The information paradox: Push vs Pull

As every day I was in my car, going back home after a working day and I asked myself how about a news I heard few days before. I realized that even though I was really interested on that news and how that would have ended up, I completely miss to follow the updates and still today I don’t know.

That occasion make me realize a simple but also very relevant phenomenon that is going on about the information. Today we receive more and more information in a “push” way throughout TV, Internet, Social Media and Network, Email, Alerts, Popup, etc.

Many times it happens to me that I open my browser in order to look for something but then a news raise automatically so I start reading it. That bring me somewhere completely different and sometimes I even forget the reason why I opened the browser itself.

Even though you set your areas of interests through the people, pages, newspapers topics and groups you want to follow, in reality today the information we got are 90% pushed to us instead of being us looking for it. I addition their availability in everywhere make the “consumption” of it always faster in a hit-and-run way. 5 minutes waiting for the metro, in the post office queue, waiting for colleagues in a meeting.

The final effect is that you get less and less the information you want (pull way) and more the information that someone wants you to have (push way) that turns rapidly in marketing and focus your attention on the news that has to have more focus from the mass.

The areas of interest become market data for people that want to sell something and to understand where the fashion is moving.