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Last week I started writing a blog post about information overload. I was inspired by a meeting we had, discussing the fact that we have become so large that so many interesting things we do don’t get shared easily enough. We tend to do things twice or trice until someone passes by and gently reminds of another case. Learnings are seldomly shared. Time for action. We were discussing to use a microblogging like tool with group functionalities, tagging and so on to solve the problem. Say Yammer could be the solution…

Back to my story. I decided to write some things down, make a presentation (that I will finish the next days) and share how to improve your search efforts. Tips on how to minimize efforts and maximize results. In my search for information on Google, Delicious, Slideshare and so on I found a blip movie recorded at the Web2.0 Expo in New York last year (Jan and I visited the European version of the seminar the last two years and they are top!). It was a session by Clay Shirky, new media professor at NY University and writer.

He explained that people were suffering from information overload since Gutenberg. The amount of books published in the 1500’s was so big that no person could read all books in a lifetime. On the other hand, Gutenberg introduced something else. An economic problem: the problem of risk. Since the investment in publishing a book was rather high, the results needed to be calculated up front. That is why publishers not only printed books, they also filtered what was printed… and what wasn’t printed. They were the filter on the information overload. If they didn’t, the problem would have been even bigger.

For years, decades, centuries this problem of risk existed. Printing books is still expensive and little niche books are printed, the gaming industry suffers the same disease. The music, video, radio, newspaper, television show, information – virtually any – industry. People who are good printers and – as Clay Shirky puts it – are not necessarily good filters. But they had the power to decide what was good enough. Many insightful works have never been published because the cost was probably too high, the results too unsure to have it spread for its audience of a mere – say 100 – people.

Not anymore. The last 15 years, the Internet changed the landscape. A lot! Books can be written and published by anyone on iUniverse, eBooks and audio books can be written and published by virtually anyone and sold on Lulu. And many people do so. MySpace has hundreds of thousands of groups and artists sharing their music, small, specialized music labels are selling music to a niche segment and they make big money! In 2004, Apple reported that 95% of the songs in iTunes are sold at least once and they offered at the time over 30 million unique songs! Viddler and Revision 3 host video podcasts by regular people sharing their own interest, often to a niche public – like we do on Blip TV. They (and we) do it at low cost and some do make money, like Cliff & Stephanie on GSPN who are doing this on a full-time basis. People are writing blogs and the amount of new blogs per day grows at an enormous pace – figures for wordpress.com.

Our information overload is bigger than ever.

And it will become even worse. Yet, there was never such a diversified offer of books, music, opinions, shows. There are more ‘niches’ than there were people in the 1500’s, more new blogs each day than there were books in the 1500’s, more solutions to problems than there were problems in the 1500’s (probably – I have no proof of this ;)) and so on.

I love my information overload, I love my lack of filters… Because I have my filters ready: they are you, the people I follow on Twitter, my delicious network, leading bloggers and techmeme-like initiatives. And at least, I can find that one blog that talks about that one rare hobby that I have. And you can do it too.

But I will finish up my presentation I started talking about… untill I pass by an interesting post or video that tingles my brain once more… ;-).

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