A previous colleague at George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media just participated in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s 10-year review. He (along with others) were asked to answer the question: What will be the defining idea of the coming decade, and why?
His answer ‘The Maddening Crowd’ raises many interesting points about the information overload experienced by the content explosion on the internet.
He raises some interesting predictions about the future of how people will respond to the internet. Good thoughts for the gov community thinking through how to engage with those in the ever-widening public sphere of the web.
Read and let me know your thoughts! Are we headed for a push towards “slow-information,” as Dan suggests? How will society balance the draw to value expertise as opposed to listening to the crowd?
Good post. I think of it as like books on steroids. For years, people have complained about too much info – there’s some good old articles about it with advent of too many newspapers or book publishers. But I agree there needs to be more and better filters