From The Head Of Zeus Jones

As our time is increasingly consumed by Facebook pages, IM, Twitter, RSS feeds, Digg Thumbs Up’s, url shorteners, embedded HTML, emoticons and hyperlinks, there is little doubt about the premium placed on timely information. It has reached a point where the value of information seemingly diminishes in direct proportion to how old it is. As if an article written six months ago might well as be ten years old.

This tendency will only increase as we hurtle towards a real-time web. But will there be a place for meaningful communication?

The Flutter April Fools joke parodied our growing obsession with instantaneous information exposing the growing misconception that a means of communication also also make it meaningful. But the important distinction, as Zeus Jones points out, is that while real time information loses value over time, timeless pieces grow in value.

When you consider brands rely on an emotional connection with their customers to motivate their behavior, this confusion becomes costly. Of course, a meaningful connection isn’t always timeless, but the same limitations apply. A brand hoping to generate trust, interest or loyalty in a 140 characters is about as misguided and ineffective as a guy using his best one-liner in a bar. If a brand does use social media, it must also play an overarching role as "aggregator and curator”, as Joseph Jaffe states, “to provide a place where consumers can see the conversations pulled together, engage with the brand, hear the story in the brand’s voice”.

Communication should not be regarded as an end in itself. It exists to create a connection that lets us recognize ourselves in others. If our daily communication is reduced to a teeming sea of quips, asides and blunt reductions, we simply enlist ourselves in the service of data tracking. As if our lives were some enormous marketing focus group and our communication ticked a box.

When communication is reduced to a shooting gallery, the saddest casualty is the dialogue that adds meaning to our lives. As both marketers and consumers, we would be foolish to let this happen.

@Simon, totally agree, I think nuance is exactly what we are losing in the short, digital, and often binary world of communication. I read a really interesting book on creativity called Fire in the crucible years ago. They looked at creative geniuses across a variety of fields and found that nuance was the key to their creativity. I suspect we'll see a backlash to "slow information" and longer forms sooner rather than later.

There's also a correlation between timeless information and meaningful communication. Instantaneity is one thing, but communication isn't an end in itself. Its premise is human connection. As we hurtle from 140 to 26 to even less characters, we run the risk of joining a teeming seas of quips. asides and blunt distillations. Dialogue should be nuanced not a shooting gallery.

Hi Stephanie,

I think you're absolutely right, real-time information is an AND not an OR. The net is, as you point out, an overall gain. I love that kind of thinking and I do appreciate your (and all commentary). A big part of putting this stuff out there is so that other people will help you shape it. Thanks for the "personal note" it's nice to know you like it but keep the alternative thinking coming.

"Because the web, and in particular the real-time web, favours information that is timely, it’s likely that we are creating a situation where information producers will be dissuaded from producing more timeless pieces of information."

I like to think that we're diversifying our portfolio of types of information. before the enabling information and communication technologies emerged, we could only produce timeless information (because we didn't have the ICTs for real-time information). right now we're experiencing an explosion of possibilities for real-time information/communication; hence FriendFeed, and hence the fear that timeless information is being whereas before, we could produce only more timeless information is being compromised. but ultimately, I feel, emerging ICTs are enabling us to elaborate more types of information (in this case, vis-a-vis time). there is a time (haha) for timeless vs. timely information - just think about their different functions in our information ecology...

still, can information that's timely also be timeless? or are these two mutually exclusive categories of information?

on a more personal note, I notice that I usually leave comments only when I'm critiquing something, suggesting an alternative way to see. that's not to say that I don't appreciate your blog; I just usually don't feel the need to leave a comment merely saying "this is awesome!" that said, this is awesome! I definitely enjoy reading your blog.

You're right, knowledge doesn't fit in 140 characters ;-)
It's almost like knowledge is hard to separate from the knower who uses experience, intent and judgement to produce his knowledge in fine. As a famous chinese proverb says: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I forget. The key is in the do...So may be there isn't one place, it's all scattered in blog posts and so on and the only way to make it part of your daily experience is to do what you read, learn from the experience and feedback to others.

Yes I think you're both pointing out that information/data ceases to become information/data when it is properly processed and becomes knowledge. So then my question is what happens to that knowledge on a real-time web? Knowledge isn't transferred through tweets and friendfeed updates. Where does knowledge live and how can we make it part of our daily web experience?

What you call timeless information looks like what is called knowledge. Forget SM and look at how you learn. Information is acquired through our senses then processed by the nervous system to be stored (or not) in memory where it's constantly re-evaluated as more information flows in. At the end, it produces knowledge. I see SM as functioning the same way. Communities absorbs tons of info and act a bit like the nervous system to process all that and ultimately create knowledge. Tons of the real time info is forgotten because forgetting is a necessary function in memory or we would run out of storage space ;-).

"I'll meet you *where* our contexts align."

All information atrophies to data only to be recontextualised again.

Could those lines be re-labelled as: 'real-time data' and 'timeless data', and the point at which they cross 'information now'?

When data is put in context (a function of timeliness and relevance to a running process) it informs, it becomes usable information.

Old data or seemingly irrelevant data can always have value later in the form of a revisionist past - and, since the web can dredge up old data at the same speed as the new - do we just need to be mindful of the current context, rather than the current time?

"I'll meet you when our contexts align."