The history of humanity reveals information as something we have had to pursue. Through philosophy, research, libraries, and universities, information had to be intentionally sought to be known (by the individual). It is only a slight exaggeration to say that we are today moving toward a system where information knows us. Well, maybe “know” is over-stating it. But many of my information interactions are not ones that I have to initiate. Simple services like Google Alerts, personal bots (more popular a few years ago) and more complex social network tools (like diigo) provide a steady stream of information.
The patterns that we exhibit in our interactions with information and with others (i.e. facebook), when known by certain software/services, can be a basis for effective and contextual information provision. GPS will likely continue to improve information quality. Why shouldn’t my history of search be combined with my interactions on facebook and used as a basis to provide me with important information (i.e. my iphone says: “George, three months ago you searched for history of human rights, then you joined a similar group on facebook…just around the corner is a museum dedicated to the cause…and, for that matter, so are Joe and Jane that you’ve emailed several times over the last year, but have never met”).
Ok, perhaps that would be unnerving. But, still, geo-broadcasting combined with the information trails we leave online could serve as valuable source of relevant information.
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[...] at work showed me http://www.visualcomplexity.com and the second, a few minutes later in my mail, was George’s geo-broadcasting post. I now see many examples of how to THINK NETWORK (as opposed to thinking business or learning or [...]