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I) We live in the Information Age

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I) The Information Age

I remember being introduced to Mosaic, the first web browser.  I was in university studying Neural Computation and someone demonstrated Mosaic's browser to me.  My first reaction was: now what?  There was no content apparent, nothing to see, and no way to find it.  Then came Yahoo organizing the world for you, followed by AltaVista my first content searchable portal.  Google had the simpler interface, not a portal just a search engine, it was faster and that was that.

Well there was and is more to the two different approaches.  Portals gather, organize and present the data, they feel limiting to me.  While search engines open up the vast potential to explore all the worlds data, freeing me to discover anything.  Perhaps the subtlety is that even search engines guide your search and organize the data for you, we are not as free as we think we are.  Funny that my current behavior is still a mix, I go to Yahoo and Google, but I now also visit the Twitter sphere and Facebook, a mix of personal preferences guiding my formatted data and open search.

Thinking these thoughts as an opener to this blog, partially because revisiting them is fun, life was simpler then, more physical survival less virtual.  However, seems that these two modes of interaction are typical of the struggle with data today.  Too much freedom, pure free search is overwhelming, too little is stifling.  What should we put in the hands of others, how can we guide our path through all this data?

I would like to share tools I have developed to help navigate and survive in the Information Age.  But beyond survive I would like to develop tools with you to thrive and grow with the opportunity.  So here goes...

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