philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Too Big To Know (book)

Too Big to Know, Rethinking Knowledge now that the facts aren't the facts, experts are everywhere, and the smartest person in the room is the room, by David Weinberger, 2011.

The author also cowrote ClueTrain Manifesto.  This book has an equally limited world view from which it makes all sorts of projections.  He spends a lot of the early portion of the book defining "facts" in a way that ignores how hard science - as opposed to the softer social sciences - works, although he throws in hard science cases to cover the shortcoming.

Here are a few good, useful quotes from early in the book.

"Transform the medium by which we develop, preserve, and communicate knowledge, and we transform knowledge."

"If we've always had information overload, how have we managed?  Internet scholar Clay Shiry says: "It's not information overload.  It's filter failure." If we feel that we're overwhelmed with info ration that means our filters aren't working.  The solution is to fix our filters, and Shirky points us to the sophisticated tools we've developed, especially social filters that rely upon the aggregated judgements of those in our social circles."

"Filters no longer filter out.  They filter forward, bringing their results to the front.  What doesn't make it through a filter is still visible in the background."