Bit by Bit

The heads of school for the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) had the opportunity to hear Mark Hurst at its annual conference. This post originally appeared on June 21, 2008. Mark was well received, entertaining, and immensely informative.

Who would have known that those magical zeros and ones that I taught in earlier math classes would power our economy, vehicles, communication, and lives. The bits that make up the basic binary number system confounds the most technologically literate when you realize that computers and programming are about switches either being on (1) or off (0).

Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload by Mark Hurst is both basic and helpful to those who readily use computers and the Internet. Hurst's book defines bit overload, i.e. too much information, and gives solutions and methods for managing and avoiding overload. This includes working your email efficiently, managing your to do list, and keeping your computer desktop and files clean and orderly. Have you heard of the Dvorak keyboard map, QuicKeys, or a bit lever? Fascinating answers are part of Bit Literacy.

Get to know the author better by reading an interview with Mark at Argus Center for Information Architecture; you get a good idea of what makes Mark tick, and the site is loaded with related links.