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CHAPTER 1

A New Age of Information

Information. We are overloaded and overwhelmed by it and yet we can’t seem to get enough of it.

But what is information? This question has been a repeated topic of discussion¹. Buckland, M. (1991), after an analysis of the many senses in which the word is used, concluded that “we are unable to say confidently of anything that it could not be information” (p. 256).

Indeed, the efforts people make to understand their world are usefully characterized as acts of information processing². According to this view, our intelligence comes from our ability to process the raw data received through our senses into concepts, patterns, and implications. Everything “out there” that we are able to perceive is potential information.

Whether sensory data actually yields information depends. The seminal work of Shannon³ introduced the notion that the information content of a message or event can be measured according to its impact on a recipient’s current state of knowing (their level of “uncertainty”). The message that “Harry is coming to the meeting” has no information value, for example, if its intended recipient knows this already or if the message is given to the recipient in a language she does not understand. In neither case does the message change what she knows already concerning who will be attending the meeting.

But people don’t exchange information just to reduce uncertainty⁴. Information, as the data of human communication, has a sender as well as a recipient. The sender may send the data to reduce the recipient’s uncertainty (e.g., “It’s raining out there, better take an umbrella”). But the sender may have other or additional intentions. The sender may want to impress or persuade or ingratiate. The sender may want to increase the recipient’s uncertainty (“Have you considered these other possibilities …”). The sender may even want to confuse or deceive. Likewise, the recipient may have aims other than to simply be “informed” by incoming data. The recipient may, for example, misconstrue the data to confirm or conform to pre-existing expectations.

In a survey of information science researchers described by Zins, C. (2007), information is often defined with reference to expressions of intention. For example, information is “the intentional composition of data by a sender with the goal of modifying the knowledge state of an interpreter or receiver” (p. 485). And information is “data arranged or interpreted … to provide meaning” (p. 486).

A larger point in the work of Shannon endures: the value of information is not absolute but relative to a context that includes the intentions of the sender, the method of delivery, and the current state of a recipient’s knowledge. The information value of data is in the eyes (ears, nose …) of the beholder. What is information? We might better ask, what is information to us? Here are some answers.

Information is what we extract from the data of our senses in order to understand our world.

Information is what’s in the documents, email messages, web pages, MP3 files, photographs (digital and paper-based), videos, etc., that we send (or post) and that we receive (or retrieve).

Information is for representing and referencing worlds distant from us in time or space. For example, information is how we learn about the ancient Egyptians. Information is how we learn of the current plight of people in a remote disaster area. Information is how we learn about the possibility of getting lung cancer in 20 years if we don’t stop smoking.

Information is how we are represented to the outside world, accurately or not, for better or worse.

Information is a drain on our money, energy, attention and time.

Information is how we get things done.

Information is an extension of us.

Information is our challenge and our opportunity. We are bewildered, misled and seduced by information. But there is little we can do in our modern world that doesn’t involve an exchange of information. Information, well managed, gives us a range and reach that far exceeds the limits of our physical selves. We can “see” to the ends of the earth and beyond. We can effect changes large and small: Provide a credit card number to reserve a hotel room; transfer ideas to transform lives.

Information is power.

What then is personal information? What makes it mine (or yours)? Look for the “me” in “mine.” Information can be personal because it is “owned by me” (e.g., the information on our computer or on a flash drive), “about me” (e.g., medical records), “directed towards me” (think advertisements or dinner-time “marketing surveys”), “sent (posted) by me,” “experienced by me” or, at the most general level, “relevant to me.” Information in each of these senses is personal though for distinctly different reasons.

We gain from a management of personal information in each of these senses in accordance with the life we wish to lead. Likewise, we lose if personal information lays unmanaged or is managed by others in ways that work against us.

1.1 A DEFINITION OF PIM

Personal Information Management (PIM) refers to both the practice and study of the activities a person performs in order to locate or create, store, organize, maintain, modify, retrieve, use and distribute information in each of its many forms (in various paper forms, in electronic documents, in email messages, in conventional Web pages, in blogs, in wikis, etc.) as needed to meet life’s many goals (everyday and long-term, work-related and not) and to fulfill life’s many roles and responsibilities (as parent, spouse, friend, employee, member of community, etc.)⁵.

The definition is broad and formal. But for our purposes, a more informal, working definition will often suffice. Mary Parker Follett, writing at the turn of the last century, defined management (of people) as “the art of getting things done through people.”⁶ Make a small substitution and we have: PIM is the art of getting things done in our lives through information.

PIM is not (just) about getting back to information we have experienced before, i.e., refinding, nor is it just about being better organized. We can think of people who are well organized—to a fault—but who appear no better able to manage either their information or their lives as a result. Conversely, we may know people who in their offices and their homes appear quite disorganized but who always manage, somehow, to stay on top of things.

We will review evidence from several sources to the point that organization does, in fact, matter. But not just any organization or organization for its own sake. Rather, organizing as a PIM activity should help us to make sense of and use our information. Organization should be towards one ideal of PIM: to have the right information at the right time (and in the right form, of good quality, …) to meet our needs⁷.

Or consider another ideal: Organizing information and other PIM activities are an integral and welcome part of our daily lives, not a separate chore to be guiltily postponed to “tomorrow.” How might this be? Consider the screenshot in Figure 1.1 taken of a Web site for an amusement park in Sweden. Try it out (in a Web browser of your choice). The view in Figure 1.1 is animated. Cars and trains go back and forth. Carnival rides spin. Animals in the open air zoo move. Flags flap in the wind. Waves lap up against the beach. The water in the pool shimmers. Nothing fancy, but inviting and fun to look at, and functional. A click on the pool, for example, provides information concerning showers, changing rooms and places to eat nearby.

Can we imagine something similar as a kind of dashboard overview for our lives and our information? In the center might be a representation for home and family. Nearby might be representations for work and career, for health and fitness. Farther away there might be a snowcapped mountain or a beach to represent an interest in skiing or a vacation we hope to take. We might zoom in for greater focus on a specific area in our lives or a specific project.

