On firehoses and filters: Part 1

In short, with democratized access, the web became more saturated than ever before, and as consumers, we began to spend more and more time trying to sort through it all. In a state of analysis paralysis, how do we disaggregate signal from noise?

Bottom line: When the amount of information available to be filtered is effectively unlimited, as is the case on the Net, then every improvement in the quality of filters will make information overload worse.

While the obstruction of taste and the tactic of corrupt personalization may feel like individual problems—users must work harder to identify what they truly like—it also quickly scales up into massive social issues. When millions of consumers are subtly misled and thus ultimately fed what they consume, certain kinds of culture are choked off from

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David Levy, a professor at the Information School at the University of Washington, has updated both the utilitarian and the humanistic arguments for the networked age by calling for a new “informational environmentalism.” Just as we fight to save marsh lands and old-growth forests from development and pollution, he says, so we need to fight to save

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