Arthur C. Clarke on Information Pollution

Castolari writes "Here is an interesting interview of Arthur C. Clarke and his views on regulating communications, as well as what he sees as the past, present, and future of information management."

Comments

Smart guy! :)

[liveD ehT]

"Q: Do you advocate stricter regulation of satellite television and the Internet?"
"A: I think it is technologically impossible for any one government to (directly) control, let alone ban, transmissions coming from earth orbit."

So, even though Sir Arthur C Clarke came from a time far before ours, when strict regulations were required to "keep everyone from going mad with Communism", he still has the enlightenment he did then.

If I was in control, I would try and find ways to get more Sir Arthur C Clarkes running around planet earth, not how to tie the world in knots with controls, regulations and dubious money-making schemes.

It's wonderful that he suggests humanity will survive the information age, but unclear to me if this is the case, because I'm mostly a cynic.

We shouldn't regulate communications

[Wigfield]

Well, not most of the time, anyway. I see the point he's trying to make, but the most important thing to do, in my opinion, is to provide means for people to escape this dredge of unwanted information (particularly advertising) if they so choose. This is why I strongly support the use and people's right to use ad-blockers and the like on the internet. Now, there is *one* thing I think needs to be heavily regulated, maybe even banned -- billboards. They make the road ugly, you can't escape them, and they might even contribute to increasing the rate of car accidents. (ie, plowing into a tree while gazing at a hooters ad...)

Need more collaborative filtering

[Saeger]

Here's the information filters I use these days:

Movies: RottenTomatoes, imdb, and MetaCritic have saved me dozens of hours of time I might have wasted on crap (like Matrix Revolutions, or TimeLine).

Books: Amazon, despite its evils (patents/privacy), is a very nice filter (with a few shills and idiot-reviewers). I [ab]use amazon as a filter, and then buy them cheaper new or used.

News: Popular Daily News Tidbits, Blogdex, Daypop, and slashdot.

Music: iRATE radio, and word of mouth. Need more Collaborative Filtering in this area to root out the Clearchannels/RIAAs function as a giant pusher of "cool"

Ads (aka: mental engineering): I use PopFile to filter SPAM, and Privoxy to filter out slow-loading, privacy-invading, all-around-annoying ADS. I'm still missing a proxy for my eyeballs in the real world. Soooon. :)

Cheap Products: Not a quality filter exactly, but a quantity filter: PriceWatch, PriceGrabber, Froogle, Anand's Hot Deals ...

Phew, that's a lot of linkage. Anyway, I couldn't function without these and other filters; I'd really be info overloaded.

Collaborative filtering in general has a very bright future IMO.

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