It’s fairly safe to say that the Web today feels pretty close to Huxley’s vision. The half-life of everything on the Web is so short, and the stream is so constant that we’ve become conditioned to quickly consuming, savoring for a fleeting moment and then quickly moving on to the next thing to snack on.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about the dreaded 1000+ unread items staring me down on Google reader. It’s a deflating feeling to constantly be confronted with so much stuff that I’m failing to catch up to. In reality, I don’t want all this stuff. I just want the good stuff. Of course, technologists react by trying to develop a vaccine that is part smart algorithm (see Techmeme) and/or part social tagging/voting/whatever (Digg and Delicious).
In other words, we want an electronic version of an editorial staff. Well, maybe what we really need is help from.hold onto your hats.other human beings. Maybe we need a way to establish a circle (or circles) of trusted people – friends, colleagues, higher-profile people we know that consistently suggest interesting things – and give them a way to help us cherry-pick the stuff worth focusing on.
The above is the premise behind our proposed panel for next year’s SXSW Interactive. It’s called The Revenge of Editorials. If you think it’s worthwhile, you can help make it a reality by voting it up (speaking of information overload, there are over 2,200 panel suggestions for SXSW).
Speaking of humans (and their inherent value), Behavior Design’s Chris Fahey has another interesting panel called The Human Interface (or: Products are People, Too!). It’s another panel I’d love to see become a reality. The brief pitch:
More and more, users are interacting with web sites and software on a conversational, physical, psychological, and emotional level — just like we’ve always interacted with other people. UX designers, then, must stop thinking about interfaces as dumb control panels and begin using technology to envision interfaces (literally!) as human beings.
Go humans!
Andrew McMillen said:
Hey Richard, I surfed here from Technorati. My brother Stuart drew the comic you mentioned. Cheers.
Sergi said:
You’re totally right Richard. I feel the same every time I confront my 1000+ pending items in Reader. I’m voting for your panel.