Legal Commentary

Yes, I am a Data Glutton

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

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.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).