Discovery Engines and Information Overload Management
February 7, 2012
Are discovery engines the cure for information overload? The Darwin Awareness Engine Blog lists “How to Manage Information Overload: 6 Ways Discovery Engines Help.” First, a distinction: a discovery engine goes further than a search engine, offering tools to refine a search, consolidate data, and apply context to the results.
Discovery engines, states writer Romain Goday, help users navigate overwhelming data because they: focus on topics, not people; go straight to the source of information; supply information through a single channel; let users discover what they didn’t know that they didn’t know; often go through a curation process; and reduce anxiety by combining and ranking sources. See the write up for details on each point.
The article asserts:
Managing information overload requires tools that deliver ‘awareness’ of topics and filter out irrelevant information will become indispensable. The challenge is to do so without losing the ability to make unexpected discoveries. Content discovery engines are addressing this need with a multitude of approaches. The market remains very fragmented but we can expect important players to emerge in the next few years.
I’m sure we can. Our concern is that information may be lost through the auto-selection process. Is it wise to rely on an AI for such an important task? Do we have a choice at this point, or has the big data monster grown too big for the human touch?
Cynthia Murrell, February 7, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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