Managing the data mountain
Meebo, Pownce, Dodgeball, Twitter, Kyte, Qik - a bewildering array of different services are producing content at SXSW. In microcosm we see the rapid growth of the net played out at this festival, more data, more means of producing data - but the same 3lbs of biological computer to try and process, order and understand it.
The key tool that enables us to sift this information is search. At present there are two trends in search, human and socially powered approaches (Maholo and Wikia to name but two) and computational, rule based systems like Google.
Douglas Merrill is . In his view the evolving nature of the net means that human based approaches won't be able to cope, "The internet changes a lot, it more than doubles every year 10% of pages on the web change each month..everything changes every year..so having humans in the loop to filter is a pretty hard problem" .You might contrast this with Jimmy Wales view which
In the interview below we cover a range of themes mostly about how we can order and organise the wealth of information that comes our way:
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