The animation might change appearance to reflect important changes in our world. Clouds on the horizon might signal the imminent arrival of rainy weather; extra cars might represent a real traffic jam on our way to work. Items might change in color or increase in size to reflect looming deadlines.

Figure 1.1: Surely PIM is important but is it amusing?⁸

Such an animated “PIM dashboard” is certainly feasible even now and even more so as the computational power of our devices continues to improve. Whether the dashboard is merely a novelty or has enduring utility depends upon the nature of its implementation, the nature of our information needs and the nature of our natures as well.

A bigger point is that our visions of PIM should not be constrained by conventional images of a desktop or a file cabinet. Our informational overviews can be much richer and much more evocative. And a bigger point: PIM is not only necessary and important. It might even be fun.

1.2 WHO BENEFITS FROM BETTER PIM AND HOW?

PIM may be “personal” but better PIM promises to bring broad societal benefit.

Within organizations, better PIM means better productivity as employees develop a clearer understanding of their information needs and the ways in which tools and techniques of PIM can address these needs. Such an understanding can also facilitate better teamwork and better group information management⁹.

Progress in PIM is evidenced not only by better tools but also by teachable strategies of information management of direct relevance to education programs of information literacy¹⁰.

People generally become more forgetful and their working memory span (the number of things they can keep in mind at one time) decreases with advancing age. Better PIM can translate to compensating tools and strategies of PIM to support our aging workforce and population.

The challenges of PIM are especially felt by people who are battling a life-threatening illness such as cancer even as they try, as nearly as possible, to live their lives and fulfill their roles as parent, spouse, friend and, even, as they try to maintain their jobs and profession-related activities. Better PIM can help patients manage better in their treatments and in their lives overall¹¹.

But certainly better PIM benefits people, regardless of their special circumstances. There is little chance you could be reading these lines were information and external forms of information (email messages, web pages, newspapers, this book) not of great importance to you in your everyday life.

Consider two kinds of people: information warriors and information worriers. Information warriors see their information and their information tools as a strategic asset. Information warriors are willing to invest time and money to keep up with the latest in mobile devices, tablet computers, smartphones, application software and anything new on the Web. For an information warrior, information technology is, so to speak, a profit center.

On the other hand, information technology for information worriers is a cost center. New offerings in mobile devices, new releases in operating system or application software, … new developments in the alphabet soup of Web-based initiatives—these and other developments in information technology represent more time and money that needs to be spent just to keep up with everyone else. Information worriers may have a nagging feeling they could do better in their choice of supporting tools and strategies. But they don’t know where to begin.

Even if these descriptions are stereotyped, many of us can probably think of people we know who come close to each description. Perhaps you are an information warrior or an information worrier. Or perhaps you are a little of both.

For the simple fact is that even if we embrace new developments in information technology, we must recognize that we don’t have time in the day to learn about all the latest developments. We need a basis for deciding whether a new tool or a new way of doing things is likely to work for us. We’d like to avoid an extended investment of money and, more important, time to learn the use of a new tool or strategy only then to conclude belatedly that it won’t work for us.

Better PIM starts by asking the right questions. Better PIM means that each of us becomes a student of our practice of PIM.

1.3 RELATED FIELDS AND RELEVANT TERMS

PIM is a practical meeting ground for many disciplines including cognitive psychology/cognitive science, human-computer interaction (HCI), library and information science (LIS), artificial intelligence (AI), database management and information retrieval (IR).

People don’t do smart things like PIM in isolation from an external environment that includes other people, available technology and organizational settings. Consequently, the study of situated cognition, distributed cognition and social cognition¹² all have relevance to the study of PIM. Also very relevant is the study of affordances provided by the environment and by the everyday objects of a person’s environment¹³. People vary greatly in their approach to PIM-relevant behaviors such as planning and with respect to personality traits such as risk-aversion—making the study of individual differences and personality also very relevant to PIM¹⁴.

1.3.1 A USEFUL INTERPLAY

Other fields contribute to PIM. PIM, in turn, provides a useful domain for the study in other fields. Benefits flow in both directions. The better, smarter searching methods that come from information retrieval (IR), for example, have obvious application to the finding and refinding of personal information. Similarly, as we learn more from the field of cognitive psychology concerning how information is represented in human memory, this understanding can guide us in our design of PIM tools to support in the keeping and organization of personal information. To take a simple example, what memories for an event in our lives (e.g., a party, vacation, wedding, graduation, etc.) will prove most durable over the long run—Time? Location? The people involved? The weather outside? Answers have direct implication to the design of a system for managing our photographs¹⁵.

In the other direction, PIM offers many practical situations that might help to keep the researchers of other fields “relevant,” so to speak, concerning the practical realities of everyday information management and use. For example, work on a big project such as “plan my wedding” can be viewed as an act of problem solving, and folders created to hold supporting information may sometimes resemble a problem decomposition¹⁶. For another example, the decision to keep or not to keep can be viewed as a signal-detection task and, as such, invites questions concerning the rationality of our keeping choices and our ability to estimate costs and outcome¹⁷.

1.3.2 “PIMS” AND PDAS

PIM is often, incorrectly, equated with the development of “personal information managers” (some-times referred to as “PIMs”) and personal digital assistants (PDAs)¹⁸ which first appeared in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Characteristic of “PIMs” was the Sharp Wizard¹⁹ first released in 1988 and famously featured on an episode of the TV show “Seinfeld ”²⁰. The Sharp Wizard was small enough to carry and offered an integrated set of basic functions for time and task management.

Today’s handheld devices are much smaller and much, much richer in features and in raw computational power. But even as these devices solve some informational problems they create new ones. We can look up the location to a restaurant while we’re driving … and we may very well kill ourselves and others if we try.

