Ethan Zuckerman on how to engineer serendipity online

In a wired world, finding information about events in a distant part of the world – the score of a soccer game, the aftermath of a military coup, or a nascent hip-hop movement in a conservative country – is straightforward.

Even if news sites overlooked a certain event, chances are that a blogger has not. “But how do you find stuff you don’t know you are looking for?” asks Ethan Zuckerman.

This koanlike question comes from his work as a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Mr. Zuckerman spends a lot of time pondering the intricacies of the Internet and how to realign its many moving parts to make the Web more useful.

Read the rest of the story here. html.pdf.