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"The answer to the problem of information overload on the Net is reputations… engineer a system called a reputation server."
- Neal Stephenson
 |
| Filter Program | ||
| Using programs to filter Internet results; a person need see only what they want to see. |
This is a very early reference to a problem that has become increasingly common, and has already divided our country into groups of people who are completely unable to agree on the simplest things.
| People bought personalized filter programs to skim a few droplets from that sea [of information] and keep the rest out. For some, subjective reality became the selected entertainments and special-interest zines passed though by those tailored shells.
...a woman hears and reads only opinions that match her own, because other points of view are culled by her loyal guardian software. |
| Technovelgy from Earth,
by David Brin. Published by Bantam in 1990 Additional resources -
|
As it turns out, one of the characters has a plan to avoid that problem:
To avoid such staleness, Jen had hired a famous rogue hacker... to design her own filter... one in five files would pop up randomly, in defiance of her own parameters.
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Filter Program-related
news articles:
- UK Internet Filters Default To 'Family-Friendly'
| Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million |
| California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone |
| Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay |
| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
