A problem we may not want to solve.

One of the central problems that confront us when we use the internet is that we're bombarded with so much mis-information and non-information that we're almost unable to find anything worthwhile that is there. There are web sites devoted to helping people who want to use the web overcome this problem, and of course it's a central part of most introductory courses to the internet - learning to separate the wheat from the chaff. When I used to teach introductory courses of this sort I tried, sometimes even with a passable degree of success, to show my students that it's possible. And of course there are books, like the following which has this blurb online:

Information Anxiety 2 by David Sume, Loring Leifer, Richard Saul Wurman. Paperback - (December 14, 2000) 308 pages. A follow up to the first edition, Information Anxiety 2 teaches critical lessons for functioning in today's Information Age. In this new book, Wurman examines how the Internet, desktop computing, and advances in digital technology have not simply enhanced access to information, but in fact have changed the way we live and work. In examining the sources of information anxiety, Wurman takes an in-depth look at how technological advances can hinder understanding and influence how business is conducted. A guide to clarity in an age of massive information overloads. Offers perspective on the problem of pervasive amounts of meaningless information and how to sort through the mess. Includes detailed photographs, tables and other visual aids.

So lots of sources are trying to help us overcome the problem of too much meaningless information, yet we continue not only to be inundated by it, but to continue to search for it. Which forces us to ask whether we really want to overcome the problem.

That's certainly an important question, but there's another one which is perhaps no less important, and to a great extent even more problematic. Put quite simply, who's to judge what's meaningless and what's not?

Go to: All that technology for ... that?