These days, the information we need may come from any of several sources—a hand-held device, a Web service as accessed from someone else’s computer or, still, a paper-based source such as a print-out or a flyer. Also, PIM casts a broad net to include information of relevance to us for any of a number of reasons. We seek to manage, for example, not only “our” information but also the information about us or directed towards us.

1.3.3 HUMAN/COMPUTER INTERACTION, HUMAN-INFORMATION INTERACTION AND LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE

Much of the early PIM-related research came from practitioners in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). But concerns of PIM force us to look beyond the computer. PIM includes a consideration of our personal use of information in all of its various forms. Computer-based, for sure. But also paper-based. PIM brings an informational focus to everyday objects too. The light left on by the front door may be a reminder to take out the trash. The office door closed even though the light within is on may be sending our colleagues a message “I’m here but don’t bother me unless it’s really important.”

In recent years, there has been discussion of human-information interaction (HII) in contrast to HCI²¹. In fact, arguments for a focus on information are not new. Fidel and Pejtersen (2004) asserted that the terms “human-information interaction” and “human information behavior (HIB)”represent essentially the same concept and can be used interchangeably. As such, HII-relevant discussions have been a long-standing mainstay in the field of library and information science (LIS) field²².

People. Information. Tools (and technologies). Three concepts connected (see Figure 1.2). An initial focus on people and information (in the spirit of LIS, HIB & HII) eventually brings us to a consideration of the tools and technologies by which this information is created and stored, sent and received. An initial focus on people and tools eventually causes us to think about the information that is being managed (sent, received, created, stored) through the use of the tools under study. For example, we might study a person’s use of a large-display device but without the broader perspective of PIM we might miss the sticky notes that encircle the display device.

Figure 1.2: The triangle of people, information and technology. A focus on the human-information interaction inevitably involves tools and technology (computer-based and otherwise). Likewise, a focus on the human-computer interaction inevitably involves a consideration of information.

1.3.4 KNOWLEDGE VS. INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VS. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, PKM VS. PIM

The study of information management and knowledge management in organizations also has relevance to the study of PIM²³. Issues seen first at an organizational level often migrate to the PIM domain. The merits of various schemes of classification or the use of controlled vocabularies, for example, have long been topics of discussion at the organizational level²⁴. But these topics may find their way into the PIM domain, as the amounts of personally kept digital information continue to increase. This migration has already happened in the area of privacy, protection, and security²⁵.

Discussions often reflect an implicit ordering of the terms data, information and knowledge, i.e., information trumps data and knowledge trumps information. In a corporate/organizational context, information management came first as a field of inquiry, followed, beginning in the 1990s by discussions of knowledge management as a related but separate field of inquiry. Knowledge is, as O’Dell et al. said, “information in action” (1998, p. 5). Similarly, we might say that information is “data in motion”—data communicated, data sent or received with intention²⁶.

Now, predictably, we have discussions of personal knowledge management (PKM)²⁷, as a field of inquiry that relates to but is separate from personal information management (PIM). Elsewhere, I argue for the following²⁸.

1. Information is a thing to be handled and controlled; knowledge is not.

2. Knowledge can be managed only indirectly, through the management of information.

3. Personal knowledge management (PKM) is, therefore, best regarded as a subset of personal information management (PIM)—but a very useful subset addressing important issues that otherwise might be overlooked such as self-directed efforts of knowledge elicitation (“What do I know? What have I learned? How can I best communicate this knowledge the people I am training?”) and knowledge instillation (i.e., “Learning what it is I need to know”).

1.3.5 TIME, TASK AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The terms “task” and “project” (and associated terms such as “task analysis,” “task management,” “project management”) mean different things to different people in different research communities²⁹. Even within a single community such as the HCI community, the term “task” takes on different meanings in phrases such as “task management”³⁰ and “cognitive task analysis³¹. Also, “project” and “task” are often used interchangeably.

For PIM, a useful distinction is made between a personal task and a personal project or, simply, task and project. For task, we can use a simple, intuitive definition: A task is something we might put on a “to-do” list.“Pay bills,” “Call mom to wish her a happy birthday,” “Make hotel reservations” are all examples of tasks. With respect to everyday planning, tasks are atomic. A task such as “Make hotel reservations” can be decomposed into smaller actions—“Search for hotels in downtown area,” “Select hotel,” “Search for room,” etc.—but there is little utility in doing so. A task can usually be completed in a single sitting but often stays on a to-do list of pending tasks for long periods awaiting the requisite information. We can’t make hotel reservations, for example, until we know the dates of the trip and the location of the meeting.

A project, in turn, is made up of any number of tasks and sub-projects. Again, the informal “to-do” measure is useful: While it makes sense to put tasks like “Call the real estate broker” or “Call our financial planner” on a to-do list, it makes little sense to place a containing project like “Buy a new house” or “Plan for retirement” into the same list (except perhaps as an exhortation to “Get started”). A project has an internal structure of inter-dependent sub-projects and tasks and can last for weeks, months or even years.

Task management as used in recent studies of human-computer interaction³² refers primarily to the management between tasks including handling interruptions, switching tasks and resuming an interrupted task. Project management, on the other hand, refers primarily to the management of various components within a project³³. For the project to be successfully completed, many or most of these components must also be completed, in the right order, at the right time. In planning a family vacation, for example, it’s important to make plane reservations but not before travel dates and destination are determined.

The informal task and project management that people perform as part of their everyday practice of PIM frequently differ from the more formal “industrial strength” task and project management ³⁴, which is done (sometimes by managerial fiat) in an organizational setting and done also on occasion by highly disciplined individuals. People may use tools like the task module of Microsoft Outlook ³⁵ or the web-based remember the milk ³⁶ application for task management. But tasks are more commonly managed through more ad hoc methods, for example, “in our heads” or through notes scribbled on paper or through self-addressed email messages³⁷. Projects too are frequently planned in our heads (e.g., as we’re driving to work), or through notes quickly written to paper or an electronic document. Also, the folder structures people develop to hold project information can serve as a rough representation of project—its structure and current state of completion³⁸.

