Monday, October 13, 2008

Not information overload--filter failure

Clay Shirky presented "It's not information overload. It's filter failure" at Web 2.0 Expo NY. Here are my notes.

  • The assumption is that the information is going to keep increasing .
  • Before the Internet, the source was the filter.
    • My rewording: Newspapers and book publishers decided what was filtered because it was costly to publish (i.e., What if we publish, but no one bought the book?)
    • Now the cost of publishing is negligible so where is the filter? When the source doesn't filter, how is it information filtered? Individuals have to learn to filter.
  • We have to get better at filtering and keep re-tuning those filters.
  • Filters for information must be automated, manually constructed, and continuously re-tuned. All solutions for filters are temporary.
  • It's not an information overload problem, it's a filter failure, and we, as individuals, have to create, rethink, and re-tuned the filters.
  • Managing privacy information flow is unnatural for most of us because before the Internet, providing private information was difficult, inconvenient, and inefficient.
    • My thoughts: it's a new paradigm and we rethink the social social structure, expectations, the underlying way for which we decide what to share and not share.
  • Today, we design the filters so the privacy works the way we want it?
  • Large groups are tolerant of free riders where small groups are not tolerant of free riders.
    • My rewording: In large groups you can easily have lurkers. In small groups, you must be able to contribute in some way--just lurking is not permitted.
  • It's a mental shift--rethinking the model--we are the same as fish in the ocean--we are just in the flow.
    • My rewording: The ocean isn't the problem. The question is: how do we navigate the flow?
  • Rethinking the model because before the Internet the filter of the information was at the source. Now the filters are with the people.
  • Updating the old filters is not the fix.
  • We should re-think the social norms.
  • When you think you have information overload, think about what filters broke.
    • How is email broken? What are the solutions? Other methods of sharing, wikis, blogs, Twitter,FriendFeed, instant messaging.
    • How are feeds from newsreaders broken? How do I streamline and choose what feeds I read? Constantly changing feeds in my reader.
    • What about other solutions? Friendfeed and Twitter for manual filtering?
    • Still not working? More solutions coming.

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting these notes - I wrote a whole aside in mine about the large group vs. small group thing, because that can be taken on a tangentially different path - but I was rambling enough in mine already. These notes are quite helpful!