{"id":27939,"date":"2012-01-04T07:54:20","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T06:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/?p=27939"},"modified":"2012-01-08T09:37:33","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T08:37:33","slug":"un-problema-serio-di-information-overload-too-big-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/2012\/01\/04\/un-problema-serio-di-information-overload-too-big-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Un problema serio di information overload: Too big to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Salon<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"The last two decades have completely transformed the way we know. Thanks to the rise of the Internet, \u00a0information is far more accessible than ever before. It\u2019s more connected to other pieces of information and more open to debate. Organizations \u2014 and even governmental projects like Data.gov \u2014 are putting more previously inaccessible data on the Web than people in the pre-Internet age could possibly have imagined. But this change raises another, more ominous question: Is this deluge overwhelming our brains?<\/p>\n

In his new book, \u201cToo Big to Know,\u201d<\/a> David Weinberger, a senior researcher at Harvard\u2019s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, attempts to answer that question by looking at the ways our newly interconnected society is transforming the media, science and our everyday lives. In an accessible yet profound work, he explains that in our new universe, facts have been replaced by \u201cnetworked facts\u201d that exist largely in the context of a digital network. As a result, Weinberger believes we have entered a new golden age, one in which technology has finally caught up with humans\u2019 endless curiosity, and one that has the potential to revolutionize a wide swath of occupations and research fields.<\/p>\n

Salon spoke to Weinberger over the phone about the rise of the information cloud, the demise of expert knowledge, and why this is the greatest time in human history.<\/p>\n

In the book you mention the \u201csmartest guy in the room\u201d metaphor. According to your book, that\u2019s an outdated metaphor. Now it\u2019s the room itself that\u2019s smart.<\/p>\n

In the West we\u2019ve pegged knowledge to what fits in books or gets written down. That\u2019s been our medium for preserving and communicating knowledge. Because books are written by individuals, it has often made knowledge seem like the product of individuals, even though everybody has always understood that individuals are working within the social network. With the new medium of knowledge \u2014 the Internet \u2014 knowledge not only takes on properties of that medium but also lives at the level of the network. So rather than simply trying to cultivate smart people, we also need to be looking above the level of the individual to the network in which he or she is embedded to see where knowledge lives.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Do you think all of these changes are good or bad?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s both good and bad. It\u2019s both impossible and unhelpful to ask if it\u2019s making us smarter or stupider. But I am actually very hopeful. Ask anybody who is in any of the traditional knowledge fields, and she or he will very likely tell you that the Internet has made them smarter. They couldn\u2019t do their work without it; they\u2019re doing it better than ever before, they know more; they can find more; they can run down dead ends faster than ever before. In the sciences and humanities, it\u2019s hard to find somebody who claims the Internet is making him or her stupid, even among those who claim the Internet is making us stupid. And I believe this is the greatest time in human history<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Salon The last two decades have completely transformed the way we know. Thanks to the rise of the Internet, \u00a0information is far more accessible than ever before. It\u2019s more connected to other pieces of information and more open to debate. Organizations \u2014 and even governmental projects like Data.gov \u2014 are putting more previously inaccessible … Leggi tutto<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,30,32],"tags":[176,2155],"class_list":["post-27939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-media","category-pensieri","tag-informazione","tag-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27939"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27941,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27939\/revisions\/27941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}