Buttoning down the content explosion
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Pages | 227-229 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045561 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Author | Bob Duffy |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Buttoning down
the
content
explosion
Bob Duffy
Strategic Communications, 9200 Old Annapolis Road, Suite 203, Columbia, MD 21045,
USA
E-mail: bobduffy@strcom.com
http://www.strcom.com
The 'single biggest problem'
on the
World Wide Web, Netscape wunderkind Marc Andreessen tells
The
Washington Post,
is
'information overload'. The implication:
how is the
user supposed
to
home
in on
exactly
the right info when
the
Web harbours such vast volumes
of
unruly content?
While Andreessen
is
surely right
to
single
out the
Web's trackless reaches
of
information
as a
source
of
user
frustration,
he
might well
be
accused
of
playing this intellectual tennis match from both sides
of the
net. After
all,
he
himself
is
arguably the single individual most responsible
for
the massive expansion
of
this remarkable
network. And
it's
this impressive market penetration
by the
Web that
in
turn
has
caused
the
very problem
he
identifies.
In illo tempore
...
Marc Andreessen, you'll recall,
led the
University
of
Illinois team that pioneered
the
first true mixed-
media
Web
browser, Mosaic, back
in the
early
nineties. Later,
he was the
lead technical player
in
start-up vendor Netscape's brilliantly successful
campaign
to
bring
Web
consciousness
to
main-
stream markets. This market momentum
was
already
a
significant force, thanks
to
Andreessen's
Netscape, when Microsoft
at
last lumbered into
the
great game
of
expanding
the
Web's commercial
beachhead.
So,
on the one
hand
we owe
this youthful visionary
a thank-you
for his key
role
in
giving
so
many
of us
voice via the Web, both
as
individuals and
as
mouth-
pieces
for the
many thousands
of
organisations tak-
ing
up
station
in
cyberspace.
In
doing your part
to
supply
us a
world platform, Mr A.,
you
have made
us
all content producers.
But,
as my
guru likes
to
say, when
you
order the
Yin
you
get a
side plate
of
Yang too,
no
substitutions
allowed.
So, glad
as we are to
have become empow-
ered content producers, we're maybe
not so
thrilled
when
we
peer
in
from
the
opposite
end of the
infor-
mation continuum
— as
content consumers faced
with
the
enormous output
of our
page-crazy
Webcasting counterparts around
the
globe.
Of course Marc Andreessen
has a
point about info-
glut.
He and the
hoards
of
equally creative innova-
tors
in
other Web-start firms (plus
the
late-breaking
big players like
IBM,
Microsoft
and
Oracle) have
forged
a new
mass medium that's attracting
unprecedented involvement
by
individuals
and
organisations
alike.
The result:
a
vast expanding
uni-
verse
of
content
—
uneven, eclectic
and
entirely
ungovernable.
But you can be
sure vendors have
already
set
schemes
in
motion
to
tame this beast,
at
least superficially. They've spawned
an
unruly
800-
pound gorilla and now they're setting
out to
dress
the
ape
in
tails
and
teach
it to
serve finger sandwiches
on request.
But isnt that
why we
have search
engines?
Now, search engines
and
other online indices
do a
creditable
job of
imposing some semantic, left-brain
order
on the
Web's crazy-quilt content. Excellent
as
they
are in
this role, though, they still face daunting
practical challenges rooted
in the
Web's explosive
growth,
not to
mention
its
growing linguistic variety.
Information-search purists might
say
that aggregate
Web content
is
multiplying much
too
rapidly
for
ade-
quate tracking
by the
software 'knowbots'
and
'spi-
ders'
dispatched
by the
search engines
—
especial-
ly
if we
hold these intelligent agents
to
strict
stan-
dards
of
timeliness. What's more,
a
good deal
of
potentially useful content
is
simply disappearing
as
sponsors mutely remove
it, for one
reason
or
anoth-
er, from their sites.
How
often
do you
find yourself
facing that disappointing
404
screen after you've
clicked through
on
what
had
appeared,
in
AltaVista
or Lycos,
to be a
valid pointer
to a
Web item
of
inter-
est?
But even
so,
most
of us are
happy enough
to
live
with
the
putative limitations
of
today's search
"Glad as we are
to have become
empowered content
producers, we're
maybe not so
thrilled when we
peer in from the
opposite end of the
information
continuum"
The Electronic Library, Vol. 15, No. 3, June
1997 227
To continue reading
Request your trial