There is an important point that may already be obvious to many of you: task/project management and information management are two sides to the same coin. We manage (or should manage) our information with an end in mind—how will this information be needed and used later?³⁹ In some cases, a use is clear. We keep a slide presentation inside the “XYZ conference” folder because we’ll be presenting the slides at the “XYZ conference.” Folder organization in this case is a rough reflection of an anticipated reality. But this presentation may have other users later on that we don’t foresee. The presentation may, for example, form the basis for another presentation we’ll give later in the year at the “ABC conference.” And for other kinds of information such as digital photographs, the use may be years, or decades, from now. Even so, we may file the photos according to features we think we’re likely to remember, for instance by the year in which the photographs were taken or under a name for an associated event (e.g., “Sue’s 50th birthday party”).

Conversely, our efforts to plan a project or to prioritize and complete a set of daily tasks should also impact our management of related information. In fact, the structure of your project, with its various tasks and sub-projects, can form the basis for the organization of related information. A folder that implicitly represents the task to make “hotel reservations” can also contain information concerning hotel alternatives and a reservation confirmation for the hotel actually selected⁴⁰.

Two sides of the same coin. The same also holds true for our efforts to manage our life’s resources—our money, energy, attention and—the only non-replaceable, non-renewable resource—our time. We can’t effectively manage these without also managing associated information—our account and credit card statements and our calendars.

The PIM perspective gives us a stronger statement still: In a digital age of information, the very management of our tasks, our projects, our money, energy, attention and time are exercises in information management. We “see” our future by looking at the calendar(s) we keep. We feel richer or poorer after looking (on-line) at our checking account balances or the current prices of the stocks we hold. As we do so, we are not looking at and working with the “things” directly. Instead, we are looking at and working with information for these things.

1.4 A SHORT HISTORY OF PIM

Here is a newspaper-style history of PIM.

Ancient times. Great new device released called the “human brain.” Everyone gets one for free but without an owner’s manual. Enormous capacity for storage but input and output can be especially difficult. Development of mnemonic techniques is underway but essential rhyming pattern awaits the invention of buns and shoes.

The ultimate device of PIM was and still is the human brain—with capacities of associative storage and retrieval far exceeding that of our devices—current and conceivable. Various mnemonics⁴¹ are essentially information management as applied to human memory.

Since ancient times, human-generated information has taken various external forms from cave drawings to clay tablets to parchment and papyrus to paper. For each form have come tools for writing, storage and retrieval. Tools need to be invented. Consider the vertical filing cabinet—around as long as any of us can remember but invented nevertheless⁴².

The 1940s: Information is a thing to be captured and measured!

A theory of communication is developed which lays the groundwork for a quantitative assessment of information⁴³. Information can be measured for its capacity to reduce uncertainty. The modern dialog on PIM begins with the publication of Vannevar Bush’s “As we may think” article at the close of World War II (1945). Bush proposed a fanciful “Memex” as “an enlarged intimate supplement to (a person’s) memory” (p. 6).

The 1950s: The computer moves from metaphor to modeler of human thought.

Newell and Simon pioneer the computer’s use as a tool to model human thought⁴⁴. Inspired by a computational metaphor, Broadbent develops an information processing approach to human behavior and performance (1958).

The 1960s. Mind trips through hypertext, intelligence augmentation and human cognition.

After the 1950s research showed that the computer, as a symbol processor, could “think” (to varying degrees of fidelity) like people do, the 1960s saw an increasing interest in the use of the computer to help people to think better and to process information more effectively. Working with Andries van Dam and others, Ted Nelson, who coined the word “hypertext,” was part of a team that developed one of the first hypertext systems, The Hypertext Editing System, in 1968⁴⁵. That same year, Douglas Engelbart also completed work on a hypertext system called NLS. Engelbart advanced the notion that the computer could be used to augment the human intellect⁴⁶. In a similar vein, Licklider discussed the potential for a “Man-Machine Symbiosis” (1960). As heralded by the publication of Ulric Neisser’s book Cognitive Psychology (1967), the 1960s also saw the emergence of cognitive psychology as a discipline in its own right—one focused primarily on a better understanding of the human ability to think, learn and remember.

1970s & 1980s. A phrase is born.

The personal computer comes into its own⁴⁷. The phrase “personal information management” is coined⁴⁸ amidst a general excitement over the potential of the personal computer to greatly enhance the human ability to process and manage information. The 1980s also saw the advent of so-called “PIM tools” that provided limited support for the management of such things as appointments and scheduling, to-do lists, phone numbers, and addresses. And a community dedicated to the study and improvement of human-computer interaction also emerged in the 1980s⁴⁹.

1990s & 2000s. A field is born.

The Web is developed⁵⁰. And so in succession are cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), “smartphones” and integrative handheld devices that can seemingly do everything (except, it sometimes seems, establish a clear telephone connection)⁵¹. The process of building a community for the study of PIM began with a Special Interest Group session on personal information management, which was organized as part of the CHI 2004 conference on human-computer interaction⁵². But perhaps the watershed event in the creation of a PIM community was PIM 2005—a special NSF-sponsored workshop⁵³ held in January of 2005 in Seattle⁵⁴. The participants formed a nexus for follow-on workshops⁵⁵, special issues⁵⁶ and an edited book on PIM⁵⁷.

1.5 A NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION IN PERSONAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

PIM is undergoing profound change. In our efforts to understand and track this change, we search for historical metaphors. This search takes us back in time—farther back than the 1940’s and the dawning of the digital age—all the way back to the Stone Age.

Our ancestors were foragers. Before and even when they could hunt, our ancestors gathered and they scavenged the kills left by other animals. Application of the foraging metaphor has led to the development of information foraging models of PIM⁵⁸: These models align our PIM activities with the food gathering activities of our ancestors during the Paleolithic age (early Stone Age). Under foraging models, we move from place to place across our informational landscape in ways that maximize the value of the information we expect to receive.

