Your search for “information farmer” yielded no results but your own, you egotist
I’ve realised what my job is now. I was looking at an interesting web page, thinking “now who can I get to write about this….”, when it occurred to me that what I do so much of the time is to roam around, trying to find things and then seeding them by putting the idea of writing about them in peoples’ heads and offering them money to write them up. Then the text gets harvested and put on show in the paper or online, and people pay us.
It’s information farming. Have to say it’s a lot less physically strenuous than the kind one would have been doing 100 years ago (see Bobbie’s interesting musing on the “what if you were born 100 years ago?” meme), though sometimes a bit stressful.
Interestingly, the search for “information farmer” does - once you get past the results saying “information, farmers…”, yield this page from Clickz - dating back to 2003.
It seems that the “information farmer” meme has not thrived, and instead has fallen on stony ground. Well, maybe this could be some water for it. As the Clickz writer, Rudy Grahn (and hasn’t his career taken off - why, it’s as if he’d released a version of Spirit In The Sky or something), notes,
What’s missing is someone, or something, to function as an information farmer. We need an agent who will transform the verbs of the Internet from “search” and “find” to “have” and “consume,” an agent who fills the pantry with plenty of what we need. I want the information farmer to save us from mounting a search expedition every time we need sustenance.
Like Ward, I believe we’re destined to have a world of information by manufacture. The rub is I also believe we’re destined to pay for it.
On that basis is Google the Tesco of the information world, squeezing the amount the producers can charge for their goods relentlessly while gaining more and more market share?
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Immerse yourself in AOL's Google searches! Be sure to wash afterwards! (1 September 2006; score: 38.87%)
- Two things for Mac users: John Siracusa on Tiger; and DEVONagent (28 April 2005; score: 34.74%)
- Spam: a retrovirus that infects any online input (21 August 2004; score: 33.31%)
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August 29th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Vernor Vinge keeps the information farmer meme very much alive in his latest book ‘Rainbows End’ - worth a read.
October 11th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Oh dear. Ya know, I still think I had this right, even if the world couldn’t keep their eyes open at the idea. Google is going to be the Information Farmer, I just had the misfortune of not seeing it in advance.
I stand by this piece baby, and I still have an industry gig which pays better than clickz and doesn’t require me to be such a crew slut!
Lastly, while we are at it, I am a huge fan of Dr. & The Medics “Laughing At The Pieces” album. Always was. Wish the re-issue from last year was better (no ‘Burn’, but they include ‘More’ from a different album? Yuk…)
October 11th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Rudy! So good of you to drop by. Though I don’t think Google will be the Information Farmer. It’s the one which gathers the information, which we all desperately wish it would buy or take from us. We generate, it chooses. That doesn’t make it a farmer at all.