… as the constant flow of information and interaction is likely to never cease (unless there is a major outage in Internet service at some point in time, though that has not yet happened).

And yet, it can be argued that the ways we work with the constant flows of information are still very new.  We are coming out of a good half-century of "work design" in which much information and knowledge was highly structured.  Indeed, organizational structures (the architecture of the ways in which knowledge is put to work) have been designed to ensure that the flows of information and knowledge went "up" to the top, to the small executive group who watch, think, strategize and direct.

We used to … and still do … speak of "reporting relationships", as in "who, or what job, do you (or does your job) report to ?".  As I think many people realize, over time that kind of structure tends to ensure that the kinds of information that "flow up" becomes edited (edit the bad news out, or frame it so that it is acceptable).

Given that we are arguably moving headlong into a new environment for working with information and knowledge in constant flows, I often find myself wondering what will be next .. and then next .. and then next .. in the endless stream of applications that help us manipulate, manage and sometimes mangle the process of writing and publishing to the Web.

The Web is now a major part of hundreds of millions of peoples’ lives. Personal publishing of some form or another, whether it’s using a wiki with your team or is called blogging or something else, won’t be going away any time soon.

As we use software and the Internet more and more for working with information and knowledge it is becoming clearer and clearer that  every individual has her or his own working style (have you ever watched over your friend’s, or your sister’s, or your dad’s shoulder whilst they are doing something on the computer, or on the web ? I’ll bet you’re just like me, and everyone else I have ever seen … you just instinctively want to reach out ands steer, because they aren’t doing it the way you do) …

On the Web, info flows in to your conscious awareness all the time .. continuously. Whether it’s via an RSS aggregator, or through some search activity, or just by browsing and link-hopping. You’re always watching, reading .. using your cognitive capabilities and style to *interact* with the flows of information passing in front of your eyes.

The quest has been underway for some time … and won’t stop …  to design, make and offer applications that give an individual maximum time for reading and thinking whilst (by definition)  one is at the center of this continuous flow of information. Ideally,  most operations - most anything you want to do, other than typing itself - down to one click, but it’s not likely that we’ll get every operation down to that level of simplicity. But many, if not most will be.

In the blogging / personal publishing environment, publishing all sorts of other digital content (podcasts, self-created mp3’s, photo slide shows, video clips) is quickly becoming as easy as publishing text, links and images are now. It will soon be the case for knowledge workers everywhere to employ formidably simple *information pivots* which will allow you, the personal publisher, read, think, write and express yourself as clearly and elegantly as possible … whilst still offering you significant flexibility, versatility and power to address the wide range of individual’s personal publishing habits.

This will require workers to become more effective at managing both theior cognitive capacity and the way(s) in which they put that to work in the ongoing, never-ending, flow of information. And this too is a never-ending quest.

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