The Neolithic Age⁵⁹ (new Stone Age) followed the Paleolithic Age and farming followed foraging. Food foraged in the Paleolithic Age was farmed instead in the Neolithic age. Animals once hunted were domesticated and herded⁶⁰.

What about information farming? Will we “farm” information⁶¹ rather than forage for it? And is the foraging model apt to begin with? Underlying both a foraging and a farming metaphor for PIM is a metaphor of information as food.

Is the metaphor of information as food apt?

There are interesting parallels to consider between food and information. Are we getting a “balanced” diet of information or too much informational sugar and fat in the form of, for example, of gossip magazines, celebrity tweets and news shows that treat political debates as sporting contests? Are we becoming informationally obese? We generally know little about the providers of the information we “consume.” Do we need regulatory assurances for the quality of our information—comparable to those we expect for the food we eat?

These and other parallels notwithstanding, there are also important differences between information and food. Our bodies require certain essential vitamins and minerals but these can come from a variety of different foods. Vitamin C can come from a grapefruit or a freshly killed seal. Our bodies are adept at converting food from one form to another—from fat to sugars for energy now or, conversely, from carbohydrates to the fat of adipose tissue for use later on. Information is not a stuff to be so easily converted. Once informed that the stock markets closed lower today, we may make the inference that a stock we own is also trading lower. But such a “conversion” is neither straightforward nor assured. Farther afield, knowledge of the markets does not convert to a forecast for tomorrow’s trading or for the weekend weather.

On the other hand, we can do with information what we cannot do with food: We can eat our informational cake and still have it. We do this, for example, when we watch re-runs of a favorite show on TV or listen for the n^th time to a favorite piece of music or when we view again, with equal pleasure, the photographs we took during a summer vacation. Moreover, information consumed by us is still available for consumption by others. We can forward our photos.

Metaphors of information foraging and information farming may do more to challenge our creative abilities than to illuminate the challenges we face in managing our information.

For example, we “forage” for information in ways that build upon the information we have acquired already. This would seem to be quite unlike the foraging our ancestors did for berries. Facing a long, cold winter, we might always act to maximize the number of berries we gather. Facing a trip to Boston, our informational foraging quickly changes focus as a function of task: decide on dates of travel; book plane tickets; book hotel; make appointments and dinner reservations. Each task demands its own distinct kind of information. With task completion, the associated “informational berries” quickly lose their value. Once hotel reservations have been made, for example, there is little point to a continued gathering of information concerning alternate hotels⁶².

Likewise, there are oddities with the application of a farming metaphor. We may think of situations where the metaphor is apt. We plant the “seed” of a blog post, for example, to grow a “vine” in the form of responses from others. But, more often, the metaphor seems strained. How do we sow our informational seeds? How is the field watered, fertilized and weeded? Is there a growing season? Are we informationally poor for the months of the growing season only to feast on an autumnal harvest? To be sure, we store information. But is this done to stave off an informational famine? Do we ration our information during the long months of winter?

Again, we can find answers to these questions. But these answers are more a testament to our creativity than to the aptness or utility of the foraging and farming metaphors. Exercises in the mapping of these metaphors do little to advance our understanding for the challenges of PIM.

In what sense, then, might we be facing a Neolithic Revolution in personal information? The original Neolithic Revolution brought about two profound changes in the way people lived and in their relationship to the world about them.

1. People actively worked not just to live in their environment but to change it.

2. People settled down.

Efforts to change the environment likely began in the Paleolithic Age with, for example, a seasonal firing of the prairie grasses to promote new growth in edible grasses and a return of game to feed on this growth⁶³. But a transition to farming required a much greater, more local, and more focused concentration of efforts to control the environment. #2 above followed from #1. Ground must be tilled and fenced in to protect against the predations of animals, wild and domesticated. Granaries must be built to store the harvest. Walls must be built to protect against attack from neighboring nomadic tribes. Sedentism is self-reinforcing. It now makes sense to invest greater effort in permanent structures of habitation. Tools no longer need to be portable. Pottery, a heavy, non-portable kind of tool, is developed uniformly and independently across Neolithic cultures isolated from one another in time and space⁶⁴.

The parallels for personal information are approximate but intriguing. We have long been told that we live in an “information age.” In a developed country like the United States, the onset of this age is sometimes traced back to a time in the 1950s when the number of white collar jobs exceeded the number of farming and blue collar jobs⁶⁵. But we could extend backwards in time to a point where literacy, as promoted by public education, became widespread. We might well go farther back in time to the invention of the printing press and a resulting widespread availability of printed material in the form of newspapers, pamphlets and books.

Our understanding of our world is shaped not only by direct experience but also, indirectly, through the information we receive from books, billboards, magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and, of course, the Web. As Whittaker, S. (2011) notes we don’t simply consume, we also curate, that is, we keep and manage information for later use. When print media dominated, for example, people saved clippings from newspapers and magazines. Many of us still do.

Living in an information age has personal relevance if we reflect upon the extent to which our interactions with our world are one step removed from direct experience and mediated, instead, through information items. In deciding to take an umbrella with us to work, we may check the Web for a forecast even before we look outside. In the other direction, many of the actions we take to effect change in our world (e.g., reserving a hotel room or delivering flowers for a friend in the hospital) are accomplished through an exchange of information items such as Web forms and emails.

Are we entering a new “Neolithic” age of information? What would it mean to “settle down” in a digital space of information? The pioneers among us have already long had settlements on the Web in the form of personal (or “professional”) web sites. The rest of us are catching up. We may have one or several personal and professional web sites. We have Facebook⁶⁶ accounts and LinkedIn⁶⁷ accounts. We may even post our autobiographies to Wikipedia⁶⁸. We can construct buildings or whole islands in Second Life⁶⁹. A complete list of possibilities for the “settlement” of the Web gets longer with each passing moment.

