There is no information overload, only filter fail

One of the things that the internet has fundamentally changed is language, so I find it a little bit ironic that there is much buzz about the semantic web because the culture of web 2.0 is chock full of all kinds of creative uses of language. The most recent term I learned is bacn. Bacn is that email that is jamming your inbox. It is not spam but it sometimes feels like it. Its is all information that you opted to have sent to you, but you really don't have time to read, but you think you will some day so it sits in your inbox unread. I was happy to know that I am not the only one that has this problem, but also that it is common enough to have a clever slang word.

I opened my gmail and all I could see was bacn. A transient moment of information overload came over me, until I realized the situation was a filter fail. And the failure was on my part, because I had failed to use the filters available in gmail. In less than 15 minutes I had set-up several filters to index and archive my lists without ever going to my inbox. Search-centric email is the greatest thing that has happened since email itself. Google's mission is to organize the worlds information, but I know at least in my world, mission accomplished.