Interesting thoughts. Personally, I think that we need to look more at the nature of ourselves, and less at the nature of the information. We are social creatures that have evolved to interact in a certain way.
Part of the information overload IMO, stems from the fact that it is satisfying only one aspect of our need to socialize. I think what is lacking, is the ability to go socially deeper with the information presented. If we find like minded folk, we should be able to form transient groups about this commonality, and then dissolve it or ignore it when we are concerned about something else.
The problem I have with much of the information I am fed, is that it treats me like a flat list of interests. It doesn't react to my mood, and it generally doesn't allow me to make meaningful connections.
One thing I appreciate about HN, is that the people here work to inject an intellectual social human element to the interaction. The platform might not be optimized for it, but it is more or less successful.
Yes, but as any cognitive psychology banks his career on... we are also information-seeking creatures: basing survival strategies on our ability to predict, control, and assess the degree of our control, etc.
See also the last decade's research on choice behavior, etc. The whole field of marketing psychology is based on information processing (not necessarily rationally evaluated information, but interpretations of numerous forms of infomration).
>Yes, but as any cognitive psychology banks his career on... we are also information-seeking creatures: basing survival strategies on our ability to predict, control, and assess the degree of our control, etc.
That is actually to my point. I think feeds satisfy the information gathering aspect of our needs quite well. However, I think in large part, these services fail to provide our need to meaningfully share and to build valuable connections based on that sharing.
This is a problem I've been batting around in various forms over the last several years, most recently with my "Weekly" Ruby and JavaScript newsletters. I've had a lot of encouraging e-mails and tweets from people who've "given up" on the chase for information and who are willing to trust me to curate the 10-20 most interesting stories in their niche. Long may this trend continue ;-)
At the thinner end of the wedge, though, are those information addicts. I worked on an auto-tagging system for developer content (live at http://coder.io/) for some time. It's turned out not to be as good as I had hoped (but at least I know why) but I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with trepidation here.. sophisticated enough to put together queries, filters or even collections of topics in the main.
Solely my opinion, though, but through these projects (and others) I'm finding folks prefer branded, curated digests of knowledge rather than filterable, 'queryable' firehoses. Either that, or I'm just better at providing the former ;-)
>I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with trepidation here.. sophisticated enough to put together queries, filters or even collections of topics in the main.
Absolutely. Human curation feels right, because that's what we've been doing for so many thousands of years. We are multi-faceted, and so are our decisions on what information is useful and when.
> I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with trepidation here.. sophisticated enough to put together queries, filters or even collections of topics in the main.
I'm not convinced it's worth _anyone's_ time to do so.
1. Master the wonky interface of some search engine.
2. Be disappointed by results of aforementioned wonky search engine.
3. Instead find results through rapid iteration of search terms.
I've worked on an in house search engine for the last year. User have been conditioned by google to just keep trying search terms till you find what you want. No interface (that I've seen) can beat the rapid iteration of search terms with fast response times.
I'm curious, what information online is so important that you need immediate updates?
I can think of a few case like stock prices etc. But your social info?
What are you following that closely? Also how do you get any real word done if you are constantly drinking from the dirty water fire hose that is social media?
Actually my point with the essay was a little bit different.
If we are to have real time it need to inform us without being required to actively read it.
Mind you that you are constantly bombarded with real time information through your senses. You could call that a real time feed but instead of experiencing it as individual feed items, they come together and form a larger picture.
There is a solution to the described problems that has been around for several centuries, but vent out of vogue with the emergence of modern online media. Any good magazine is an example of this solution. A good magazine works because it collects information related to a certain subject of interest and has quality control. This can be done online too. Moreover, it is easier and cheaper to do this online. Unfortunately, this simply isn't being done very often.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] threadPart of the information overload IMO, stems from the fact that it is satisfying only one aspect of our need to socialize. I think what is lacking, is the ability to go socially deeper with the information presented. If we find like minded folk, we should be able to form transient groups about this commonality, and then dissolve it or ignore it when we are concerned about something else.
The problem I have with much of the information I am fed, is that it treats me like a flat list of interests. It doesn't react to my mood, and it generally doesn't allow me to make meaningful connections.
One thing I appreciate about HN, is that the people here work to inject an intellectual social human element to the interaction. The platform might not be optimized for it, but it is more or less successful.
Yes, but as any cognitive psychology banks his career on... we are also information-seeking creatures: basing survival strategies on our ability to predict, control, and assess the degree of our control, etc.
See also the last decade's research on choice behavior, etc. The whole field of marketing psychology is based on information processing (not necessarily rationally evaluated information, but interpretations of numerous forms of infomration).
That is actually to my point. I think feeds satisfy the information gathering aspect of our needs quite well. However, I think in large part, these services fail to provide our need to meaningfully share and to build valuable connections based on that sharing.
At the thinner end of the wedge, though, are those information addicts. I worked on an auto-tagging system for developer content (live at http://coder.io/) for some time. It's turned out not to be as good as I had hoped (but at least I know why) but I'm not convinced that even developers are.. and I'm picking my words with trepidation here.. sophisticated enough to put together queries, filters or even collections of topics in the main.
Solely my opinion, though, but through these projects (and others) I'm finding folks prefer branded, curated digests of knowledge rather than filterable, 'queryable' firehoses. Either that, or I'm just better at providing the former ;-)
Absolutely. Human curation feels right, because that's what we've been doing for so many thousands of years. We are multi-faceted, and so are our decisions on what information is useful and when.
I'm not convinced it's worth _anyone's_ time to do so.
1. Master the wonky interface of some search engine.
2. Be disappointed by results of aforementioned wonky search engine.
3. Instead find results through rapid iteration of search terms.
I've worked on an in house search engine for the last year. User have been conditioned by google to just keep trying search terms till you find what you want. No interface (that I've seen) can beat the rapid iteration of search terms with fast response times.
A good reference: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781565922822
I can think of a few case like stock prices etc. But your social info?
What are you following that closely? Also how do you get any real word done if you are constantly drinking from the dirty water fire hose that is social media?
If we are to have real time it need to inform us without being required to actively read it.
Mind you that you are constantly bombarded with real time information through your senses. You could call that a real time feed but instead of experiencing it as individual feed items, they come together and form a larger picture.
My comment was more in the philosophical sense of disconnecting from the constant stream of interference that is the media (social and otherwise).
If you can manage to filter this info to mine the "valuable" stuff, you'll have an idea for a great company.