And this is just the beginning. As we shall explore in the coming chapters, we can readily mold our digitally encoded information environment through a proliferation of tools—some of our own construction, many more crafted by others but available cheaply or for “free.”

Settling down on the Web in this manner need not mean a concomitant “settling down” in our physical world. To the contrary, many of us may already feel a greater freedom to travel with assurances that we can keep in touch through email, text messaging, tweeting and voice-over-IP (VOIP). A permanent locatable presence on the Web may engender additional freedoms of movement in our physical world. We can post changes of physical and email address. Our web presence may “speak” for us in many routine situations—keeping a boss notified of changes in project status, for example, or keeping family and friends informed of our progress on a trip. We can grant controlled, qualified access to our calendars. We can even, if we choose, “tweet” our movements minute by minute. There is a real possibility that, through our devices and our Web settlements, our information can function as a kind of alter ego—the Enkidu to our Gilgamesh⁷⁰—speaking for us, protecting us when we are otherwise occupied.

1.6 ROADS AND WALLS

Nomadic cultures still exist. A nomadic way of life thrives, for example, in large regions of Mongolia. Mongolian nomads are pastoralists—they tend their herds of cattle, yaks, sheep and goats. But they do not farm. Traveling through nomadic regions of Mongolia one is struck⁷¹ by an absence of two structures so pervasive in an industrialized world: roads and walls. Travel through the Mongolian countryside is by jeep over open land and few roads are maintained outside of its towns. Likewise, outside of the towns in Mongolia, one sees few permanent vertical structures of any kind: no buildings, no walls, not even fences.

An informational settlement needs the metaphorical equivalent of both roads and walls⁷². “Roads”—in the form of search utilities and hyperlinks, for example, connect us to useful services and information (including the information in the settlements of others). Roads in the form of search engine optimization (SEO)⁷³ connect others to the services we want to provide and information we want to share.

“Walls” have a roughly opposite function. We may erect informational barriers (with varying degrees of effectiveness) in the form of “do not call” lists or the “disallow” of a robots.txt file. We use encryption, password-protection, and verification devices such as CAPTCHA⁷⁴. We want to keep out the thieves, spammers and other unwanted intruders.

Informational walls are also a way to keep our information “in.” Folders or tags, for example, if well-defined and consistently used, can provide a wall-like service in the partitioning of our information into useful groupings.

Without roads we stay ignorant and isolated. Without walls we are vulnerable to disorder, intrusion and attack. But both are a curse as well as a blessing. One main road—Internet connectivity—brings us to a world of information but also brings us phishing attempts (“Urgent: Please update your account …”) and hateful computer viruses that destroy our personal information. A wall in the form of junk email detection may block us from noticing an important email message. We may even find ourselves on the other side of a wall of our own construction—unable, for example, to open an encrypted file we’ve created because we can’t recall the password.

No PIM construct is purely “road” or “wall” but, instead, a mixture of each. This is true whether the construct is a supporting tool or technique, a strategy or an overall system of organization. Throughout this book, we’ll assess various constructs of PIM for their “road-like” and “wall-like” characteristics.

For starters, let’s consider one of the most ordinary and widely used of PIM constructs: the file folder.

How is a folder like a road? How is it like a wall? For good and for bad? The folder’s path is a kind of road (and aptly named as such). The folder’s representation in a containing folder or on the computer desktop is road-like. When things go well, we see the folder’s representation (e.g., a folder icon and the display of its name), recognize this as the folder that contains the information we seek and we open it to get at the desired information. By setting permissions for a folder we can realize a useful wall-like control over who can see and modify its contents. Also, folders keep our information grouped. Files and subfolders within move as the folder is moved. The grouping can be backed up or archived.

For the bad, we sometimes forget the way, take a wrong turn, and then fruitlessly look for the information we seek within the wrong folder. Or, we fail to recognize the folder even though it is “right there” in front of us. In these cases, the road is poorly marked and the folder is more like a bad wall—hiding its contents and keeping us on the “other side” of our information.

A recurring theme of this book is that, with the right tools and techniques of PIM, we can build roads and walls in our practice of PIM that work for rather than against us. Consider the fast, index-supported desktop search that is now standard on current operating systems. Evidence suggests that, at least for the return to documents and other files, people continue to prefer a road-like navigation through folders and subfolders⁷⁵. However, on those occasions when navigation fails, people can now turn to search as an alternate “teleporting” method of return⁷⁶.

Furthermoe, consider the conventional file manager and its support for viewing and working with folder contents. The traditional model is perhaps too “wall-like” in the implementation of its features for file manipulation. We cannot easily see the contents of several folders at the same time. More recently, however, we now see support for “libraries”⁷⁷ and a outliner-like “in-place expansion” of folder shortcuts⁷⁸ as tool support that lets us break down the “walls” between folders in cases where we want to see a larger view of our information.

1.7 THE PLAN FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE BOOK

The remaining chapters in Part I (“The Future of Personal Information Management, Part 1: Our Information, Always and Forever”) are as follows.

Chapter 2. Some basics of PIM. How is our information personal? The six senses in which information is personal combine to form a personal space of information (PSI). How do we manage our information? PIM as the creation, maintenance and use of a mapping between need and information yields six basic activities of PIM. PIM is about minute-by-minute tactical decisions of keeping and finding. PIM also needs to be about longer-term meta-level strategies for maintaining, organizing, measuring and making sense of personal information.

Chapter 3. Our information, always at hand. How do we manage when a device that fits in the palm of a hand affords access to a world of people and information that is by turns useful, entertaining, distracting and demanding? Through mobile devices, our physical and digital worlds meet—and sometimes collide. We’re always connected but always on call. How to avoid the dangers of multitasking “busyness.” How to really get “real” things done and, in the process, how to preserve precious memories for a lifetime and beyond?

