Information Losing Value/Impeding Decision Making?

[Nick Arnett]

At 06:44 AM 2/21/97 -0800, RBerkman at aol.com wrote:

>If the two above points are true, and information is no longer a scarce
>resource, but, in fact, something that consumes too much of our time and
>attention.  what then is today the critical scarce resource? Perhaps
> insight?

Insight is one way of expressing the shift in value; other expressions might
be point of view, analysis, opinion and so forth.  This shift is based on
basic supply and demand: the supply of information (or data or whatever you
want to call the glut) is rising much faster than demand, which is
constrained by our ability to consume.  The result is a lower value of the
information.  When time is wasted looking for valuable information (this is
not to imply that all "looking" is wasted time), then the value of tools
that reduce the search time increase.

There's an interesting metaphor that arises here -- search tools become
equated to insight, analysis, point of view, opinion, etc.  This is somewhat
true -- a search engine gives you its computed analysis of which documents
are relevant to your query.  When you think of the software that way, you
realize how incredibly stupid it really is compared with human point of view
and opinions.

Nick

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