The document discusses the exponential growth of information and data online. It notes that while the amount of information available is vast, much of it is spam, advertisements, or low-quality content people rarely engage with. This leads to increased entropy and disorder online as high-quality information becomes harder to find. The document suggests focusing on internal processes like writing, communication and information architecture to improve quality rather than just adding more content or making superficial changes.

1. INFORMATION ENTROPY
By Oliver Reichenstein, iA Inc.

2. 2012

3. 15,000,000
Books

4. 51,117,600
New Websites

5. 1,000,000,000+
Facebook Users

6. 1,100,000,000
Smartphone Subscribers

7. 2,400,000,000
Total Users

8. 182,500,000,000
Tweets

9. 380,000,000,000
Photos

10. 985,000,000,000
Facebook Likes

11. 1,500,000,000,000
Google Searches

12. 8,600,000,000,000
Short Messages

13. 52,852,000,000,000
E-mails

14. 1 Trillion Dollars

15. 15 Trillion Dollars

16. 52 Trillion Dollars

18. 52 Trillion in 1$ Bills

19. QUALITY

20. 52 Trillion

21. 68% spam

22. 99.99% in the trash.

23. 48,000,000,000 hours of YouTube.

24. 1,000,000,000 x “Gangnam Style”.

25. 99.999% Trash.

34. The Web
has become like
TV.

35. It’s noisy.

36. It’sboring.

37. It is too much mostly
Advert
iseme
nt.

38. WHY?

39. “When you're young, you look at
television and think, There's a
conspiracy. The networks have conspired
to dumb us down. But when you get a
little older, you realize that's not true.
The networks are in business to give
people exactly what they want. That's a
far more depressing thought. Conspiracy
is optimistic! … We can have a
revolution! But the networks are really
in business to give people what they
want. It's the truth.” —Steve Jobs

40. The medium is a mirror. Because
humans are messy, everything will get
even messier.

41. :(

42. “Language allows information to
accumulate more and more rapidly as
time passes. Due to language I can
receive signals from Confucius,
Heraclitus, Plato, et cetera, et cetera.
Now the acceleration of information has
reached a point where I think it’s totally
out of control and nobody can stop it.”
— Robert Anton Wilson

43. We are doing with our mind what we
have successfully done to our
environment. We are making a
mess.

46. ENTROPY

47. 1. A measure of the unavailable energy
in a closed thermodynamic system that
is also usually considered to be a
measure of the system's disorder...
Broadly: the degree of disorder or
uncertainty in a system
2a : the degradation of the matter and
energy in the universe to an ultimate
state of inert uniformity
2b : a process of degradation or
running down or a trend to disorder
3: chaos, disorganization, randomness

48. 1. A measure of the unavailable energy
in a closed thermodynamic system that
is also usually considered to be a
measure of the system's disorder...
Broadly: the degree of disorder or
uncertainty in a system
2a. The degradation of the matter and
energy in the universe to an ultimate
state of inert uniformity
2b : a process of degradation or
running down or a trend to disorder
3: chaos, disorganization, randomness

49. 1. A measure of the unavailable energy
in a closed thermodynamic system that
is also usually considered to be a
measure of the system's disorder...
Broadly: the degree of disorder or
uncertainty in a system
2a. The degradation of the matter and
energy in the universe to an ultimate
state of inert uniformity
2b. A process of degradation or running
down or a trend to disorder
3: chaos, disorganization, randomness

50. 1. A measure of the unavailable energy
in a closed thermodynamic system that
is also usually considered to be a
measure of the system's disorder...
Broadly: the degree of disorder or
uncertainty in a system
2a. The degradation of the matter and
energy in the universe to an ultimate
state of inert uniformity
2b. A process of degradation or running
down or a trend to disorder
3. Chaos, disorganization, randomness

53. WHY SO NEGATIVE?

54. “Iteration scales collaboration: Lots of
people making small changes. Just as
inaccuracy scales knowledge: Knowledge
can't get huge unless it's allowed to be
wrong sometimes... and just as
messiness scales meaning.”
—David Weinberger

55. Messiness scales meaning? How so?
Automatically? Because it’s… all…
like… you know… awesome?

56. WHAT DO WE KNOW FOR SURE?

57. “From a scientific point of view,
optimism and pessimism are
objectionable: optimism assumes, or
tempts to prove, that the universe exists
to please us, and pessimism that it
exists to displease us. Scientifically,
there is no evidence that it is concerned
with us either one or the other way.”
—Bertrand Russell

62. We are good at cleaning up, but making
a mess and ignoring it, this is what we
are really good at. And in both cases
technology works as an amplifier.

63. Is it pessimistic to assume that what
analog technology has done to our
environment, information technology is
doing to our minds?

64. Information Entropy.

65. “…commodification [of personal data]
is not happening against the wishes of
ordinary citizens but because this is
what ordinary citizen-consumer want.
Look no further than Google’s email
and Amazon’s Kindle to see that no
one is forced to use them: people do
it willingly.”
–Evgeny Morozov
(yes, that [negative] guy)

66. CAN WE DESIGN OR PROGRAM
THIS AWAY?

67. 1. Reduction creates essence.
(We can do a better job at focussing on essence.)

68. 2. Silence and pauses give structure.
(Meaning needs Pauses. Thought needs room. We can improve our own diet.)

69. 3. Details clear things up.
(And they show that you care as a human being for another human being.)

70. 4. Conscious repetition is fun.
(Redundancy makes a message memorable, identifiable and solid.
Kids love repetition. Repetition is fun. Repetition is funny. “New” is overrated.)

71. 5. Negativity motivates.
(Don’t be negative? Branding negativity as evil and unwise is utter ideological
nonsense. Negativity is as evil as the color black, it is as unwise as the word “No”.
There is nothing wrong with negativity. Negativity has its place in communication and
so does positivity. Ultimately, negativity can be a much stronger motivator than
positivity. If you censor negativity, how do you grow? To grow, you better embrace
negativity. What you should do, is trying to avoid all optimism and pessimism. That’ll
help you seeing reality for what it is and not for what you wish it to be.)

72. 6. Slowness is powerful.
(There is no need to increase overall user engagement, we engage enough. It’d be nice
to start shaping technology so it slows us down a little.)

73. …and?

74. OK, NOW ENOGH WITH THE
NEGATIVITY AND THE REPETITION
AND THE SLOWNESS. GIVE US
SOMETHING…
NEW!

75. Design is a process.
Writing is a process.
Business is a process.
(Improving the quality not a matter of good intentions. It’s how you do it. It’s a matter
of process.)

76. If the process sucks, the result sucks.
(There is no killer method to solve all problems. Problem solving is a process. Always
focus on the process, if you’r unhappy with the result.)

77. Design Processes.
Editorial Processes.
Business Processes.
(Improve your team’s performance? Maybe invest into improving the internal
communication before you raise salaries, hire more staff and move into an even cooler
office? Improve the financial industry? Well maybe you should look at how they
communicate with each other, how they read and write, how they communicate
internally before you you try to fix their results.)

78. Look at internal information processes
before you paint a nice picture of a
corporation on the outside.
(One can feel that the NYT has a broken Content Management System, that they use
Word to write and edit texts, that they send those word document back and forth. One
can feel it not only on their home page, one can feel it in the article.)

79. Your information architecture is your
brand architecture. To improve it:

80. 1. Reduction creates essence.
2. Silence and pauses give structure.
3. Details clear things up.
4. Conscious repetition is fun.
5. Negativity motivates.
6. Slowness is powerful.
7. Focus on process (not on pretty pics).

81. THANK YOU.