Chapter 4. Our information, forever on the Web⁷⁹. We must learn to live with, through and “on” the Web. Many of us look for ways to move from scattered “nomadic camps” on the Web to consolidated, permanent settlements where our investments in the management of our information pay off. We need help from our applications. How to transition from vertical, monolithic, “do everything” applications that fragment to horizontal, PIM-activity-centered applications that work together towards a common unity of personal information?

Chapters in Part II (“The Future of Personal Information Management, Part 2: Building Places of Our Own for Digital Information”) are as follows.

Chapter 5. Technologies to eliminate PIM? We have seen astonishing advances in the technologies of information management—in particular to aid in the storing, searching and structuring of information. These technologies will certainly change the way we do PIM; will they eliminate the need for PIM altogether?

Chapter 6. GIM and the social fabric of PIM. We don’t (and shouldn’t) manage our information in isolation. Group information management (GIM), especially the kind practiced more informally in households and smaller project teams, goes hand in glove with good PIM.

Chapter 7. PIM by design. What are some of the methodologies, principles, questions and considerations we can apply as we seek to understand PIM better and to build PIM into our tools, techniques and training?

Chapter 8. To each of us, our own. Just as we must each be a student of our own practice of PIM, we must also be a designer of this practice. This concluding chapter looks at tips, traps and tradeoffs as we work to build a practice of PIM and “places” of our own for personal information.

Some final notes and caveats:

References to scholarly articles of direct relevance to PIM are grouped together into bibliographies at the end of both Parts I and II. Web references and non-PIM references for background reading are generally included directly in footnotes.

I am an unabashed citer of Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) articles when these are reasonably clear and objectively written. The interested reader should use these articles not as a final destination but as a springboard (through references cited) for further study of a given topic.

Although each chapter builds upon previous chapters, each stands on its own. You do not need to read in sequence. But do try to read the next chapter, “Some basics of PIM,” before reading the others.

The book is not a step-by-step “how to.” It aims to help you in your efforts to figure out things for yourself.

The book is not a review of the latest and greatest in PIM tools and technologies. Such a book is out of date even as it is being written.

This book is no crystal ball. How then, is this a book about the “future” of PIM? In two ways:

The book makes reasonable extrapolations from present trends into the future.

The book considers a “present perfect” of basic truths concerning our ways of processing information that have, are and likely always will have relevance.

Present trends and a present prefect of enduring truths: With these clearly in focus, may we each be empowered to determine our own future. May we each lead the lives we wish to live through the artful use of information.

________

¹For general discussions concerning information and its definition see Braman, S. (1989), Buckland, M. (1991, 1997), Capurro and Hjørland (2003), Cornelius, I. (2002), Machlup, F. (1983).

²See, for example, Broadbent’s “Perception and communication” Broadbent, D. (1958) for a discussion of the information processing approach to understanding human intelligence.

³See Shannon, C. (1948) and Shannon and Weaver (1949) for a description of “The Mathematical Theory of Communication.”

⁴For “post-Shannon” views of what information is and how it might be measured see Aftab et al. (2001), Capurro and Hjørland (2003) and Cornelius, I. (2002).

⁵This definition of PIM is taken from Jones, W. (2007).

⁶Daft, Richard L, 1988, Management, p. 5, Dryden Press, ISBN-13: 9780030094736 ISBN: 0030094739.

⁷Jones and Maier (2003).

⁸The screenshot is taken of the web site for Furuvik in Sweden (http://www.furuvik.se/#1041).

⁹For more on group information management, see Lutters et al. (2007).

¹⁰For a review of information literacy initiatives see Eisenberg et al. (2004).

¹¹Pratt et al. (2006).

¹²See, for example, Fiske, and Taylor (1991); Hutchins (1994); and Suchman (1987).

¹³The interested reader is referred to Gibson’s groundbreaking work on affordances (1977, 1979). Also very interesting and more accessible are Norman’s discussions on the impact that “everyday things”—computer based and not—can have on our ability to handle information (1988, 1990, 1993).

¹⁴For a discussion of individual differences as these apply to PIM, see Gwizdka and Chignell (2007). (See also Boardman and Sasse (2004), Malone, T. (1983), Whittaker and Sidner (1996).)

¹⁵For a fascinating study of how (how well) people retrieve photographs they have taken, see Whittaker et al. (2010).

¹⁶See, for example, Jones et al. (2005).

¹⁷The signal-detection analysis was originally developed by Peterson et al. (1954). For its application to keeping decisions see Jones, W. (2004). For a more general discussion on the interplay between cognitive psychology and PIM, see Jones and Ross (2006).

¹⁸See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_information_manager, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Personal_digital_assistants, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_personal_information_managers.

¹⁹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Wizard.

²⁰http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld.

²¹See, for example, Fidel and Pejtersen (2004), Gershon (1995), Lucas (2000) and Pirolli (2006).

²²See, for example, Belkin et al. (1993).

²³For more discussion on information management and knowledge management in organizations, see Garvin (2000), Selamat and Choudrie (2004), Taylor (2004) and Thompson et al. (1999).

²⁴See, for example, Fonseca and Martin (2004) and Rowley (1994).

²⁵See, for example, Karat et al. (2006).

²⁶Why stop with knowledge? Factoring in “wisdom” we might have the following sequence: Information is data in motion; knowledge is information in action; wisdom is knowledge in perspective.

²⁷Pauleen D. and Gorman G., Farnham Personal Knowledge Management: Individual, Organisational and Social Perspectives, in: Gower Pub Co. Retrieved from http://www.gowerpublishing.com/default.aspx?page=641&calcTitle=1&isbn=9780566088926&lang=cy-GB

²⁸http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3062/2600.

²⁹Grudin, J. (1993).

³⁰See Bellotti et al., 2004; Bellotti et al. 2003; Czerwinski et al. 2004; Gwizdka, 2002 a, b; Kaptelinin, 2003; Kim and Allen, 2002; Mackay, 1988; Silverman, 1997; Whittaker and Sidner (1996); Williamson and Bronte-Stewart, 1996; Wolverton, 1999; Yiu, 1997.

