from the "information overload" department…

Another good “Thought for the Day” from the EMC-Squared calendar:
“From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have ‘published’ at least 32 million books; 750 million artilces and essays; 25 million songs; 500 million images; 500,000 movies; 3 million videos, TV shows and short films; and 100 billion public web pages.” –Kevin Kelly “Scan this Book!” The New York Times, May 14, 2006
This has implications for both suppliers and end users of automation products and services.
The hooforaw about alarm management over the past few years is interesting, because it is a deliberate exercise in information overload. When putting in alarms cost real money, we didn’t do it. But when a DCS based alarm only cost zero cents, we put in hundreds. Why? Because we could. And so we did.
Now we’re getting ready to give managers and the entire enterprise access to plant floor data…and do we know why? Sometimes, I think it is, again, because we can.
This makes it difficult for real decision making– you can’t get through the signal to noise ratio.