A quote from Elon Musk: "The amount of information equality that exists in the world is unbelievable, as a result of the Internet. It's really phenomenal because - if you go back, say, 30 years ago, and say well, the President of the United States probably had the most access to information of any person on Earth but today, if you have access to the Internet, you've got access to more information than the President of the United States had 30 years ago. You have access to all the world's information. You can go on Google and search for any book, any scholarly work. Ya know, Wikipedia's actually pretty damn good. It's like 90% accurate. It's just not clear what 90%. But, it's really incredible what you can learn, and how connected you can be to people all around the world."
Other than leaks via Wikileaks etc. i don't have access to a lot of information that the president of the USA had 30 years ago. Most public information on the internet today was also available pre-internet. The main difference is the time needed to access information. Instead of searching for hours or even days it's now minutes. Time effiency increased a lot with the internet.
Because it is now so much faster to get information the question has become: is the info that i want really relevant to me? Otherwise it is still a time waster even though it only takes a minute to look up. Like many people here i tend to be intellectually curious and knowing things gives satisfaction. But increasingly i have come to realize that much is not truely relevant to me. I think that's where the focus should be for future technologies, helping people get small amounts of highly relevant information while respecting their privacy.
I wonder if more than you think is actually relevant to you? The old adage is you get data, give it structure and it becomes information. I am thinking that maybe nowadays we need the next level: get information, give it 'structure' and it becomes... What?
I've been thinking about this a lot recently due to an article here on HN about the fact that we are getting lots of 'data' recently in the form of scandalous articles in the media, which shock and dismay us, but are we tying these all together into a larger picture? I don't think so, therefore we end up with the modern day equivalent of shamans - conspiracy theorists. They see the 'data' (or nowadays in its current higher level form information) and give us 'information' about what it means (sorry, I'm still struggling with what the higher form of information is).
Shamans saw dark clouds on the horizon and said the gods were angry, conspiracy theorists see the NSA spying and say 'illuminati'
Now I've done a fair bit of work on KMSs (knowledge management systems) and that could be one view, structured information becomes knowledge. But I think that that is somehow missing the point. Information+structure+experience+remembrance = knowledge (one way of looking at it IMHO) So I'm searching for an other, different way to think about this issue, because that doesn't quite seem to fit the bill here.
Is the path data>information>knowledge>wisdom ? Or are we missing steps, or even missing completely different paths?
Or is it not even a path, but more of a n-dimensional network that is recursive in time and size?
Maybe this should be the future focus of technologies.
I think you have to shift the graph: what you have under info- rss atom etc, should move up to the data position.
Then what? You could do something simple like keyword grouping - '500 news events including the word "drone"' but I feel that is not enough. Take it further and use semantics to do sentiment analysis maybe? '50 data point talking positively about airbnb today'
But I still think there is something missing. I'm interested in any other thoughts you may have, especially after shifting info-now down to data, what would be 'new' knowledge or wisdom?
information: do a basic keyword-analysis of the news snippets, maybe with some natural language processing, push it all into a graph database, using meaningful nouns as nodes and verbs as edges. Think of something like DBpedia, but with tiny information pieces and high interconnectedness between. This would be good structured "information", right?
knowledge: define some sophisticated query language / data endpoint, ideally again with some natural language processing, to discover the informations in the graph. the result of such a sophisticated query i'd call 'knowledge'.
The point Elon Musk makes is about information equality. It seems you were lucky enough to be at a place in time where a good amount of information was readily available. Not me. I had to depend on very old encyclopedias. No libraries available and no one to ask. Now days, thanks to the web, I have the same general access as you. Which is his point about equality.
When he mentions the president, the point seems to be that the person holding that position could simply ask and get the information he desired. That option was not available to the masses until web search came to be. And think about it. You do have access to a lot of sensitive information. Such as updated maps of every country. Direct and instant communication with people from other nationalities. And so on.
i don't have access to a lot of information that the president of the USA had 30 years ago. Most public information on the internet today was also available pre-internet. The main difference is the time needed to access information.
But time restriction is information restriction. Who in the 1980s had the time to sit in a library for hours on end every day researching esoteric issues? I'd argue that the information wasn't meaningfully available to everyone - only people in academic careers that had time to conduct research.
I agree, but I also think the poster to whom you are responding has a valid point as well. The internet gives us access to a lot of useful information. It also gives us access to orders of magnitude more useless information. And the President of the United States? Well, I just hope that 30 years ago his information was better than what I can find by Googling. (Though hind-sight makes most things clear)
I think the President comparison is useful, because we, if nothing else, have the ability to access so much information that would have made the President's jaw drop three decades ago. However, I agree with the minor nitpick that he had access to higher quality, classified information that the rest of us will never see.
I relate to this. I remember when I first had internet access as a kid, I'd go to GameFAQs and websites about SimCity and Red Alert- and I was so blown away at this amazing access I had to hundreds of internet strangers who were interested in the same things I was interested in.
