A few days ago came up in conversation how the density of data online was making almost impossible to find meaningful results through search engines. The proliferation of automated content generation is leading to a data degradation that some think will render the entire web useless.
Now, that sounds a bit too far fetched.
In reality, what we are seeing is how businesses we incorrectly considered infrastructure are becoming victim of their own success. Attempts to monetise content have been …clumsy.
There are two analogies that I will borrow to explain where my frustration comes from, and why there’s a hint of worry in my frustration.
Let’s assume a webpage in essence is equivalent to a book, and the internet is a library.
If a library is as vast as the one Borges describe in his famous short story, you could be born and die inside it, and while all the knowledge ever known is in there, it would not matter as it would be impossible to find anything given the sheer volume of information contained.
In practical terms, this means that without indexing, information alone is not only useless, but dangerous. Why dangerous? Large volumes of irrelevant or simply deceitful volumes would cover the biggest truths we could think of. Think about it, Kim Kardashian may be blocking us from learning about life-extending technology. For more on that, I am sure modern concepts like misinformation or the modern ‘alternative facts’ would easily come to mind.
Now, let’s see the internet through the lens of of transport.
Historically, kingdoms would build roads to connect points of importance. Populations (even cows!) will also create roads based on their needs. As density increased, signposting was required: you had to know in which road you were, and what direction you were heading.
I suppose this was one of the earliest uses of indexing: maps
Now, fast forward to modern roads, a few technology advancements were introduced. Let’s leave for a moment the oh so very British roundabouts, and look at tools and traffic lights. Both have a common goal, to regulate flow.
Not the interesting thing, is that while tolls (where you pay) were meant to make you go faster, traffic lights and signs were free. That’s not how the internet works, and why people seem to get confused.
Online, you ‘pay’ to use the signposts, because the signs are not public infrastructure. While many people believe we are looking at street signs, we are looking at shopping windows. In a why, the internet is closer to a supermarket than a road.
Also, tolls work differently, as the promoted (paid searches) are not meant to make you get faster anywhere. Mostly because you are not the one paying you. The road exists, and the toll is there, but in this case, you are the point of interest and the entity travelling is a company that wants to get to your attention faster. while you generally get slower to what you are looking for(i.e. going past 2 or 3 adverts of paid services before landing on the pie recipe you were looking into).
Lastly, there are no traffic lights, and that can lead to accidents. A bot farm can outpace the speed of actual events unfolding and create the impression that a lot more of what has happened occurred. The excess availability of data about a point of interest detracts from what really is happening.
This last point is worrying, as the most benign form of it is when instead of sources of data (a journalist filming something noteworthy) we get first to a person on TikTok giving an opinion over an article read online about something that heard about a noteworthy event who someone filmed). I do not need to explain data degradation.
The most malicious form of what I describe was discussed at length by smarter people than me: Kahneman, Tversky, Ariely and Pentland have touched on this over various books, coining terms like availability avalanche or social physics… but Mark Twain found a very eloquent and succinct way of describing it: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Sadly, once sufficient opinion is formed on a certain topic, the strength of its directional pull will make truth no longer relevant.
All this is to say that it has become harder to understand the real nature of some of the elements we are submerged in. The same way it is hard for a fish to comprehend water, I suggest we make a conscious effort in distinguish incorrect analogies that may cause us to put our trust in the wrong place.
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