But, to what extent is the problem aggravated (or even caused) by information overload? As Taran has said "RSS feeds are nice, but they also suck in a lot of ways. Finding what you want when you want it has actually become a lot more difficult." There is so much information out there that it is easy (as some students do) to simply turn to your favorite news station for the same reason people by certain brands - they know basically what they are getting. It is an information-search short cut in an overly information-rich environment. One of the major appeals of blogs to me is their function as specialized information-broker - I read certain blogs to stay up on certain topics just like I subscribe to this email list to keep up with interesting ideas and insights.
How does this relate to the digital divide? It does because I think we always need to keep in mind that there are many people who will react to information overload by shutting down channels of communications. DD survey's have consistently shown a percentage that don't want to be connected 24/7. Our goal in closing the digital divide is to make sure people have the option -- not that we shove their face into that firehose stream of information around us with they want a simple drink.
Ken Jarboe
At 12:03 PM 1/21/2005, Andy Carvin wrote:
Dan Gillmor at the Berkman blogger confab today just made the comment that the public will have to learn to do "a little more work" if they want to stay informed. "It's not just going to show up on their doorstep" the way it used to be, he said. It takes more effort to stay informed now, he noted. So what can we do to streamline the process?
Sounds like RSS feeds will be one of the next major ICT literacy challenges for the general public, particularly when only five percent of people on the Net use RSS and they tend to be white, well-off, and very well educated, according to the folks at Pew. It will take this particular technology literacy (RSS savviness) for people to achieve media literacy and be well-informed as more journalism and civic discourse is produced for the Internet rather than broadcast or print.... -ac
-- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.tsunami-info.org Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com -----------------------------------
_______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
