Man Overboard: Societies are Drowning in a Flood of Information.

(Toronto, Ontario)—Information Experts Nick Bontis and James Gleik have both identified information overload as one of today’s most formidable threats to modern society.

“Finding a particular piece of knowledge, separating it from the flood of nonsense is our most serious problem,” said James Gleik, author of “The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood,” in a recently broadcast PBS interview.

“I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Gleik,” says Dr. Nick Bontis, author of “Information Bombardment: Rising above the Digital Onslaught.” “Our biggest problem is we have no idea how to filter, organize and prioritize all the information we receive.”

According to Dr. Bontis, noise contaminates every aspect of our lives. Junk mail, spam, sales pitches, gossip and propaganda saturate our attention spans. Dissecting real knowledge from today’s barrage of information is like searching for dry land in the midst of the ocean.

Mr. Gleik described in the interview all new information technologies are associated with anxieties and fears. “People in the early era of the printing press worried about what it would mean when there were just too many books,” stated Gleik.

“The key word here is cumulative codified information,” says Dr. Bontis. “This term refers to all information recorded in the world since it began. Information previously doubled in quantity over centuries; today it doubles in less than a day!”

Bontis cites several recent events resulting from poor information management. In each, information bombardment obscured valuable knowledge that could have thwarted the subsequent disaster. Examples include:

* Hurricane Katrina’s devastation on New Orleans
* The attacks of 9/11
* The Columbia shuttle disaster
* Failure to “connect the dots” prior to the Christmas Day terrorist plot
* The Great Recession of 2008

“Information bombardment is without discrimination,” says Bontis. “Individuals, organizations and even institutions are affected. One doesn’t have to search hard to find examples of how too much information created massive catastrophes.”

In his book, Dr. Bontis offers strategies to deal with information bombardment ranging from techniques for individuals to global institutions. This timely advice is important in order to gain control of what both authors see as a major modern concern.

About the Author:
Dr. Nick Bontis was named a 2010 Top 5 speaker world-wide for management and one of the world's top management gurus of 2010, along with such luminaries as Jack Welch, Tom Peters, Michael Porter, and Jim Collins. He is an internationally sought-after management consultant and keynote speaker, hand-picked by the United Nations, the US Navy, Microsoft, IBM, Accenture, KPMG, Century 21, and others to help navigate the knowledge era. He is a popular TV and radio personality, a leading academic researcher and an award-winning, tenured professor of strategic management at McMaster University. As one of the world’s most cited authors in the fields of intellectual capital and knowledge management, he has amassed over a dozen prestigious teaching and research awards. He was recently recognized as a 3M National Teaching Fellow, an exclusive honor bestowed upon the top professors in the nation.

Institute for Intellectual Capital Research
11 Hackamore Court, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada L9K 1N7
Contact: Dr. Nick Bontis
Phone: 905-525-9140 ext. 23918
E-mail: nick@bontis.com
Web Site: www.InformationBombardment.com

This release was published on openPR.