17.2. An Information Arms Race

Or, consider our suffocation beneath a flood of information we don't know what to do with. We have repeatedly been told that the next advances in technology will ease our burden. More elaborate filters, information rating schemes, personalized software agents ("knowbots") that roam the Net gleaning information precisely targeted to our interests—by these devices and their successors we will finally learn to ride the crest of the flood rather than drown in it.

What we forget is that the arms race between the powers of information proliferation and the powers of information management is an endlessly escalating one. The logical finesse with which we manage information is the same logical finesse that generates yet more information and outflanks the tools of management. Software agents are quite as capable of mindlessly flinging off information as of mindlessly collecting it.