But I think the distinction between push and pull is not so clear. When I want to pull information, at some point I have to query the world (because I don't have direct indexing into the world's knowledge). The response to that query is bound to be a powerful push of some sort, purely evolutionarily speaking.
I think that might have been true once, but I don't think it is now.
If I make a thing, I can put up a web page about it. I can ask Google to index it. I can put my product on Amazon with useful keywords. I can get myself in directories. I can go to trade shows. I can put a press release on PR Newswire.
None of those are push actions in the sense that I am intruding on recipients and trying to badger them into doing what I want. They're just all making offerings in a pull-compatible way such that when people with needs go looking, they will find things.
The last bit makes me think you might be using "pull" in a metaphorical sense, but here I'm using it in the Lean supply chain sense, which is about producer and consumer behavior.
Lean supply chain is maybe not the best analogy, because suppliers are limited, their properties are known, and deals and optimizations are made in advance. Knowledge foraging is very different in that knowledge supply is constantly shifting and basically infinite, and by definition you don't know what you're looking for until you find it.
You can request your page to be indexed and your product to be listed, but so can a million other suppliers, so we return to the problem of how to prioritize and distill information when someone asks for something.
I'm not saying the supply chain is the best analogy. I'm saying that in that context, "push" and "pull" have very specific meanings, and that's the one I'm using here.
I agree that distilling information is challenging. Challenging enough that places from Google to Wirecutter to Consumer Reports make good livings from doing that. But advertising makes that problem worse, not better.
But I think the distinction between push and pull is not so clear. When I want to pull information, at some point I have to query the world (because I don't have direct indexing into the world's knowledge). The response to that query is bound to be a powerful push of some sort, purely evolutionarily speaking.