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#clayshirky#informationoverload#filterfailure

Web 2.0 Expo NY: Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.

O'Reilly

202K subscribers • 23 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 2 people: 2 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2010 to 2018.
  • Presented by Clay Shirky, writer and consultant
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 18 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

55K views18 years ago2 recommendations

Web developmentSoftware designThe tech industrySimplicity and complexitySoftware architecture

Clay Shirky argues that the modern struggle with online content is not a problem of information overload but rather a failure of our filters.

It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a classic talk that reframes the problem of online information abundance as a design challenge for better filtering tools.

pkghoston Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to disconnect from your online life”

yay for clay and the middle way. he reminds me of uncle ben: "with great power comes great responsibility." he has a similarly level response to the problem of information overload (instead, filter failure): link to this video
View on Hacker News

enkiv2on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”

…That Wasn't gives a nice history of the idea (for anybody who thinks it starts with TBL -- surprisingly many people!): link Another reframing-oriented talk is Clay Shirky's "It's not information overload, it's filter failure", which ultimately leads to Shirky suggesting the kinds of user-oriented filtering features that Mastodon has implemented: link to this video At the intersection of neurology and information science, Peter Watts always has something interesting to say, and as a former marine biologist focusing on the nervous system of starfish, this is absolutely in his wheelhouse: link This one ("moving away from defensive programming") justified strong typing in a pretty clear way: link Dan…
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malandrewon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: Can we add tags to submissions? ”

…. IMHO, the number of votes to reach the front page for a political story should be much higher than one that is about programming. I think most would agree. With tagging pg would be able to figure out if one tag is getting out of hand and squelch it temporarily or even permanently. As the community has grown, we're suffering from filter failure ( link to this video ). The less HN is about stuff that is interesting to hackers, the more it becomes welcoming for people who aren't hackers, the more non-hackers that join the more up votes that non-hacker focused stories get. It's a vicious cycle and tag squelching is one good way of moderating the community and keeping it focused.…
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FullstakBloggeron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Show HN: If YouTube had actual channels”

…watch a few seconds of a bunch of videos to get a vibe. There's so much low hanging fruit in terms of content organization/discovery, it drives me insane that the experience is generally so bad, and getting worse. Clay Shirky gave a talk on this years ago (also I think it's a blog post) called "It's not information overload, it's filter failure". link to this video…
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