I immediately felt that I had to own a little piece of that, that I had to create a space for myself and be useful to others the way they were useful to me.
Alway great to be reminded of the incredible opportunity we have, that nobody quite had prior to this. A child with an internet connection having access to more information than the US President did 20-30 years ago. That's really something. Thanks for sharing.
"The web is incredible. I love the web. In so many ways it has improved the lives of millions by transforming society, education, culture, community, and commerce. "
We need to extinguish this kind of enthusiasm. Sure, computers are great, and they have changed the world, but not always for the better. And all this unending praise we give technology can keep us from thinking about technology critically.
I love the web. And I hate the web. I hate surveillance. I hate data mining. I hate advertising. I hate linkbait headlines. I hate youtube comments. Hate hate hate.
I'm inclined to agree to a point. However, I'd also point out that promoting rampant cynicism is perhaps not the answer to all of our problems, nor necessarily a good way to teach people to think.
Critical thinking? Absolutely. But stomping out enthusiasm is a great way to kill something valuable that people like to talk about but rarely seem to understand: Actual innovation.
Yea--I have a love/hate relationship with it as well.
I will go to my death believing that looking into a manmade
box; whether a computer screen, or TV--is--not--living--well. I got a single fried who travels the country in his camper. He says he follows the sun, and hides from authority. People critize him, but somtimes, I think he has it all figured out.
There are negatives, no doubt, not the least of which is the TPP and its potential ramifications for an open web. But that doesn't deter my enthusiasm in the least for other two-thirds of the world to get online.
I'm sure there's a lot more untapped talent out there, and I'd like to believe the net sum of their innovations will see the positives outweigh the negatives.
There is untapped talent out there, but I'm not sure the web can unlock all of it. You don't have a chance to develop your talents when you're going hungry each night. Nor is it easy to be talented under an authoritarian dictatorship. These are problems a website or smartphone app can't fix (though maybe they can help a little). I don't even buy that the web can raise people out of poverty. Seems like it produces more inequality if anything, though that remains to be seen.
What the web can do is educate people (though it's also capable of misinforming them). And it can make life a little more efficient (Shopping online reduces travel time. Google maps reduces time driving around asking for directions). These are modest improvements, and they could unlock some talent. Just not much.
Exactly. To clarify, by talent and innovation I didn't just mean the websites that the rest of the world can build. I meant it wrt the empowerment that free MOOC's can provide when it comes to basic education (especially in remote areas where schools are not always existent/affordable) and the possible innovations it could lead to in different sectors outside the realm of software development.
Getting an education isn't just a matter of cost. You need free time to take the classes, a quiet place to study, a family that supports you, and often, a teacher that motivates you to be your best. That's why I don't think MOOCs will change anything. They're great for people who are already educated, and have the resources to teach themselves. The rural poor in developing nations have bigger things to worry about.
Didn't like the article. I believe using ambiguity of words "web", "create" and "content" he completely mixed up things. Maybe he's right in some or all aspects, but it's too messy to read. At least I feel something's wrong when I read something about hyperlinks, then suddenly seeing a comparison of web to native code (huh?)
That made complete sense to me. There's a trend recently of people focusing on native mobile apps instead of websites (see Keith Rabois on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rabois/status/406519032624320512 "nobody is going to be using the web soon"). I read this article as a reaction to that trend.
[Added a bit later] Although, I don't see how "mobile" is much conceptually different from the "web". The only missing part is linking and transferring of mobile app code over the network, on demand, instead of barcode/hyperlink-market-install manual process. But that's because of security model deficiencies on modern mobiles, and I won't be surprised things'll change. Then mobile'll be part of the web - no conflict here.
As a so called hacker that has grown up with the Web I awe at how software vendors released their software in the past. I mean when you got stuck with xyzy there was no quick Google search that gave you 10 different fixes or workarounds. When the CD-ROM/disc/s was shipped it was shipped. It must have taken ages before the user got the bug fix
Except that it's not just 'a link' is it? It's billions of miles of copper, fibre optics, routers, switches, media converters, legal agreements, large buildings, nuclear power stations...
I create for the web, because I have never been good enough to create for the desktop. Thankfully, that's been changing lately -- it's a nice change of pace, and I think desktop programming can learn some things from web programming (and, has been, if you look at elementary OS).
> I create for the web, because I have never been good enough to create for the desktop
Why would being good enough have anything to do with whether you can create for the desktop? If anything, creating for the desktop is easier. There are far less languages, technologies, quirks, etc. you need to deal with as a dektop app developer.
I agree. I programmed for desktop and mobile before the web. Every time I tried to get started developing for the web I was held back by how many different things I needed to learn just to get started (html, css, js, ruby, rails, how servers work and how I get my site onto one, how to setup a local server for development). I use these things to build a web app which could be built on the desktop/mobile using one language.
