Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Excellent post here - Need to spend a more time listening to these guys.  There are implications here that are "emerging" in a whole range of topics too numerous to list.  Concept here is overwhelming me.  Need to wallow in it some more - when I've got some time to wallow. =================== Hierarchies, webs and emergence. Last week Dave Sifry and I met up with Dave Winer and Steve Gillmor at Technorati to share ideas. We talked about the public resource that Dave W created in weblogs.com, about Technorati, and about Dave's new idea to help people categorize blog postings and the things they link to. Dave W said: I feel we're at a turning point in the weblog world, either we're going to be like every other hierarchy that's ever been, with secret deals, lots of impediments to progress, eventual stagnation; or we're going to overcome that. Dave thinks in hierarchies; whether this is because he invented outlining, or why he invented outlining I'm not sure. Along the way he added links into the picture, so his hierarchies can link to other nodes, or other hierarchies to get as complex as you like. The conventional wisdom is that links beat out hierarchies - Google's link-centric approach beat out Yahoo's hierarchy-centric approach (the HO in Yahoo stood for Hierarchically Oriented). However, another way of looking at it is top-down versus bottom-up - central design versus emergence. Dave W wants to build a bottom-up emergent taxonomy, using open debate and open standards. Steve Gillmor is saying something similar about how we can grow new things. I have a couple of ideas that I need to write up as spec proposals to try to start such discussions - one about 'vote links', one a new bit of metadata for feeds saying whether they are complete or not. [Epeus' epigone] 7:13:54 PM

Brilliant of you to notice! ============================================== Says who?. According to TalkLeft, there's a pithy quote making the rounds that's been attributed to Abraham Lincoln: "There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There's nothing good in war except its ending." In truth, this was spoken by an actor portraying Lincoln, in the classic Star Trek episode "The Savage Curtain." [View an image from the official site; Hear the original line via TrekkieGuy] It's an important distinction to make. Lincoln was president from 1860 -- 1865. Star Trek aired from 1966 -- 1969. To be proper, I suppose the line should actually be credited to Gene Roddenberry, but somehow people don't treat his words with the same gravitas as those from dead presidents. Anyway, just setting the record straight. Accept no imitations. [Riba Rambles:] 5:39:09 PM

Pick Your Head Up.... and stop watching TV. Go read a blog instead...and find out what real people re thinking, feeling, saying. On The River this morning, I found a piece that sets out eloquently the types and levels of distraction in our society that help maintain a profound apathy, denial and plain flat-out dismissal of facts. By clicking on a link in the piece, I came upon the web site of the writer William Greider.  Looks like he's a brave and thoughtful person. [wirearchy News] 5:34:06 PM

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