Laisser-faire Information Age
If anyone has strolled through Floydville lately, you may have seen this post about information. While a number of issues arise out of his post, specifically I have been thinking about the gatekeeper crisis in an information flood.
America is a rich culture: we are rich with cars, rich with spacious houses, rich with good healthcare, and we are rich with food. This subtle observation I made while carefully cleaning my seventh plate at Ryan’s Steak House. Then it hit me--the gatekeeper crisis is me.
Super-sized, all-you-can-eat buffets filled with flavored matter in all shapes and sizes epitomize the gluttony of our food rich culture. A family of four can pick up 27 pounds of food for less than two six packs of “good” beer, yet there are still other restaurants in business. Primarily the reason that fine cuisine competes with the “value added” food, is the reason that good information survives in a culture that is information rich.
All day I can super-size and efficienize. I can keep Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Old Navy in business, but that is not sustainable. At some point (around about the fifth plate stretch), I suffer from the lack of quality from this gluttonous lifestyle. I may be able to have all I want all the time, but as Doug noted “57 Channels and There’s Nothing On” becomes a theme song to this excesstasy. The beauty of the free market is that I don’t have to go to Wal-Mart, Ryan’s, or pay for 936 digital channels.
Nor do I have to buy all of the information. Instead, the Internet, which is certainly information rich, is filled with many close relationships in forums, newsgroups, and the blogosphere. People form relationships through the digital divide and provide meaning in a meaningless swath of 1s and 0s. The gatekeeper, as it has always been, is ultimately me. As the free market and a little social Darwinism suggests, the good information will stay around, and the excess may not be around—ever heard of Quincy’s?
America is a rich culture: we are rich with cars, rich with spacious houses, rich with good healthcare, and we are rich with food. This subtle observation I made while carefully cleaning my seventh plate at Ryan’s Steak House. Then it hit me--the gatekeeper crisis is me.
Super-sized, all-you-can-eat buffets filled with flavored matter in all shapes and sizes epitomize the gluttony of our food rich culture. A family of four can pick up 27 pounds of food for less than two six packs of “good” beer, yet there are still other restaurants in business. Primarily the reason that fine cuisine competes with the “value added” food, is the reason that good information survives in a culture that is information rich.
All day I can super-size and efficienize. I can keep Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Old Navy in business, but that is not sustainable. At some point (around about the fifth plate stretch), I suffer from the lack of quality from this gluttonous lifestyle. I may be able to have all I want all the time, but as Doug noted “57 Channels and There’s Nothing On” becomes a theme song to this excesstasy. The beauty of the free market is that I don’t have to go to Wal-Mart, Ryan’s, or pay for 936 digital channels.
Nor do I have to buy all of the information. Instead, the Internet, which is certainly information rich, is filled with many close relationships in forums, newsgroups, and the blogosphere. People form relationships through the digital divide and provide meaning in a meaningless swath of 1s and 0s. The gatekeeper, as it has always been, is ultimately me. As the free market and a little social Darwinism suggests, the good information will stay around, and the excess may not be around—ever heard of Quincy’s?
posted by floyd at 9:43 PM
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