Awareness of What?

Kim Strassel, writing in the the Wall Street Journal a few years back pointed out the fallacy of too many days and dates to keep in mind:

Chase Annual Events contains more than 12,000 entries and is more than 700 pages long. The book allows any sponsor of an event to send in an item and will publish it free of charge, though it limits entries to those that are of national or broadly regional interest or that seem to have some special entertainment value.

Last month, we find Listen to Your Inner Critic Month, Freedom From Bullies at Work Week, Create a Great Funeral Day, National Be Bald and Be Free Day, National Sarcastics Month and National She Loves God Week.

Awareness campaigns have become so commonplace these days that even presidents throw them about willy-nilly. Chase's shows dozens of presidential proclamations in 2000, ranging from National Safe Boating Week to Spirit of the ADA Month (celebrating the American With Disabilities Act) to National Day of Concern About Young People and Gun Violence.

The result of awareness-day fatigue is that some of the more serious groups -- those that had previously accomplished some charitable good with awareness days -- have thought about getting out.

Info Overload at Every Turn

The reality of our times: information overload at every turn. In the last 12 months, in the U.S. alone:
156,000 books were published
1,120 new magazines were launched
7,200 movies were offered on DirecTV
218,000 programs were televised.
658 films were produced

Decide now to only choose the best of information and communication resources; you simply don't have time for the rest!

Beyond the Information Explosion

As I wrote in my 2007 book, Breathing Space, the term "Information Explosion" has no meaning. The discharge of information spewing forth since the phrase information explosion was first coined dwarfs the original meaning. Within a few years, half of our technical knowledge will have been replaced.

Every other page in all the texts on AIDS, biomass, chemical dependency, diet, electronic funds transfer, fire retardation, gynecology, hydrogen fission, immunology, jet propulsion, kinetics, linear motion, meteorology, novas, obstetrics, pituitary functioning, quasars, relativity, sonar, telemetry, uranium, viruses, wellness, x-rays, yacht racing, and zoology, will be rewritten.

So, your task becomes to focus on the handful of key developments in your field that will have the greatest impact on you, your organization, your family, and your world.

Cell Phones set for Subway!

This appeared on the Reuters News Wire on Febuary 3, 2006:

Welcome or not, cell phones set for subway, by Ellen Wulfhorst

One of life's ironic oases of solitude – the peace people find amid the roar of a New York City subway – could soon be gone. As New York plans to make cell phones work in subway stations, experts say Americans eventually could be connected everywhere, underground or in the air.

"It's technically feasible, both for airplanes and subways," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "It's the social aspect that's really the most intractable."

People fall into two camps, one that defends the right to make calls no matter the inconvenience to others and the other that likes an undisturbed atmosphere, he said. Business people tend to belong to first camp, and leisure travelers to the second, he added.