1. What Is Information Trapping?

For a long time—and especially around 1994, when the World Wide Web was just getting its jumpstart—the Internet appeared to many as a vast pool of information just sitting in cyberspace. People who used the Internet for research “cast their nets” by entering queries into a search engine, and then pulled in “fish,” in the form of information. Once they had the information they needed, they didn’t bother to repeat the search, unless enough time lapsed and the information changed.

Nowadays the Internet is in a constant state of flux. No longer a static repository of information, Web content changes minute by minute. From bloggers posting their thoughts online and news sources adding timely stories, to Flickr users ...

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