I can't look at everything on cable or read every newspaper published in Trinidad alone, so I employ a clever system of filters. In simpler times, information filters were called editors. They split up the avalanche of local and world news among themselves and decided what they would allow their readers to know, based on the common value of each story, its importance to their communities and the issues which the newspaper might support. Few stories are so big that they automatically command premium space in any printed periodical of record. Most stories are weighted according to a great many criteria, which may vary depending on the nature of the periodical and the approach that it champions to the world.
Most readers find a filter they are happy with and stick with that source of information.
When editors ruled the flow of information, the pipe delivering it was tiny. Today we have a veritable Niagara of data, facts, reports, and opinions on any given subject. In recent times, the World Wide Web and the Internet have gotten a great deal of public notice for the diversity and sheer volume of information which swells its virtual coffers each day. Yet the Web itself, even bolstered by QuickTime, ActiveMovie and Real Audio, still only offers a sampling of the vast resources of information broadcast into the ether and published in the world each day. Future editors, our personal information filters, will probably be active agents, software that searches out our areas of interest in all of media, capturing video, audio and text that matches the breadth of our interests in much the same way that a database sort sifts through data to find matches.