Knowledge > Information

The black hole of social media.

Gist: While we prefer to be surrounded by less spam and more useful data,
the state of art today is that quantity dominates quality.

In this post I look at the world of data around us through the lens of r/K-strategies of evolution of content.

Data as the World

We naturally want to be aware and well informed of what is happening in the world around us. This is part of our nature of being human beings.

Communication technologies have been inaugurated in late 20-th century. Social media is marching now, in early 21-st.

The most precious resource of today is access to data.

I think of data in two forms:

1. Unstructured information.
2. Structured knowledge.

The etymology of the word “information” is “in-formation”, which stands for “lack of structure”. A piece of information, most of the times, carries no immediate value, and has to be digested prior to being useful.

Knowledge is that digested gist.

Data can be unstructured or structured.
I call the former information and the latter — knowledge.

Data as Ecosystem

If data is the essence of the world around us, then:

• Individuals and larger forces can be seen as agents, and
• Supply and demand concepts of economics can be used to analyze the domain.

Let’s model the world as the universe of data created and consumed by agents.

Content Creation

Content creation is the supply side of the market of data.

Two plausible extreme strategies to provide the supply are:

Strategy A

• Digest input data, carefully analyze and then transform it into more structured form.
• Strive for quality and structure of produced content.
• Optimize for accuracy and completeness of the output.
• Care about long-term reputation.

Strategy B

• Echo the incoming data passing certain primary filter with little or no modifications.
• Strive for quantity and volume of the content being sent out.
• Optimize for visibility and distribution of the output.
• Care about being present and valued in the moment.

Content Consumption

Content consumption is the demand side of the market of data.

Plausible extreme strategies to fulfill the demand:

Strategy 1

• Seek for quality.
• Value reputation, correctness and completeness.
• Favor evergreen content, the value of which is persistent.
• Focus on content that can be kept, revisited and learned from later on.

Strategy 2

• Seek for quantity.
• Value recency, novelty and content going viral.
• Favor viral content that is easier to distribute.
• Focus on keeping high volume of the flow of content around.

Content creation and consumption strategies complement each other.

Supply strategy A plays well with demand strategy 1.
Supply strategy B plays well with demand strategy 2.

A+1, as well as B+2 are sustainable local minima.
They form a stable equilibrium.

A+2, as well as B+1, would not work together anyhow well.
Their equilibrium would be unstable.

Today’s State of Art

The industry of creating and delivering content to the mankind dates back thousands of years. This industry may well be the oldest one in the world.

And it sure is here to stay.

I am willing to take the existence of the world up to this point as a solid proof that the equilibrium reached is indeed a stable one.

Viral vs. evergreen content is an r/K strategy selection.

To keep it brief, in ecology and evolution, the established terminology for r/K-strategies is:

• r-strategy:
  Many offspring, most don’t live long.
  Behavior is mostly instinct-driven.
  Mutations are mostly genetic.
  Examples: Oysters, fish.
• K-strategy:
  Few offspring, most live long.
  Behavior is rationalized instead of being instinct-driven.
  Childhood, education and culture play larger role than pure genetics.
  Examples: Mammals, humans.

And growth rate outperforms capacity by a margin as of now.

A+1 is a sustainable K-strategy.
B+2 is a sustainable r-strategy.

Today we are on the B+2 side of this spectrum

Every media channel is thrilled to put the most recent,
trending, viral content first.

If information is data without structure and knowledge is structured data, the world today strongly prefers information over knowledge.

To continue with the analogy:

• r-strategies perform best in rapidly changing environments, where dramatic changes are often required in order to not get extinct.
• K-strategies perform best when the environment is established and the low-hanging fruits, that instinct-driven evolution could have grabbed, are mostly gone.

Since the world of social media is relatively young and constantly changing, there is no surprise that strategies, that dominate this market today, can mostly be categorized as r-strategies.

And I believe this is changing as we speak.

Where Are We Going Tomorrow?

Glad you asked.

We consists of me and you. And I have made up my mind.

Before sharing it, why don’t you stop and ask yourself a somewhat easier question:

Would you prefer to see more information or more knowledge around?

Information is available in enormous quantities. The first part of Google’s original mission of making it universally accessible and useful can safely be declared accomplished.

Myself, I consider information to carry negative value. It does not affect my behavior, while taking my time and energies to process or filter it.

Knowledge, on the other hand, is what makes my life richer.

• I don’t want the same content floating around me online and offline.
  Internet and TV, spending hours talking of the same information with no knowledge introduced, just make me allergic.
• I don’t want businesses to aggressively tell me what should I like.
  When I want to watch Star Trek, I want to watch Star Trek.
  Not “How I Met Your Mother”.
  Heck, I don’t even want to know what “How I Met Your Mother” is. At least, not when what I want is to watch Star Trek!
• I don’t want spam in my online and offline world.
  I want to be getting answers to the questions I have.
  When I want pizza, a recommendation is invaluable compared to a yet another discount promotion.
• I value my time!
  And take it personally when a yet another service is trying various nasty attempts to make me waste it.

As the last straw argument, imagine yourself, some five or ten years from now, talking to today’s you.

Could you speak along the lines of:

Hey, I don’t think you are spending enough time reading and posting to social media, forums and news.
You should make it a priority.
Go out less, exercise less, work and sleep less.
Just make sure to never miss an important update!

I sure can not. The inner “future me” is already grumbling that one hour on Sunday has been a bit too much to spend writing this post.

Part II: What can we do?