In The Recommendation Age Sophisticated Filtering Engines Are Our Beacons
It wasnt too long ago we were embracing the information age. Most of us still think we are in it. But the consequence of the information age is the overwhelming volume of information on any given subject, product or service. We are forced to spend a great deal of time sifting through sites, bits and bytes to [hopefully] discover what we are looking for.
Be it music, film, books or other products the sheer volume of choice makes it more difficult to find what we want; but we are also offered an abundant picking list: This immense list has emerged because a) production has been democratized: Never before has any single human being anywhere been able to operate independently to bring something of value to the world stage; be it a sound track, desktop wallpaper image, Flash cartoon, computer programming service, or indeed, more and more, a paid commentator, and b) distribution now takes the form of bits and bytes, meaning zero goods stock holding so companies like Amazon can print books on demand and iTunes can deliver music in bytes.
These two forces create abundance in choice and...