The Solution of Information Overload

Because there is still a period of time before the campus moves towards the college, many conditions are not mature, so it is feasible to truly realize the reasons for the current information overload. Kuang's understanding of the causes of information overload and finding ways to curb it are of great benefit to all groups in education and society.

Professor China Renmin University and Kuang have their own unique views on the causes of information overload. She believes that due to the massive network capacity, people no longer consider the limitation of capacity when publishing information, so it is more likely to cause the rapid expansion of information. Furthermore, the lowering of the threshold of information release makes it possible for any individual to participate in information release, and the surge in the number of publishers will naturally bring about an increase in the amount of information. Finally, in the information age, people have excessive worship of information, such as information anxiety and information dependence. People feel that they can't live without information for a moment, and people's excessive demand for information will also stimulate information overload.

Due to the mass and intermittence of information, information overload has developed rapidly in campus and society. A lot of information has brought great inconvenience to students like Li Ming. Under the teacher's recommendation, Li Ming turned his attention to the search engine dominated by new technologies such as RSS. He introduced that the new search tool RSS can subdivide information, which greatly promoted his efficiency in reading information. But at the same time, he also said that the new technology still has the problem of information overload, but it is slightly more efficient than the old technology. Li Ming is still confused about how to solve the information overload.

As for the initial solution to information overload, Peng Lan advocates that schools should teach students to face information overload actively. She told China Education Network that the new technology really helps people to personalize filtering from the information ocean, which reduces the pressure of information overload to some extent. However, technology is not the only way to solve information overload, and it may not even be the main way. To solve the problem of information overload, the most important thing is that people correctly evaluate and use information. If people always rely too much on information, then even the best technology will not be fully utilized in people's hands.

Doubts still exist. Kuang believes that due to the rapid development of information, the emergence of new technologies only temporarily solves part of the problem of information overload. When new information development leads to new information overload, the existing technology can no longer meet people's needs. It can be seen that the problem of information overload will always exist with informatization and cannot be completely solved. In a sense, information overload is an insurmountable gap.

Therefore, people can only actively learn and master the methods of using new technologies and actively reduce information overload.

This is consistent with Peng Lan's solution to campus information overload. Peng Lan told reporters that network information helps to broaden students' horizons and provide resources for students' research to a certain extent, but it may also bring students blind trust in network information and opportunistic behavior. If we want to deal with this situation, the school should take the rational use of network information as a method course, improve students' ability to obtain real and effective information, improve students' quality of rational use of information resources, and at the same time train students' research methods more strictly, so that they can obtain comprehensive research ability.

The method of dealing with information overload in schools and society is the same in principle, that is, taking the initiative to attack. Li Ming said, maybe one day, we will say goodbye to information overload completely, but it seems far away now. Through information technology, human beings are integrating all kinds of media content that have been produced in history into the ocean of bits, and at the same time continue to produce content at an unprecedented speed. Moreover, in the past, the production and circulation of information in society mainly followed the principle of "filtering before publishing", and the mass media, churches, schools and expert authorities played the role of gatekeepers and filters; Nowadays, it is more and more common for information to be "published first and then filtered".

Originally, people defined "eliminating uncertainty" as information, but massive information seems to increase uncertainty and people's inner anxiety. Therefore, the information filtering mechanism is becoming more and more important in our times. The new information filtering mechanism is a comprehensive product of scientific and technological development and social evolution. The former is represented by the familiar search engine, while the latter is a typical behavior habit of sharing, evaluating, classifying and recommending among netizens. The process of people obtaining information through this information filtering mechanism is not only a so-called "push" or "pull", but also a process of content feed flow. Will such a mechanism and process bring "group wisdom" or "group polarization"? It is worth asking.

One of the filtering mechanisms: search engine

Search engine, a set of complex software, runs on countless computers, captures and stores web pages and contents all the time in the whole network, and indexes them into the database; At the same time, it immediately responds to the search requests of countless users and sends relevant search results to users' terminals. As for the related algorithms of indexing, sorting and presentation, they have become the core business secrets of search engine companies.

