If we’ve always had information overload, how have we managed? Internet scholar Clay Shirky says: "It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure." If we feel that we’re overwhelmed with information, that means our filters aren’t working. The solution is to fix our filters, and Shirky points us to the sophisticated tools we’ve developed, especially social filters that rely upon the aggregated judgments of those in our social networks.

Shirky’s talk of filter failure intends to draw our attention to the continuity between the old and the new, bringing a calming voice to an overheated discussion: We shouldn’t freak out about information overload because we’ve always been overloaded, in one way or another. But when I asked him about it, Shirky agreed without hesitation that the new filtering techniques are disruptive, especially when it comes to the authority of knowledge. Old knowledge institutions like newspapers, encyclopedias, and textbooks got much of their authority from the fact that they filtered information for the rest of us. If our social networks are our new filters, then authority is shifting from experts in faraway offices to the network of people we know, like, and respect.