thinking, but his use of sheeple is the same, i.e. people should think for themselves, whereas sheeple 's thoughts and reactions are based on what they have been led to believe by others.

Background – sheeple

The plural noun sheeple is what is technically referred to as a blend, a combination of the words sheep and people. A blend is a new word formed from parts of two (or possibly more) words in such a way that it cannot be further analyzed into morphemes (i.e. the smallest meaningful components of words). Other more familiar examples are brunch (br eakfast and l unch) and chunnel (ch annel and t unnel). The concept of a blend (also called a portmanteau word) is nothing new. In Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass, written in 1872, Alice asks Humpty Dumpty to explain the words of a poem and he replies: 'Well slithy means lithe and slimy. Lithe is the same as active. You see it's like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.

email fatigue noun [U] exhaustion caused by receiving a large amount of emails each day. Related terms junk mail fatigue and direct mail fatigue also exist.

phone neck noun [U] neck and shoulder pain caused by holding a phone for long periods. This term was originally coined in the late eighties to describe the muscular problems suffered by office workers after long periods of balancing the phone between their neck and shoulder in order to be able to simultaneously use a computer keyboard. The mainstream use of cordless and mobile phones however has made this concept even more pertinent in the new millennium.

voice injuries noun [plural] throat and speech-related injuries caused by persistent use of voice recognition software. Symptoms include hoarseness and loss of voice. An alternative term is laryngeal stress / strain injuries, related to the superordinate term repetitive strain injury (RSI).

mouse wrist noun [U] pain in the wrist caused by excessive use of a computer mouse. This term is also a hyponym of RSI. The related terms Nintendo thumb and tetwrist have been popularised in America to refer to repetitive strain injuries caused by compulsive use of electronic games.

text message injury (also TMI) noun [U] a form of RSI caused by excessive use of the thumb in typing text messages into a mobile phone.

Technosexual

Another recent coinage borne out of the current preoccupation with male stereotyping is the noun and adjective technosexual (also with derivative technosexuality), which refers to a metrosexual man who, as well as being concerned with fashion and appearance, has a strong interest in technology:

'It was bound to happen: the metrosexual has spawned an offshoot, the t echnosexual … The official definition for technosexual is "a dandyish narcissist in love with not only himself, but also his urban lifestyle and gadgets; a straight man who is in touch with his feminine side but has fondness for electronics such as cell phones, PDAs, computers, software, and the web."'

sofalizing also sofalising

noun [uncountable]

the activity of using the Internet or other electronic devices to socialize with people from home, rather than meeting them face to face

sofalize also sofalise

verb [intransitive]

sofalizer also sofaliser

noun [countable]

'Millions of us have given up socialising for " sofalising " – talking to pals via phones and the net instead of going out.'

THE SUN 11TH NOVEMBER 2010

'Researchers claim nearly a quarter of us sofalise every night – rather than go to a pub, club or village hall to meet people face to face, we plop down on the sofa … spending hours updating our profiles on social networking sites, chatting online or Tweeting …'

DAILY MAIL 15TH NOVEMBER 2010

'There is even an army of "extreme sofalisers " – the three per cent who spend a staggering 25 hours or more each week talking to friends via electronic devices.'

TELEGRAPH, UK 30TH NOVEMBER 2010

As I write, the UK is currently at the mercy of what is perceived to be an unusually early period of winter snowfall, the first time Brits have seen snow in November for many years. But those of us who are confined to barracks or reluctant to venture out because of adverse weather conditions need not be cut off from our pals. Hey, it's the 21st century and there's no need to actually see them for real, when we can chat and share all other intimate details of our lives at the touch of a keypad. Yes, staying in is the new going out, as socializing in person plays second fiddle to a phenomenon coined sofalizing.

Those of us who prefer to talk to our friends without having to step through the front door have a variety of ways of sofalizing at our disposal

A poll recently conducted in the UK revealed that one in four Brits prefer to do the majority of their communicating from the comfort of their own home. Rather than going out to meet people in person, it seems that there's a growing tendency to sofalize – socialize with friends and family via electronic devices in the home. Instead of long, detailed conversations over a meal or a drink, it appears that many of us prefer the immediate, rapid-fire exchanges we can have through text messaging or social media.

Those of us who prefer to talk to our friends without having to step through the front door, in fact have a variety of ways of sofalizing at our disposal, including texting, e-mail, instant messenger, Skype, Twitter, live chat, status updates or wall posts on Facebook, and the communication networks associated with online gaming and gambling.

