Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Latest News
    • Storage

    Teaching the Internet to Value Our Time

    By
    Peter Coffee
    -
    March 18, 2002
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      “Information consumes attention,” as Nobel economist Herbert Simon famously observed. “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” The Web, by this measure, makes all of us paupers: It offers so much data that we all wind up working harder to accomplish less, if our measure of achievement is whether we feel that were making well-informed decisions.

      And we dont like feeling poor.

      If youre looking for a competitive edge, nothing has more potential than increasing your customers return on invested attention—making them feel rich, in ways that mere money cannot. The question is whether the exponential improvement of data delivery technology can be tied, with equal success, to the task of showing each user the subsets of personal interest.

      Can we make the Net pay attention to us and tailor what it offers based on what we want to know?

      The Net is trying to pay attention, as measured by the explosion of effort devoted to capturing clickstreams. “By the middle of the next decade,” projects data warehouse consultant Ralph Kimball, “clickstream databases will dwarf all the other conventional data warehouse examples. And the worst part is that the clickstream is really interesting.”

      What sharpens the edge of the problem is that the clickstream, unlike other bandwidth-busting traffic, resists compression. We can learn what people notice, or dont notice, in video scenes and the like, and we can apply ever-increasing processor power and ever more sophisticated fractal and wavelet algorithms to reduce the number of bits that we actually need to send to convey the essence of an experience. Personalization, by contrast, has its greatest promise in the highest fractal dimensions, so to speak: in the attributes that distinguish one “jazz record buyer” from another, for example, so that the same core best-selling products dont get recommended over and over again in a self-perpetuating process.

      Nothing consumes more of our attention than streaming media, which we cant readily summarize or skim. At the same time, we value its high information content. IBM researchers are trying to resolve the resulting paradox with their VideoCharger technology: This monitors user interactions with video to develop a model that predicts what a user would find most interesting and broadens user options for direction and speed of viewing.

      Some creative artists will resist such technologies, saying that they want their works viewed as they were conceived—or not at all. Piffle. The function of art, like the function of any other work of the mind, is to stimulate other peoples thinking—whether the end result is a decision or merely (if thats the right word) a more enlightened state of being.

      Like books that let us reread, or skim, or return to a favorite passage at will, other media technologies need to become more responsive to our interests if we are to give them the favor of our attention.

      And content on the Net, even if it does stay “free” in monetary terms, needs to work harder to be less expensive in terms of what it gives us back for our time.

      E-mail eWEEK Technology Editor Peter Coffee

      Peter Coffee
      Peter Coffee is Director of Platform Research at salesforce.com, where he serves as a liaison with the developer community to define the opportunity and clarify developers' technical requirements on the company's evolving Apex Platform. Peter previously spent 18 years with eWEEK (formerly PC Week), the national news magazine of enterprise technology practice, where he reviewed software development tools and methods and wrote regular columns on emerging technologies and professional community issues.Before he began writing full-time in 1989, Peter spent eleven years in technical and management positions at Exxon and The Aerospace Corporation, including management of the latter company's first desktop computing planning team and applied research in applications of artificial intelligence techniques. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, he has held teaching appointments in computer science, business analytics and information systems management at Pepperdine, UCLA, and Chapman College.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Applications

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      IT Management

      Intuit’s Nhung Ho on AI for the...

      James Maguire - May 13, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nhung Ho, Vice President of AI at Intuit, about adoption of AI in the small and medium-sized business market, and how...
      Read more
      Applications

      Kyndryl’s Nicolas Sekkaki on Handling AI and...

      James Maguire - November 9, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nicolas Sekkaki, Group Practice Leader for Applications, Data and AI at Kyndryl, about how companies can boost both their AI and...
      Read more
      Cloud

      IGEL CEO Jed Ayres on Edge and...

      James Maguire - June 14, 2022 0
      I spoke with Jed Ayres, CEO of IGEL, about the endpoint sector, and an open source OS for the cloud; we also spoke about...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2022 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×