Introduction to Part I Content Overload More content is produced every day than a person can consume in a lifetime. From snaps in Snapchat, pins in Pinterest, and instas from Instagram, the sheer number of options available to the average person is overwhelming. Unsurprisingly, feeling overloaded with content is the new normal. How- ever, even with this proliferation, instead of distancing ourselves we have welcomed the content explosion with open arms. We expect there to be 100 different flavors of coffee at our local café, 1,000 types of baby strollers on Amazon, and 10,000 titles on Netflix, all with the option to browse and research for days on end to pick out our favorites. And as anyone who has put a video on YouTube, written a blog, or marketed an online business can attest to, content creators are in the same mess. With an endlessly growing sea of content, it’s increasingly difficult to be discovered at all. Clay Shirky (Internet smart guy) once said that content overload occurs when filters stop working.1 And some of our most obvious filters—search engines, social networks, and recommendation algorithms—no longer work like we need them to. As a result, discovering content and products on our phones and laptops can feel overwhelming and downright frustrating. Fundamentally, filters organize stuff in ways we could do ourselves. I could alphabetize a list of 1,000 strollers, but I’m glad I don’t have to. I could sort them by lowest to highest price, but I’ve never had to do it manually. I could sort them by the ones I like most to the ones I like least, but, oh wait, there’s no drop-down menu for that. I absolutely still do that by myself. It’s as if the entire Internet zips around on a spaceship, but when it comes to finding what we like, we’re still taking the stairs. It’s innately human to organize the world objectively and subjectively. It’s as natural as telling time (objective) and liking chocolate (subjective). And as
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