I'm slowly realising a fundamental truth of economics: whatever it is you're making cheaper, you're going to have one hell of a lot more of.
And as you increase the quantity, you'll start bumping into limiting factors elsewhere. E.g., cheaper transport => far more congestion. Cheaper communications => more advertising. Cheaper storage => vastly more surveillance and monitoring. Cheaper telecoms => vastly more phone solicitations and scams.
There's the question of what people really need to access -- and here I think it's key to go back to Maslow's Hierarchy. And to acknowledge our human limitations of information capacity per day. Several sources I've seen (Stephen Wolfram, Walt Mossberg) suggest about 150 - 300 email messages/day, and something less than even a cursory glance at 800 comments (The New York Times's comments moderation team). How do you provide a manageable and significant set of information to people?
I've also started noting that our-so-called discussion systems themselves (Slashdot, Facebook, Reddit, even HN) are pretty poor at self-supporting useful user feedback. Almost as if that's not their true function.
I'm slowly realising a fundamental truth of economics: whatever it is you're making cheaper, you're going to have one hell of a lot more of.
And as you increase the quantity, you'll start bumping into limiting factors elsewhere. E.g., cheaper transport => far more congestion. Cheaper communications => more advertising. Cheaper storage => vastly more surveillance and monitoring. Cheaper telecoms => vastly more phone solicitations and scams.
There's the question of what people really need to access -- and here I think it's key to go back to Maslow's Hierarchy. And to acknowledge our human limitations of information capacity per day. Several sources I've seen (Stephen Wolfram, Walt Mossberg) suggest about 150 - 300 email messages/day, and something less than even a cursory glance at 800 comments (The New York Times's comments moderation team). How do you provide a manageable and significant set of information to people?
I've also started noting that our-so-called discussion systems themselves (Slashdot, Facebook, Reddit, even HN) are pretty poor at self-supporting useful user feedback. Almost as if that's not their true function.