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Premise:
We will increasingly be bombarded with information.
I am not going to prove this premise, because you
already know it's true: Technology eases information
transfer -> technological use will continue to increase
dramatically -> information will increasingly permeate
our lives.
Now, there exists this notion that information is
doubling every X years or so. If you just consider
raw bits of data, this notion is quite valid. With
800++ million Web pages (a number out-of-date the
moment I write it) and countless uses of the electro-magnetic
spectrum (TV, radio, cell phones, remote controls,
etc.), you can hardly go anywhere to escape raw
bit bombardment.
And we're not talking about critically useful information
here – just the annoying promotional department
has become an insurmountable glob. I personally
could do without billboards, telemarketers, and
door-to-door solicitors, which we rendered trite
long ago (although they haven't gone away). Now
we have spam, UCE, CD-Roms, banner ads, and pretty
soon we'll have individually targeted ads and corporate-sponsored
space exploration.
So who cares? After all, if we just index all this
information in some cool hypertext fashion, won't
it be pretty easy to get what we want? And furthermore,
why don't we just let the ads keep on comin', since
as long as banner ads are deemed effective, they
can pay for free information to the end user, i.e.
me?
Yes, we're heading toward endless bits of well-indexed
free information on anything anyone has ever thought
about; but, to get at this information you have
to know what you want. You need key words, lots
of specific key words. You need questions, whims,
a drive to learn.
And of course I am cynical. I just don't believe
that our predominately apathetic society is prepared
for such a shift in information transfer. And the
corporations know it. The couch potato will always
have TV, but when it comes to the Internet, when
it comes to choice, what happens? Corporations create
massive "portal" sites designed to turn the WWW
into a TV super store. And it's working, as far
as I can tell.
Yet, just because we aren't ready to utilize our
technology doesn't mean it won't be useful in the
future. I use it, and you probably do too (after
all, you are reading this). The problem then becomes:
How do we get the rest of people interested in things?
How do we get people to find key words? How do we
get people to go to your personal Web site, where
you have a detailed analysis of the chemistry of
Pyrex?
And that I don't know. I hope you can help me figure
it out.
Just be aware of information overload – it is both
a savior and a hindrance. There is so much stuff
and therefore so much to search. Where do you start?
What are you interested in? In a society of compulsory
school curriculum and force-fed programming, it
becomes difficult to figure out what you want to
know.
Copyright
© 1999 by Gabe Weinberg
Check out other writing by Gabe Weinberg at: http://www.mindspring.com/~yegg/
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