Sensory Transformation: Overcoming Cognitive Overload | The Institute For The Future
Posted: June 18th, 2008 | Author: Steve | Filed under: Technology | Tags: CognitiveOverload, future, Information, Information Overload, internet, rss, Technology, web | View Comments
This research paper from the Institute for the Future discusses information overload and the future of various technologies to overcome it. It is a really interesting read.
My favorite part is where they discuss the social web, especially social bookmarking services like del.icio.us. I love del.icio.us, and I use it quite a bit. The problem, for me, is that I haven’t yet figured out a way to discover those perfect gems of the internet which are ripe for blogging. What I need to find are relevant stories, research, ideas, products which are just coming onto the scene, and before the mainstream blogs pick up on them.
What happens with social bookmarking is that you get one of two things: a small number of web pages which are bookmarked by a lot of people, a “popularity contest”, or a large number of web pages which are just coming onto the scene, some of these are interesting, but most of them “noise”. How do I raise the signal-to-noise ratio?
I have been using a “river-of-news” system for a while, where I subscribe to a large number of blogs, and quickly scan the titles for things that look interesting. Then I “star” them in Google Reader for later review. This is a good system, but very time-consuming. It is a constant process of finding new feeds and then getting rid of feeds that don’t provide any value.
Part of the problem can be solved by finding good, cutting-edge bloggers and bookmakers, who can act as a filter. These 
are few and far between, but when you find them, they are gold.
Another method it to use various automated filtering programs, like FeedHub. FeedHub works by taking your feeds and filtering them based on “memes”, which are basically subject keywords that appear in the various articles You then get a new “washed” feed that you can subscribe to in your reader. You can also set volume limitations.
One drawback of this system is that you have to be careful not to limit yourself to subjects which are your “favorites”. What happens is that as you customize and narrow down your feeds to the ones you like, your view can also become very narrow, and you will miss opportunities coming from unexpected areas.
How do you increase the signal-to-noise ratio?
