Information Overload Can Shut Down Logic in Brain

A colleague forwarded this awesome article on information overload and it’s effect on the brain – I Can’t Think, Newsweek. There seems to be a point at which too much information can just shut down logical thought processes.

As the information load increased, she found, so did activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region behind the forehead that is responsible for decision making and control of emotions. But as the researchers gave the bidders more and more information, activity in the dorsolateral PFC suddenly fell off, as if a circuit breaker had popped. “The bidders reach cognitive and information overload,” says Dimoka.

Most of us have experienced this somewhat. It’s almost a full cycle in play – when there is no information we make instinct based decisions; then with more information we make data driven decisions; finally, with too much information we go back to instinct decisions. Or do we?

The danger here and the key insight for me is that too much information can shut down logic, whereas too little information forces you to use instinct much more. Put another way, no information may be better in some ways than too much information.

That’s not where anyone wants to go though. A better solution would be put more wood behind helping users get the information they need rather than just inundating them with information. This is something I am super excited about as it is in line with the mission over in Bing – to help users complete tasks. By re-pivoting the goal of search engines to a user centric view (what I want to get done) vs. a provider centric view (organizing information for example), you end up making drastically different choices in the capabilities you build. I think the results speak for themselves as you compare the experiences on leading search engines and Bing for example.

Search is Not Over–“Piles and Piles of Garbage”

For search observers, this video is a gem. I won’t write my thoughts just yet, but certainly worth a watch. Click on the image ….

Get Bing Bar 7– Yes, You Really Will Be Surprised!

We just shipped Bing Bar 7, a new toolbar that is both useful and fast. My particular favorite features are the multiple email reader (which allows you to quickly check emails form Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail wherever you are on the web) and Facebook tab (which allows you check news feed, photos, messages and more on Facebook). For those of us addicted to email and Facebook, this is a great to check these things without really leaving what you are doing. A solution for ADD that doesn’t require drugs!

On a practical level, the weather and traffic tabs are awesome if you quickly want to check the state of the roads or slopes before you head out. I drive to work so traffic on the highway can add 30 minutes to my commute if I get it wrong – there is a work around on the backstreets that only adds 5 minutes or so.

There are other useful features too, like the news and stock reader for quick check on what’s going on in the world, the movie and game tabs for some alternative mental stimulation, the dictionary for when you don’t know a word but don’t want to open up a new browser tab. And finally, the translator which translates websites, automatically if you wish. This is my blog in Traditional Chinese!

This isn’t your older brothers tool bar, go check it out!

Bing vs. Google … Conclusion “Bing Matters”

Very interesting discussions going on for those who haven’t seen. For those that have, here’s my recap

Google Accuses Bing of Cheating

Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this.

Google Sounds Hypocritical

Google copies every original idea it can find, like a massive information sponge, sucking up business models and innovative creations and forming its own duplicates, often with little success. In the last year, its most obvious advances were copies of Twitter… and the revised layout of Bing.

Bing Says We Don’t Cheat

We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.

Conclusion: Bing Matters!

Anyone watching Google and Microsoft spar over search results has to be torn between being shocked and amused. Google accuses Microsoft of stealing its search results for Bing. Microsoft says it doesn’t steal Google results. A lot of discussion ensues—some of it hysterical. My bottom line: Bing matters.

Bing vs. Google on Superbowl

After almost 10 years in the US, I am still trying to figure out the the whole “football” thing. Where I come from, one plays FOOTball with one’s foot. Technicalities aside, it is great to be coming up to the only time in the year when I actually watch an American Football game, and wanted to draw the attention of my more fanatical friends to the beauty of Bing when it comes to prepping for the stats spatter about to come.

As I have blogged about before, Bing gets you the answer you need faster rather than just loading the page a thousandth of a second more quickly. Take a look at a simple search to compare compare teams on Bing (left) and Google (right). You still get the web answers, but rather than clicking on several links and hitting the back button, you get the basics on the main results page.

or maybe the quarterbacks for comparison ….

Bing (top image below) even has a feature called “Visual Search” that allows you to explore the teams easily from a single place making topical exploration easier vs. the pure web results from Google (bottom image).

Check out some searches and let the results speak for themselves.

Re: WSJ Article on Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

A friend forwarded an article with the explosive title “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”. Intro excerpt below should give you a flavor of what it’s all about. The debate my wife and I had is a microcosm of the comments on this article. Last year I blogged about my thoughts on teaching kids values and noted how different cultures approach values in radically different ways. The chart in that post shows China as being high on the Secular-Rational (as opposed to Traditional) and pretty far towards Survival (as opposed Self Expression). The USA in contrast is mid way between Secular-Rational and Traditional, and very high on Self Expression. Coming at child rearing with these vastly different values results in very different approaches. Not sure if one is right or wrong, but it’s certainly interesting to see the end results.

“A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
• attend a sleepover
• have a play date
• be in a school play
• complain about not being in a school play
• watch TV or play computer games
• choose their own extracurricular activities
• get any grade less than an A
• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama
• play any instrument other than the piano or violin
• not play the piano or violin.”

Read the article here.

Re: Google vs. Bing: The Fallacy Of The Superior Search Engine

Great article in Search Engine Land comparing Bing and Google on search results quality. Very subjective, but author does ask a very pertinent question or two …

Not too surprisingly, there was not a massive disparity in the results of my little test. In fact, Bing came out on top.

Of course, this begs the question why has Google been so successful? Are they still riding their brand laurels? Has Microsoft’s brandings and rebrandings of search hurt them among consumers?

Check out the actual results in the article and give it a go yourself.