On the whole, we don’t know how to deal with information, but we all think we have a way of managing information.

The fascinating thing about information is that it is both personal and communal.

There is big information. Everything out in the public domain in some shape or form.

The is private information – things that are known but are not available to the public

And there is personal information. This is information that belongs to you in some way.

There is a connection between all three types of this information and there some syncing that goes on between.

But as with any time you try to sync something between three separate and distinct systems bad things tend to happen.

This would be a challenging enough problem on its own, but this problem is compounded by the veracity of the information and the speed at which the information changes.

The same information can be parsed differently and give people profoundly different impressions of the same event.

Software can do an amazing job of processing different inputs and come out with some vaguely resembling a plausible reality on average….

But that brings in the problem of averages again. Averages are not the same as events over time. See the post about ergodicity for a more detailed explanation.

By homogenizing information to get it to fit into certain classifications, we are simultaneously making it easier to use in the aggregate, but also less useful in individual situations.