Many organizations, and even networks of networks, are now represented in online databases, but each remains largely an island unto itself. Until recently many sites sought to be "the" portal to the larger whole, but this approach has only insured that none can ever succeed. The LinkTank Principles were articulated in response [...]
The ASN weaves together four distinct technical areas into components of an interdependent system. The four main elements of the ASN are: persistent online identity; interoperability between communities; brokered relationships; and public interest matching technologies. Each of these is discussed in a separate section in detail.
I've added the Augmented Social Network channel on TopicExchange to my topicroll and subscribed to the associated RSS feed. (Yes, I'm a little late to the party - I was in the process of moving when this came out.)
Now that even John Robb has changed his mind about the usefulness of the TrackBack protocol, and given that my blog tool (Radio) now implements it, maybe I should think about enabling it here.
But Murphy's law - especially as applied to computers - scares the hell out of me, so I'm always leery of plugging new stuff into software that currently works well for my purposes. I know Lilia has had some gripes about it.
Do other Radio Trackbackers think I should tread carefully here?
Jack Vinson (a newly blogging chemical engineer who I found thanks to Denham'swonderfulKmBlogger page) has dug up an interesting Taxonomy of Ignorance. "The purpose is to increase awareness of both knowledge and ignorance that help shape decision processes."
TeledyN: Writing for the Net. Brilliant. The wave of new users that is unleashing upon the Net probably understands better what computers will be for than current technology developers. See also "The Invisible Customers".
When my mother first saw my laptop computer, she looked at the box and asked, "How does it work?" Being just a little on the left-brain side and with far too much technology under my belt, I totally misunderstood her question. I started to explain how it was just like a desktop, it was just all in one package.
"Yes, I see that, but how does it work?"
Even May chimed in to explain where the CPU was, how the parts came together, but mom just kept turning the box over and over not really looking like our explanations where getting anywhere even near answering her question. I was about to drop the subject, thinking "she just don't get it" when I pulled out my Roots-brand retractable modem cable to dial-up my roaming ISP and hook myself up for my email ...
"Oh!" says Mom, "I see now: That's how it works!"
Scott McNealy would be so proud of her, and yes, blogreaders, it wan't Mom, it was yours truly who "just don't get it" when it was perfectly clear to Mom: The network is the computer.
Two articles in recent days highlighted social scientists at Hewlett-Packard (Joshua Tyler) and Microsoft (Marc Smith). Tyler, 25, studies the rhythms of composing and answering e-mails, work that he started while pursuing a master's degree at Stanford. Smith has been studying USENET newsgroups, and his team at Microsoft has developed software called Netscan. [EEK Speaks]
USENET newsgroups are often overlooked as a knowledge management application, but there are still many good people out there willing to help out complete strangers. It is important to recognize that the threads that connect postings are akin to links on the Web. Says Smith:
What we are about is the thread. It turns out that the core sociological data type of the Internet is not IP (Internet Protocol) numbers, or any of that stuff, it's threaded conversations. And it's amazing how little investment has been put into adding value to the core data structure of the Internet, which is the conversational thread.
[...] If there were only one person writing Web pages, Google wouldn't work. Google Groups doesn't do what we do to Usenet. We're doing something useful to Usenet.
Even though I've so far managed to avoid that particular business, it doesn't mean I'm not interested, far from it - especially given the recent ongoings around the syndication forkof 2003. Here's a pair of interesting pieces on standards development that highlight its political aspect.
The first is a 1990 document by James Gosling, one of the original designers of the Java languages. "This is a moderately sarcastic note on the phases that the standardization process goes through, and the relationship between the level of technical and political interest in a topic."
The second is a note by Aaron Swartz who seems to want the group developing the Pea standard to agree on a more explicit constitution for dealing with dispute resolution. I wish them good luck, but I'm afraid it may be even more difficult than defining the standard per se.
The first is a 1990 
