We're feeling our way in the dark quite a bit, as we wander through this new world of information the Internet has created for us.
But we're quite happy to build up myths which I suppose give comfort for those of us who either don't want to spend any time online, or can't.
I guess we prefer to confirm our prejudices rather than deal with reality.
One of the myths is that we now only look for information online that matches our interests and points of view. Our lives are getting smaller, the argument goes, because now we have all this information online we of course are able to ignore all the other stuff and just grab the stuff we were interested in anyway.
Strawberry jam making. Holocaust denial. Climate change. Climate change denial. Raspberry jam making.
You get the idea.
Yes, the irony that people are willing to believe that people online are only interested in reading stuff that feeds their small little worlds and points of view is not lost on me.
The truth is, actually, quite the opposite.
My favorite graphic to illustrate this is of Wikipedia. Start reading an article on Wikipedia on jam making and I guarantee that you'll snap to an hour or so later reading an article on the writings of Wilfred Burchett, reached merely be clicking on a link in one article, and then another, and then another.
Call it focus disorder or whatever you want, but the day the link was invented was the day narrow interests died.
What's interesting, though, is this: As people started to fret over this serial distractedness they came up with tools that they thought would solve it: create rivers of attention, feeds of focus, and all that kind of thing.
The idea was that with the surplus of data, the information economy would transform into the attention economy. Those who made money, the argument went, would be those who were able to filter out all the noise.
Just give us the information we want, the argument went, and we'll pay you good money.
Trouble is that hasn't happened.
Something called RSS - really simple syndication - was supposed to create these feeds of interest, enabling us to organize them as we wanted.
Trouble is, we didn't know when to stop adding feeds until they became weeds and our RSS reader became an overgrown garden we were scared to visit.
Meanwhile, along came things like Twitter and Facebook, which actually have more in common than people care to admit.
All three do the same thing, basically - let you choose what you read, and make it come it to you - but the differences are key.
RSS is a collection of feeds from blogs and news sites. Not unlike the old wire service tickers of old.
Facebook is a collection of feeds from your friends: What they're up to, what they're reading, videos they like.
Twitter is a collection of feeds from friends, companies, people you've never heard of, people you don't even like, or companies. They all have one thing in common: You subscribed to their feed because at one point you liked one of their tweets.
In other words, Facebook reflects the eclectic interests of people you like and know; Twitter reflects the eclectic interests of people you may never have met.
The result is a mish-mash of stuff that pulls you in all directions at once. And because your Twitter buddies only have a few words in which to explain why they've posted a link to a webpage, chances are you'll be intrigued enough to click on it.
This, more than any other service I've come across, takes you way out of your comfort zone of familiar reading matter.
In the time I've written this, for example, my modest Twitter buddy list has sprouted links to a blackout in Kigali, a speech by a friend at the Australian Skeptics' Society, and tips for public speaking which don't include imagining the audience naked.
Far from producing rivers of attention, they create complex creeks of serendipity.
Dipping your toes into Twitter, or Facebook, is like eavesdropping on other people's conversations at dinner parties. They always seem, somehow, to be more interesting than the one you're stuck in.
Of course, this isn't twitter doing this. Neither is it Facebook.
It's us. We're using these tools to create odd webs of interest. But whereas before, with photo sharing tools like Flickr, and music sharing services like Last.FM, we were consciously seeking those with similar tastes and interests, we're finding that these tools actually thrive on entropy - randomness that somehow pushes us out of the worlds we'd normally inhabit.
One day a service will come along that does this even better. But I think the lesson we've learned from all this - if we care to - is that we're not very good judges of what interests us. So, far better to leave it to the inherent chaotic madness of the Internet to guide us.
Maybe this, more than all the fine talk and fancy gadgetry, will determine the power of the web.
c 2009 Loose Wire Pte Ltd This story cannot be reproduced without written permission from the writer. Jeremy Wagstaff is a commentator on technology and appears regularly on the BBC World Service. You can reach him via email at jeremy@loosewire.org
