Jonathan B. Spira (born 1961) is a

researcher Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

and

industry analyst An industry analyst performs primary and secondary market research within an industry such as information technology, consulting or insurance. Analysts assess sector trends, create segment taxonomies, size markets, prepare forecasts, and develop in ...

known for his work in the area of collaboration and knowledge sharing and the problem of

information overload Information overload (also known as infobesity, infoxication, information anxiety, and information explosion) is the difficulty in understanding an issue and effectively making decisions when one has too much information (TMI) about that issue, ...

Early life

Spira was born in New York and grew up in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, the son of photographic pioneer

Fred Spira Fred Spira (1924–2007) was an inventor and innovator in photography as well as a collector of photographic equipment, images, books, and ephemera. He is credited as one of three individuals who opened up the U.S. market to quality Japanese photo ...

and his wife Marilyn (née Hacker). He studied Central European History at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

where he was a member of the

Pi Lambda Phi Pi Lambda Phi (), commonly known as Pi Lam, is a social fraternity with 145 chapters (44 active chapters/colonies). The fraternity was founded in 1895 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Pi Lambda Phi is headlined by prestigious chapte ...

fraternity and conducted his graduate studies at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's List of universities in Germany, sixth-oldest u ...

(Ludwig-Maximilians Universität)

Career

Spira began his career in business and technology while still in high school when he became involved in the management of office systems at

Spiratone Spiratone was a company specializing in low-cost lenses and filters for cameras, lighting, and darkroom equipment. The company was started by Fred Spira in 1941 in the bathroom of his parents' apartment where he developed film. In 1946, it rel ...

, a company founded and run by his father, Fred Spira. After completing his studies in 1983, he founded a research and IT advisory firm,

Basex BaseX is a native and light-weight XML database management system and XQuery processor, developed as a community project on GitHub. It is specialized in storing, querying, and visualizing large XML documents and collections. BaseX is platform-in ...

(originally called The Basex Group) in 1983, that focused on helping organizations understand how

knowledge worker Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include programmers, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is to "thin ...

s work and what they can do to manage them more effectively. He has been associated with the firm ever since.

Research

Spira's research focuses on the problems organizations are having as they migrate from the industrial age to the

knowledge economy The knowledge economy (or the knowledge-based economy) is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is based principally on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to advancement in technical and scientific inno ...

and what managers can do to remain competitive. According to Knowledge Management in the Public Sector, the main thrust of Spira's arguments is that software companies should develop new systems that are designed from the beginning for knowledge and information work but collaboration and knowledge sharing are "less a question of technology than of systems that facilitate people working together." Spira started researching the problem of information overload in the early 1990s and was interviewed in March 1993 by

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

on the topic. In 2003, he published research that assigned specific costs to components of the problem of information overload and in 2008 published an estimate of the cost of information overload to the U.S. economy ($900 billion per annum). In 2008, he helped found th
Information Overload Research Group
a business and academic consortium that is working to bring attention to the problem and potential solutions.

Books and publications

Spira is the author o
Overload! How Too Much Information Is Bad For Your Organization
published by Wiley in 2011. He is also the co-author o
The History of Photography
(Aperture, 2001), named a "best book of the year" by the New York Times
/ref> when it came out. He is the author of ''Managing the Knowledge Workforce: Understanding the Information Revolution That's Changing the Business World'' (Mercury Business Press, 2005). He has also written several major reports on

including ''Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us''. He is regularly quoted by publications including the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

, the

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

, among others.

Notes

Sources

Basex Web siteThe History of PhotographyStrategic IntelligenceKnowledge worker: Do you relate?Lost knowledge: file not foundStep up to the knowledge economy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spira, Jonathan American non-fiction writers Living people University of Pennsylvania alumni 1961 births