

Seth's Blog - Warning: The internet is almost full - twampss
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/12/warning-the-int.html

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old-gregg
Last August I took a very long (2.5 weeks is long in my book) vacation. Part
of it was living in a small hotel in Jamaica without a phone, TV or even an
Internet access. Just books on a beach, plus a few pinacalladas of course.

After less than a week I stopped by the lobby to check my email and see
"what's going on out there". They had just one lonely iMac sitting abandoned
and no customers (Gustav was about to hit the island, so there were only 3
couples left in the entire hotel).

I checked the email, hopped on 2-3 news websites on top of my head, including
news.yc, reading every article that seemed interesting and that was it... Took
me about 15 minutes. So I left wondering how come I had managed to waste hours
surfing every day.

Internet isn't changing: the web (even FIDO before WWW) has always been full
of digital noise. But the amount of time you stare at your browser slowly and
quietly brings your standards for quality signal lower.

Good reading material isn't growing as rapidly: not every day brings
memorable/important events and the number of smart writers with something to
say isn't growing as fast.

But on any given day there will always be CNN and their "breaking news",
reddit with upvoted articles, startups announcing ground-breaking products
that "change the way we live". And most of the time the "news" are
exaggerated, articles are boring rants or pictures of fat cats, and "ground-
breaking software" is probably another seven HTML-ized MySQL tables or just a
web-wrapper around some open source product that would better work on a
desktop, but being online allows founders to escape GPL obligation for
sharing.

I guess I don't have much of a "positive attitude" today, heh? :)

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jhancock
"No one goes there any more, it's too crowded" - Yogi Berra

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ivankirigin
As Clay Shirky would point out, the issue here is filter failure. 15 years
ago, you might have been able to understand the stuff on the internet - but
what about all the newspapers and books written? Or music made?

I doubt it. This problem isn't new. You're always at the knee of the curve as
you go up an exponential.

~~~
terpua
Sounds like an opportunity for a bunch of startups.

~~~
ivankirigin
There are already a bunch of startups. Facebook and FriendFeed are basically
both information filters. So are Tipjoy, Reddit, Digg, SU and HN.

~~~
terpua
I disagree. The areas of email, movies, books, ecommerce are wide open. Even
news filtering could use improvements.

~~~
ivankirigin
I didn't say there was no opportunity - just a lot of people trying to solve
problems in the space.

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jwesley
Full of pithy and sensationalist blog posts? Most certainly.

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Tichy
The libraries have been full with more content than any single human could
digest long before the internet.

For some reason it seems unlikely that a few major "content providers" will
emerge that monopolize new content. We had that already, it was called TV.
Does anybody really want to go back to that?

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puzzle-out
This may be considered off topic, but I visited the major London datacentre
last month and perhaps there is also an argument that the growth in the
internet is becoming a major hardware (and resultant energy) problem.
[http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn/news/2232079/hp-warns-
datace...](http://www.channelweb.co.uk/crn/news/2232079/hp-warns-datacentre-
information-4378731) Do we keep our faith in Moore's law, or make a
concentrated effort at slicker programming?

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andreyf
But the number of people with access to the internet keeps growing, and
filtering tools keep improving... I might not be able to view everything cool
online, but I can still view more of the things I'm really interested in.

My attention span has always been filled - more content on the internet just
means I can be more selective when picking what to fill it with.

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pclark
"Its not information overload, its filter failure"

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giardini
One huge factor he omits is the additional overhead of all the surveillance
installed by the telcos at the request of the federal government.

~~~
GHFigs
What additional overhead? You seem to not understand how such things work,
which is odd given your apparent concern.

Please do familiarize yourself with the subject, and please don't post off-
topic comments.

<http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/SER_klein_decl.pdf>
<http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/SER_marcus_decl.pdf>