What would the Internet look like if there were no search engines? I'm afraid it's hard for us to imagine today But the history of search engines is not too long. The predecessor of search engine only appeared in the 1990s. The first program whose function is similar to that of today's search engine is called "World Wide Web Rover". Around 1995, a number of websites such as Yahoo, Excite, Lycos and Altavista began to provide website search functions. However, the search engine has become an information tool that people all over the world rely on, and its symbol is the rise of Google. In China, it can be marked by the growth of Baidu. Google was officially launched in the second half of 1999, providing services to the whole world, while Baidu released a beta version in August 2006 at 5438+0.

How important is the search engine to today's Internet users? Research shows that in 2008, 865,438+0% of global Internet users used search engines (TNS, 2008); 73.3% of netizens in China, that is, more than 280 million people have used search engines (CNNIC, 20 10). In a sample survey, 52% of Internet users think that Google is their most cherished website, and they are even willing to pay a monthly fee for using it (Rubicon Consulting, 2008). The existence of search engines, on the one hand, makes massive information not become an unorganized and disorderly burden, on the other hand, it also greatly reduces the cost for ordinary individuals to choose and obtain information from it. When people come into contact with the information they want with the help of search engines, they actually complete a "needle in a haystack" filtering.

Search engines not only help people get information across the gap of space, industry and field, but also unconsciously smooth the wrinkles of time. Imagine last month's old newspaper and last week's TV or radio program being ignored. Time used to be a barrier between media content and users' needs, although it was not as conspicuous as space. However, due to the existence of search engines, when a news disappears from the homepage of major websites over time, users all over the world can still find it, which depends on the relevance of the information to personal needs and the importance of the page where it is located. The time factor still exists, but it is not so critical. Therefore, the rules of the game in the media environment have been partially rewritten, and the history that once had a sense of depth seems to have been erased.

When the importance of "the way to find content" overwhelmed the content, when software algorithms became our information intermediary and assistant, the power pattern in the communication field changed. As the core of search engine, software algorithm and artificial intelligence are both artificial rules. What is included and what is not included? How to sort and filter? Who is making the rules? Although the answers to these questions are surrounded by the barrier of "trade secrets", the questions themselves are still questionable and vigilant!

For example, because in actual use, people usually only pay attention to the results listed in the first few pages or even the first few items of search results, the resulting "bidding ranking" has also become a major economic source for the search industry to survive. However, Baidu has long presented search results and search-related bidding ranking results, with bidding ranking websites in the front and non-bidding ranking websites in the back, so it has been widely criticized.

The second filtering mechanism: collaborative filtering

The concept of "collaborative filtering" or "collaborative filtering" comes from "collaborative filtering" in English.

If understood broadly, "collaborative filtering" is not just an algorithm or software, but a new information filtering mechanism. The premise of its effective operation is as follows: first, the preferences and behaviors of other nodes connected by an individual through interpersonal networks, that is, his friends and acquaintances, are often similar or related; Second, people are increasingly accustomed to sharing, evaluating, classifying and recommending information through their own social networks. Third, as mentioned above, today's social networks and information networks of netizens have merged and overlapped, and this mechanism is enough to have an effect on the social scale.

Taking Douban, the largest book, film and music recommendation and sharing website in China, as an example, this paper briefly explains how the voluntary labeling of information on the Internet and the public sharing of labels and comments by netizens form a new information filtering pattern.

Unlike traditional libraries, Douban.com does not provide standard classification based on book classification, nor does it list "literature" and "children" as e-commerce websites do. Whether books, movies or music, these cultural products are logically related according to the tags added by users.

You can label a book as "novel", "youth" and "Borges", or you can label it as "suitable for reading in rainy days" and "his birthday present". These tags are open to all users (of course, you can choose not to make them public). When users click on the "Youth" label, there will be a list of cultural products that different users think are related to "Youth" and have added this label. At the same time, users can also know what other meanings a cultural product is associated with in the eyes of others from multiple tags added by different users.

