Specifically, Shirky (and nearly all of his peers) hold to positions that are not neurally realistic, and would have to abandon much of their opinions (and specifically the reality of information overload) if they were informed by the recent findings in affective neuroscience on how human minds actually process and choose information. Surprisingly, this argument can be made quite simply, and is made (link below) using an allegory of the Boston Red Sox pennant run over the years.

http://mezmer.blogspot.com/2012/02/searching-for-red-stockings-myth-of.html

(Alas, my argument at three pages is a bit long for a comments section, but perhaps not as a link.)

A. J. Marr

I add my bit to this discussion in a post at http://bit.ly/bDUDuB.

Does the analogy scale in interesting ways to knowledge management? We might speak of cutting or boosting signals in any of a range of information domains (cf. frequencies, in an audio equalizer), in an attempt to tailor overwhelming input to our room-sized brains.

But EQ is a messy art. I’m not quite ready to let go of Toffler’s overload-as-illness metaphor. Set that treble too high, and suffer squeal of feedback. Half the Web makes me want to run screaming from the room.

The former adds “atoms” of knowledge – the atoms being simple words people add without any constrains. They work by invoking certain connotations that happened to be common. These connotations are these additional concepts – so we “filter” the web using them, by adding them !

The later projects the information contained in the pages onto semantic web blocks – RDFs and ontologies – which in fact are a bit more formal expressions of named objects, facts, event and concepts.

In both cases, we get less overload, by adding a bit more – a filter put upside down :-)

Delicious and others – already proved to be extremely useful. For Calais, Hakia and similar – we still await their large scale success….

As a journalist, I look at filter design as an editorial process.

– Jonathan