There may be many reasons why people are choosing to sofalize rather than socialize – convenience, laziness, time pressure, the expense of going out, or just a desire to avoid lengthy conversations. Whatever the explanation, it seems that the way we are communicating with friends and family is changing, with people increasingly preferring the short, regular and instant exchanges afforded by electronic media, rather than more prolonged, infrequent conversations in person.

Background – sofalizing also sofalize and sofalizer

The term sofalizing is, of course, a blend of the words sofa (=soft, comfortable seat) and socializing, where this describes the activity of spending time with other people socially – in other words, socializing whilst lounging around on a sofa. Following the pattern of the verb socialize, there's also evidence of use of an intransitive verb sofalize. A countable noun sofalizer refers to individuals who maintain friendships in this way. The spelling variant sofalising (and sofalise, sofaliser) is also used, reflecting the spelling conventions of verbs which end in -ise (-ise is the British spelling, -ize is used in both British and US varieties, e.g. realise / realize).

Sofalizing was coined in 2010 by online casino company Yazino, in the context of research commissioned to determine trends in how potential users interact with one another.

Text 1

Young Blood

Text 2

Supplement

Generation X
Born: 1966-1976
Coming of Age: 1988-1994
Age in 2004: 28 to 38
Current Population: 41 million

Sometimes referred to as the “lost” generation, this was the first generation of “latchkey” kids, exposed to lots of daycare and divorce. Known as the generation with the lowest voting participation rate of any generation, Gen Xers were quoted by Newsweek as “the generation that dropped out without ever turning on the news or tuning in to the social issues around them.”

Gen X is often characterized by high levels of skepticism, “what’s in it for me” attitudes and a reputation for some of the worst music to ever gain popularity. Now, moving into adulthood William Morrow (Generations) cited the childhood divorce of many Gen Xers as “one of the most decisive experiences influencing how Gen Xers will shape their own families”.

Gen Xers are arguably the best educated generation with 29% obtaining a bachelor’s degree or higher (6% higher than the previous cohort). And, with that education and a growing maturity they are starting to form families with a higher level of caution and pragmatism than their parents demonstrated. Concerns run high over avoiding broken homes, kids growing up without a parent around and financial planning.

Generation Y, Echo Boomers or Millenniums
Born: 1977-1994
Coming of Age: 1998-2006
Age in 2004: 10 to 22
Current Population: 71 million

The largest cohort since the Baby Boomers, their high numbers reflect their births as that of their parent generation..the last of the Boomer Is and most of the Boomer II s. Gen Y kids are known as incredibly sophisticated, technology wise, immune to most traditional marketing and sales pitches...as they not only grew up with it all, they’ve seen it all and been exposed to it all since early childhood.

Gen Y members are much more racially and ethnically diverse and they are much more segmented as an audience aided by the rapid expansion in Cable TV channels, satellite radio, the Internet, e-zines, etc.

Gen Y are less brand loyal and the speed of the Internet has led the cohort to be similarly flexible and changing in its fashion, style consciousness and where and how it is communicated with.

Gen Y kids often raised in dual income or single parent families have been more involved in family purchases...everything from groceries to new cars. One in nine Gen Yers has a credit card co-signed by a parent.

 

Generation Z
Born: 1995-2012
Coming of Age: 2013-2020
Age in 2004: 0-9
Current Population: 23 million and growing rapidly

While we don’t know much about Gen Z yet...we know a lot about the environment they are growing up in. This highly diverse environment will make the grade schools of the next generation the most diverse ever. Higher levels of technology will make significant inroads in academics allowing for customized instruction, data mining of student histories to enable pinpoint diagnostics and remediation or accelerated achievement opportunities.

Gen Z kids will grow up with a highly sophisticated media and computer environment and will be more Internet savvy and expert than their Gen Y forerunners. More to come on Gen Z...stay tuned.

Recommended video:

1) Look up ( A generation of idiots, smartphones & dumb people).

'Look Up' is a lesson taught to us through a love story, in a world where we continue to find ways to make it easier for us to connect with one another, but always results in us spending more time alone. I don't want you to stop using social media or smartphones. It's about finding a balance. It's about making sure you are awake, alive and living life in the moment; instead of living your life through a screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY

Information Overload: Is There Anything We Don’t Know Any More?