The Excess of Information

If we publish a document on the Web, it is immediately at the reach of millions of people with Internet access. The document can be an HTML page, a personal profile, a blog comment, an audio or a video file. We can look at all our online activity as publishing and sharing information.

Before the Internet, knowledge and information was limited to books, recordings, and encyclopedias. Today, information is distributed without restrictions. If on one hand this means that the Internet is the biggest and most accessible source of information, on the other it causes a problem regarding the quality of that information.

The speed at which we publish information on the web makes it impossible to catalogue content, to assure the veracity and accuracy of information much less the credibility of a great deal of sources of information.

To organizations this translates into an enforced transparency and a new management task, that of monitoring the online discourse and acting to preserve reputation as best as possible.

“The power of tags shows that the way to manage information overload is more information. That’s what the doomsayers of the 90’s — Information Anxiety! Information Tidal Wave! — didn’t foresee.”

<p>
  <a href="https://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/">David Weinberger</a>, Co-Autor do “Cluetrain Manifesto”; Autor de “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder”
</p>