Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Editor and Publisher has an article on weblog as an extension of news media business model. Board the Weblog Bandwagon Now.  I think this article misses the mark, in its endorsement of traditional media creating businesses around blogging. I would imagine greater opportunities would exist for domain experts or editorialists. I would be willing to make regular micro-payments for access to blogs published by domain experts as long as they were rich in their content. A great example is Peter Merholz Peterme blog. Peterme includes for timely information, opinions and links regarding the domain of information theory, design and presentation. I would imagine that a subscription for service would be a great investment for students and professionals in this domain. 3:22:08 PM    . Dan Bricklin has a great summary of the TechXNY Expo Dan's Weblog 2:09:40 PM    . SJ Mercury Reports that blogging goes mainstream Random thoughts of strangers. Mike Cassidy sounds like one of the early reporters writing about the web. He indicates that the signal to noise ratio is poor with lots of babble and pointless posting. I would agree, but those of us who have been involved with enabling technology for the last twenty years can see the seeds of potential. I believe that blogging is going to prove to be a continually evolving form of communication which could facilitate new forms of publishing and mass communication which is more complementary to the evolving technology infrastructure and expectations of its users. Let's face it, the current format of information distribution and dessemination was the by product of the atom-based world. Newspapers, books and magazines do not map particularly well to electronic information technology, however, blogs are a by-product of EIT and are highly adaptive and an evolving communication medium. 1:16:17 PM    . David Weinberger writes on why the Semantic Web is a non-starter. The Semantic Argument Web. He points out that metadata standardization is inherently an AI issue and when applied to something as broad as the Web, could prove overwhelmingly complex. It seems that domain specific metadata schemas will prove to continue to be the accepted/adopted approach. 11:45:12 AM    . I guess the theme today is information analysis, truth and accuracy. There was an excellent article I read last year in the New Yorker Magazine titled "Absolute Power", by Ian Parker on the subject of Powerpoint presentations and the 'dumbing down' of information. The premise of the article was that when we create and distribute presentations created in Powerpoint, they are inherently more susceptible to acceptance as truth. The article sited numerous statistics which demonstrated that the simplified outline presentation format and slide show metaphor lead to the consumer being much more accepting of the information presented. I think this is the same phenomena we are seeing with our newspapers, television news and news magazines. People want short descriptions, bullets and blurbs when they consume their information. The important difference with Powerpoint is that it's typically business communication, unlike newspapers and programs. In a recent job I was encouraged to use Powerpoint in presenting business analysis and direction. Having a fair amount of experience using Powerpoint for this purpose, I was willing and did use it. One colleague pointed out that she felt it limited her ability to have the depth of data and information which she had become used to in creating her analysis and reports. In retrospect I think that Powerpoint did facilitate the kind of rapid decision making and shallow analysis which I've found prevelant in high technology these days. I don't mean to sound cynical, but instead to suggest the importance of careful analysis and deep investigation when making business recommendations. 9:20:54 AM    . Opinion is a flitting thing, But Truth, outlasts the Sun -- If then we cannot own them both -- Possess the oldest one -- I've always felt this quote was appropriate for the technology industry. Things change so quickly and are so multi-dimensional, that opinions are flittings things. However, the truth is very elusive and difficult to find. My goal in this weblog is to minimize the noise of opinion and point to facts or opinions which seem grounded in truth. 8:39:29 AM    .

© Copyright 2002 Will S. Johnston. Last update: 07/01/2002; 9:08:17 AM.

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