In Light of our recent discussions in class, this seemed like a good topic to bring up. What happens when an individual is overloaded with too much information? This topic has been relevant since the industrial revolution, and has been analyzed by Wolfgang Schivelbusch (first read him for johnathan miller class, not much info online, but here and here )began to develop his ideas of an overstimulated urban population and what effect this had on the society as a whole. This article details some issues with the influx of 2.0 programs
information overload research group (which is sponsered by google and other information corporations.)
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cmarriott // October 13, 2008 at 7:41 pm |
Over the weekend I attended a lecture that was part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. The lecturer was Ian Foster and the title of his lecture was “Big Computation, Bigger Knowledge.” The lecture covered a number of the topics we’ve been discussing. I took away from it the idea that millions of processors (and the minds behind them) jointly form a massive base of knowledge.
Toward the end of the lecture Foster explained that the number of papers being written is growing astronomically. He mentioned some research currently being conducted that is looking at data mining already published medical papers in an effort to package bits of content. In other words, people are looking at how we can sort through all the content out there. If you are trying to do novel research, it is important to be exhaustive in keeping up with all of the activity in your field. The benefits of having tools that do the sorting will become increasingly important.