McLuhan was reacting against information science’s view of a medium as that through which a signal (or message) passes. Information science purposefully abstracted itself from every and any particular medium, aiming at theories that held whether you were talking about tin can telephones or an inter-planetary Web. tweet about it. MORE >>

Networks of weak ties spread ideas, information, and enthusiasm faster and more effectively than letter-writing campaigns or newspaper ads. It seems to me that Malcolm Gladwell’s debunking of the claim that the Net will empower political revolutions is right about one big thing, but wrong about a whole lot more. They were dangerous. MORE >>

What’s interesting to a community is not enough to make us well informed because our community’s interests tend to be parochial and self-reinforcing. I’ve come to love Reddit. Reddit as it stands is not the future of news. It is, however, a hope for news. As at other sites, at Reddit readers post items they find interesting. MORE >>

I spent most of today tracking down some information about the history of information overload, so I though I’d blog it in case someone else is looking into this. Toffler explains information overload as being just like sensory overload, except it results from too much information. by Donald B. Lindsley. 432-435. MORE >>

Harvard University has today put into the public domain (CC0) full bibliographic information about virtually all the 12M works in its 73 libraries. (Here’s a version of the text of a submission I just made to BoingBong through their “Submitterator”). This is (I believe) the largest and most comprehensive such contribution. MORE >>