[Woman's Hour] Communication Overload
On 30 December, I took part in a discussion about information overload on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Here’s the blurb:
Communication Overload
Midnight on New Year’s Eve is the time when the most text messages are likely to ping around the world to our loved ones. And as we’re in the middle of the festive season we’re all contacting family and friends. With the relentless march of new technology it seems we could be reaching critical mass when it comes to communication overload. What is the brave new world of technology doing to our family and work relationships. And what does it hold for us in the future?
Jenni is joined by Aleks Krotoski; Social psychologist and writer specialising in the Internet and Dr Nicola Millard, Futurologist at BT who predicts trends in society and technology.
[Royal Institution] Hearing Connections' John Matthias
[Royal Institution] Hearing Connections' Daniel Jones
[Serendipity Engine] Recent wanderings
The serendipity engine has been on the road over the last few months, making appearances at the University of Cambridge at the Arcadia Seminar series, at Google at the Luvvies and Boffins event, for New Humanist‘s/Robin Ince’s Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People at the Bloomsbury Theatre, and this week in Leicester at DeMontfort University’s Institute of Creative Technologies research seminar series.
[LSE] Visiting Fellowship
[DMLCentral] All Hail the Analogue Computer!

Aleks Krotoski
is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity.
Her new book, Untangling the Web, based on her Guardian and Observer column, will be published in August 2012.
You can find Aleks all over the Web.
Topic: Addiction
There may be only 39 working days until I deliver the Untangling the Web book manuscript, but I’m still looking for contributions, stories, links and ideas on a few topics to produce the five exclusive chapters that will join the extended Untangling the Web columns
This week, I’m looking at addiction - one of the many evils levelled against the Web. To what extent can people become hooked on this technology, and is there something about it that makes it more or less compelling than other media?
Internet Addiction Clinics have opened up around the world - including one in the UK - and there is some evidence in the literature that the interactivity of the experience can draw us in, suggesting that different parts of our neuroanatomy is activated in the brains of “addicts” than “non-addicts”.
And it’s not just games that have proven “addictive”, although those are the regularly-cited culprits. The terrible tragedy of the Facebook Mom (used as a case study out every time there’s a story on this, like the one in The Independent a couple of weeks ago) highlights that the rest of the web is a potentially dangerous place to be.
But how much of this is unfounded, and what is the real evidence? Send your comments to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk, or tweet me @aleksk.
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[Woman's Hour] Communication Overload
On 30 December, I took part in a discussion about information overload on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Here’s the blurb:
Communication Overload
Midnight on New Year’s Eve is the time when the most text messages are likely to ping around the world to our loved ones. And as we’re in the middle of the festive season we’re all contacting family and friends. With the relentless march of new technology it seems we could be reaching critical mass when it comes to communication overload. What is the brave new world of technology doing to our family and work relationships. And what does it hold for us in the future?
Jenni is joined by Aleks Krotoski; Social psychologist and writer specialising in the Internet and Dr Nicola Millard, Futurologist at BT who predicts trends in society and technology.
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