Ted Koppel on Information Overload

A friend of mine recently pointed me to this YouTube hosted clip of news-anchor Ted Koppel in the 1980s.  Ted laments that the modern ability to archive news footage is creating mountains of information that are unsorted and overwhelming. "Perhaps the greatest need we have is for a body of people who will sift from that information—sort of winnow it down—so we have something in a form of order." It's amazing to see Koppel's foresight in the 80s on this. In my unpublished thesis, I've argued that "filtering" is the key to information space, and that this filtering will not be done by authoritative gateways (e.g. librarian and editors, as Koppel suggests), but by the "community" itself (e.g. Facebook).  Getting even crazier, I went on to compare the church to a "filtering community," suggesting that the church itself could (will?) become the relational arbiter in a sea of data.

Identity will be defined by what we see.  What we can find.  What we deem as important compared to millions of other unimportant things.  Existence will be defined by visibility.  Does it appear through the filter?

A new meaning for the church charged with "you are a light of the world."