Furthermore, on many pages of Douban, the program will automatically recommend rich and varied information to users. For example, the recommendation of books, videos, audio, comments and activities on the home page, for example, the page of each book will list other books that people who like reading this book also like, groups they often go to, activities they participate in, and so on.

Such an information filtering mechanism can not only provide users with things that meet their tastes and preferences, but also help users explore and discover new hobbies, find like-minded people and gain more value.

The example of Douban shows how effective the information filtering mechanism of collaborative filtering is in a website that uses social software. In fact, collaborative filtering across different websites can also work effectively. This is due to the popularity of micro-content distribution channels such as RSS subscription technology and Twitter, and popular social networking sites have opened platforms for various application plug-ins. As a result, short messages, portals, personal blogs and forum communities are connected, and various media contents can easily share tags and comments with the help of hyperlinks. Nowadays, information or content on the Internet, especially on social media, can generally be transformed into "feed". Through the new information filtering mechanism, ordinary individuals can selectively aggregate the required "sources" into personalized information "streams". Therefore, the so-called "push" or "pull" cannot be simply used to describe the relationship between information transmission and reception. A more vivid and accurate expression should be: individuals filter a large number of information sources through the information filtering mechanism, establish connections with the nodes they need, form a self-centered network, and then the content will naturally aggregate from different "sources" and "streams"; Individuals can also disconnect at any time. The process of establishing or breaking contact between different individuals and other individuals is also the process of constantly reshaping new social networks among media users.

Content is converted into "source" and aggregated by RSS technology. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". The so-called "Really Simple Syndication" is similar to the "Syndication" of media groups often mentioned in communication studies, that is, the same content is published and played in different channels. The content published by one website in RSS format is easily read by other websites and published in a certain format, thus forming a "consortium" to achieve the purpose of sharing content between different websites. It is widely used in various websites that continuously publish information in chronological order.

"Source" feed is a data format that provides users with continuously updated content. In the era of Web2.0, almost all websites have the ability to publish their content as RSS feeds for users to subscribe. Each published project should at least include a title, a brief introduction to the content and a link (URL) to the source webpage; It can also include the date, the author, the entire content of the page, and even advertisements. Users can choose a fixed "portal" or "interface" to collect and browse the content of all subscribed RSS feeds, which is called "aggregation". Users' choices include: RSS readers (such as various e-mail clients or specialized software) and specialized online RSS reading websites (such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Shrimp Grab, Fresh Fruit, etc.). ), and many websites also integrate RSS subscription function (such as personalized homepage of Google or Yahoo, "9 o'clock" of Douban, etc. ). Usually, these "aggregators" check whether all feeds subscribed by everyone are updated regularly (from hourly to daily) and collect the updated content; The website that publishes the content can also notify the aggregator to collect the content immediately by "ping". The highly customized and personalized "everyday me" envisioned by Negroponte many years ago has long been realized. The new information filtering mechanism may alleviate our fear or anxiety about "information overload", but there are still other debates around it. The author believes that there has never been a situation in human history in which individuals can directly face all information without any filtering mechanism, and it is unlikely to appear in the future. One difference of today's situation lies in the information explosion; The second is that in the past, the information filtering mechanism was controlled by authorities and elites, but at present, some of it is controlled by ordinary people with the assistance of other individuals and artificial intelligence; Third, the information interaction between people and groups has greatly increased. Compared with the era of unquestionable authority, lack of personal choice, more homogeneous information and higher interaction cost, does an era of complex information, more choices, powerful tools to challenge authority, interpersonal interaction and information filtering make individuals more at a loss, or even less clear about what they need?

Mankind is standing at the beginning of another new era, facing another collective growth. After the authority is weakened or even subverted, ordinary individuals should learn how to use the new information filtering mechanism and how to make their own choices and decisions.