³¹See Card et al. (1983).

³²See Bellotti et al., 2003, 2004; Czerwinski et al., 2004; Gwizdka, 2002 a, b; Kaptelinin, 2003; Kim and Allen, 2002; Mackay, 1988; Silverman, 1997; Whittaker and Sidner (1996); Williamson and Bronte-Stewart, 1996; Wolverton, 1999; Yiu, 1997.

³³See Jones, Bruce, & Foxley, 2006; Jones, Bruce, Foxley, & Munat, 2006; Jones, Munat, & Bruce, 2005; Jones et al. (2005).

³⁴http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_management; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management.

³⁵http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/create-tasks-and-to-do-items-HA001229302.aspx.

³⁶ http://www.rememberthemilk.com/

³⁷Jones et al. (2002).

³⁸See Bergman et al. (2010) and also Jones et al. (2005).

³⁹Bruce, H. (2005)

⁴⁰See Bergman et al. (2006). Boardman and Sasse (2004), Jones et al. (2005). The Planz prototype represents one approach that supports an informal project planning as an overlay to the file system (for free download, visit: http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/planner_index.htm).

⁴¹For an excellent review of mnemonic techniques, see Yates, F. (1966).

⁴²Yates, J. (1989).

⁴³Shannon, C. (1948); Shannon and Weaver (1949).

⁴⁴For a description of these pioneering efforts to model human thought, see Newell and Simon (1972), Newell et al. (1958), Simon and Newell (1958).

⁴⁵For more on this early hypertext system and Nelson’s impassioned discussion concerning the potential of hypertext, see Carmody et al. (1969) and Nelson, T. (1965, 1982).

⁴⁶For more on NLS and a discussion on the potential of computers to extend the human capacity for thought, see Engelbart, D. (1962, 1963).

⁴⁷http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer.

⁴⁸See Lansdale, M. (1988).

⁴⁹See Card et al. (1983), Norman, D. (1988).

⁵⁰http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web.

⁵¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant.

⁵²See Bergman et al. (2004).

⁵³National Science Foundation (NSF) grant #0435134: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0435134.

⁵⁴For more information on this PIM 2005 workshop and to access its final report, see: http://pim.ischool.washington.edu/pim05home.htm.

⁵⁵As of this book’s publication, the most recent of these PIM workshops was PIM 2012, held in association with CSCW 2012 back again in Seattle (http://pimworkshop.org/2012—see at the bottom of this site’s home page for a listing of links to the 4 preceding PIM Workshops.

⁵⁶The January 2006 issue of the Communications of the ACM included a special section on PIM (see Teevan, J., Jones, W., and Bederson, B. (eds.). Communications of the ACM: A Special Issue on Personal Information Management. New York: ACM Press, 2006). A special issue on PIM for ACM Transactions on Information Systems was released in 2008.

⁵⁷See Jones and Teevan (2007).

⁵⁸Pirolli and Card (1999)

⁵⁹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution.

⁶⁰See: Bellwood, P. (2004). First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies. Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20566-7. Cohen, M. N. (1977). The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-02016-3. Harlan, J. R. (1992). Crops & Man: Views on Agricultural Origins ASA, CSA, Madison, WI. http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/history/lecture03/r_3-1.html. Gordon Childe (1936). Man Makes Himself. Oxford University Press. Wright, R. (2004). A Short History of Progress. Anansi. ISBN 0-88784-706-40. Barker, G. The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why did Foragers become Farmers? OUP Oxford (Jan. 22, 2009) ISBN 978-0199559954 pp. 292–293.

⁶¹Bates, M. (2002) discusses an information farming model noting, for example, that people often assemble information into collections for later use (similar to our storage of food for later consumption).

⁶²Whittaker, S. (2011) challenges the foraging model of information behavior and, more generally, consumption models of PIM. He advances, instead, a model in which we curate our information (keeping, managing and sometimes exploiting the information we encounter).

⁶³See Wikipedia for an excellent article on the uses of prairie firing in North America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Native_American_use_of_fire).

⁶⁴Wikipedia provides an excellent starting point for learning more about the (often independent) development of pottery in different Neolithic cultures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery).

⁶⁵See Naisbitt’s book (1984), “Megatrends: Ten new directions transforming our lives.” The reader is also invited to review for the accuracy (nearly 30 years ago) of this book’s attempts to predict the future.

⁶⁶www.facebook.com.

⁶⁷http://www.linkedin.com/.

⁶⁸http://www.wikipedia.org/.

⁶⁹http://secondlife.com/.

⁷⁰http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh.

⁷¹As I was during a trip made in the summer of 2003.

⁷²As an exercise, the reader might try a broader application of the “road” and “wall” metaphors. Roads stand for flow, exchange and movement. Walls for stasis and the restriction of movement. Roads are for projection and an optimistic anticipation of gain (the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow); walls are for protection and a more pessimistic fear of loss. Activities of youth are more road-like; activities of age are more wall-like. The Internet in its youth was very road-like. But now we are increasingly seeing efforts to build walls, for example, in the form of areas of restricted or privileged access. Farther afield, it is interesting to note the “road” and “wall” themes expressed in two “master plots” of literature: “The hero takes a journey” and “Stranger comes to town” (http://teachingcompany.12.forumer.com/a/9-master-plotsthe-stranger-and-the-journey_post2248.html).

⁷³Wikipedia provides an excellent article on SEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization). For a longer, highly readable treatment see on-line “The Beginner’s Guide to SEO” (http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo).

⁷⁴http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA.

⁷⁵Barreau, D. (2008); Bergman et al. (2008).

⁷⁶Teevan et al. (2004).

⁷⁷http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7.

⁷⁸http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planz.

⁷⁹Technically speaking, the World Wide Web or, simply, the Web, is built using the Internet (see http://www.answers.com/topic/web-vs-internet). However, the terms are used interchangeably throughout this book.