Yes, I am a Data Glutton

In This Blog Sits at the: Grant McCracken is on to something at Data Glutton, Data Pauper:

I suddenly realized my problem with aggregators. When I configure my feeds, I want just about everything. … Wrap them up, I'll take them all. And then there are all the blogs. …

This informational excess is not inflicted on me by the market place, … No, this profusion of possibilility is created and sustained by me alone. Hi, my name is Grant McCracken and I'm a data glutton.

Data gluttony is a terrible condition. Everytime I turn on my aggregator, I feel like I am at an all-you-eat event at Denny's. Really, it can't end well. …

… All this “free” information is actually quite costly.

The upshot of this conversation for me was that a market in the information space is emerging. I won't pay anything for access to the New York Times. This is an interesting aggregator, but it's way too chunky for me to be exquisitely useful. I want a combination of machine and human editing that gives me all but only the things I need, and for this I am prepared to pay handsomely.

It's not that we won't pay for editing. It's becoming clear, I think, that we are now eager to pay for editing, even to pay a premium for editing. (After all, our careers now depend upon early warning, good information, timely intelligence. Not to know what we need to know in a dynamic economy, what could this cost us?)

We just don't want to pay for the editing now made available to us by the market place. …

This much is clear, there is a market emerging. It doesn't appear to have any entries. I wish they'd hurry up. Because otherwise I'm hopeless.

McCracken says he deals with his problem by turning it off, thus becoming a data pauper. I guess he's made of sterner stuff than me.

I don't think I'm ready for that.

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5 Responses to Yes, I am a Data Glutton

  1. Patrick (G) says:

    Once upon a time, I used to read my newspaper’s op-ed columns as a short-cut way of gleaming which were the important issues of the day. The run-up to the war in Iraq cured me of that, as I saw the most transparent sophistry was pondered as if profound and contrary evidence given no weight at all.

    That’s about when I turned to blogs, which I discovered when Paul Krugman gave a hat tip to Eschaton.

    Now I aggregate a number of individual bloggers as my primary filters for the rest of media. My own editorial board, which I expand or prune as my interests ebb and flow.

    One sure way to get pruned from my current blogs tab is to turn into a group blog with the original blogger stepping back… A one-voice blog has a character behind the voice that can be discerned over time and its strengths and flaws taken into account. A group blog in comparison is a cacophony requiring more effort and providing less reward for that effort.

  2. Dave says:

    tabbloid might be useful — especially if you’ve printed it and thereby put a hard limit on what you /can/ read.

  3. Rhodo Zeb says:

    Interesting comments Patrick, especially your preference for solo voices.

    Because I am fairly convinced that the best mode is 2-3 bloggers. Then that cacophony manages to stay a bit more personal, in that you know who you are reading, but content provision is high enough to put a blog on the map.

    Because any blog with 1-2 posts a day max (barring a Billmon, for instance) is not good for more than a couple of checks a week. Such a site will never break into the realm of the elite, or even close.

    Look at who your editorial board is, closely. Digby has a co-blogger, Steve Benen has one; any second voices creeping in there on you? Often it is all but undetectable because the voices are so close to each other.

  4. michael says:

    So who could be my co-blogger? Is there another blog out there with a similar voice?

  5. LACJ says:

    Ha you mean besides your bro?

    Now that would be a line-up.

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