Comments on: Information overload is NOT filture failure

By: Nathan Zeldes

Nathan Zeldes — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:03:09 +0000

Glad to see I’m not alone in being uneasy with the “filter failure” meme. You come from a different angle – mine’s more enterprise oriented, yours academic – but I agree the issue isn’t that “there’s more interesting stuff out there than I could ever handle if I tried to read all of it”.

I share my take at http://bit.ly/bDUDuB .

By: Charlie Curtis

Charlie Curtis — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:38:24 +0000

In my job as a CIO, I’ve been working on tackling information overload with mixed results. My company, a professional services firm, suffers more than most because of a couple of infrastructure problems that arose from a couple of mergers.

I’ve been trying to get my colleagues to acknowledge that attacking our information overload problem will improve our overall knowledge sharing collaboration efforts and also contribute to our bottom line. But some people here just don’t understand the extent of the problem.

I just read about information overload awarenesss day and I’ve signed up our company as a participant and designated site – I hope this will get my point across to my colleagues and help them understand what we can do to improve our overall position relative to information overload. For others in my position (and I’m sure there are many of you) I encourage you to do the same, Information is available at http://www.informationoverloadday.com

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 16 May 2009 06:22:44 +0000

I google data. There is an abundance, yes, of data on the web. Therefore, I don’t blog or input more. I just let someone else add it for me.

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:21:52 +0000

Richard–
What you’re talking about is not “filtering” as much as it is relying on various methods for discovery. You’re talking about adding to the stack one has to read, not about eliminating items from that stack. That’s not a problem I hear people complaining about. No one has too little to read. For discovery, the various activities you mention are great, but they’re not really the issue here.

By: AJ Cann

AJ Cann — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:03:26 +0000

Sorry David, but I’ve got to disagree with you on this one: http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2009/01/information-overload-is-filter-failure.html

By: Broken filters? « A Man With A Ph.D.

Broken filters? « A Man With A Ph.D. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:23:29 +0000

[...] Information overload is NOT filture failure: This has been bothering me for a while now, dating back to last year, when I first heard Clay Shirky’s very pithy statement that information overload isn’t a real problem, the real problem is a failure to build effective filters. It’s a catchy little phrase, and like most theories from Web 2.0 gurus, it seems reasonable on the surface, but when applied to the world of scientists, it’s less than useful. [More] [...]

By: Broken filters?

Broken filters? — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:21:37 +0000

By: Richard Gayle

Richard Gayle — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 06:52:01 +0000

The first thing I check every time I get Science or Nature (assuming I am not looking for a specific article) is the ‘News and Views” section. Not just to read a summary but to see if there is any interesting work that can lead me to important papers I might have missed due to the information glut.

None of us have the time to personally check every paper in depth to find the useful information we need. We need ways to ‘filter’ the huge amount of published information, not to simplify, not to have someone write a summary so that we do not have to read the paper ourselves but just to find the paper to begin with.

So we rely on methods to led us to the critical papers, to important meetings, the ones that directly affect our work. Lab or journal reputation is one. Social connections are another. PubMed also works. Gossip has led me to a lot of important ideas. News and Views can work similarly.

I don’t know how many times I have gotten an idea or been led in the right direction because of talking with another scientist who said “Hey, I read a paper that could be useful.” I do think that happened more often than my simply finding it myself.

The filter is not in producing summaries. I wouldn’t trust a random group of strangers to be a good filter either. But the social aspects of the web permit a community of like-minded scientists to more rapidly say to each other “Hey, I read a paper that could be useful.”

By: David Crotty

David Crotty — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:54:32 +0000

Hi John,
My response to your comment would be “yes and no”. You are right, in that there’s more being published, so there’s more low quality material out there. But most scientists are pretty good at filtering that out, not investing a lot of time in it. That’s not the sort of information overload I hear people complaining about. Because there’s more science being done, and technology has advanced to a point where it’s easier for more people to use the more advanced techniques, there’s more good work out there too. If it’s good quality, and relevant to advancing your research and career, then you don’t want to filter it out.

By: John Jackson

John Jackson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:21:27 +0000

But the proliferation of scientific journals/information IS a filter failure in one sense: the natural, built-in filters of the publishing industry (productions costs, editorial-labor costs, time) have been taken away as it became cheaper and more efficient to publish online. More information is available not just because there is more information (though this is true), but due to the fact that more information CAN be available.

One obvious downside to this is that there is more bad information out there. But there is also more good information. Either way, individuals have to filter out the bad information (what was previous filtered by publishers due to costs) and filter in the good (finding information specifically relevant to you).