The Rise of ‘Algorithmic Authority’ -an interesting blog on NY Times

Read: http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/the-rise-of-algorithmic-authority/

 Professor Clay Shirky blogs about how we process informatiom from multiple sources, compare and trust the final picture, rather than relying on a single source for new / information.

If you take Wikipedia as an example, most pages present views and information from multiple sources we do not know, let alone trust. Yet, a wiki article on anything presents a close to decent picture for us.

I have stopped reading newspapers, I do not take anything I see on T.V news at face value, and most new things I read about in a book / magazine, I google them! Yet, I consider myself fairly well informed on whataever topics that interest me.

Would the internet work on our ability to cross link information from multiple sources, and do away with traditional sources of information?

I see this field growing with more research and advancement. Perhaps the next few years will give us the answer.

Cheers!

Vasu