Thinking a lot about context. A piece of information has no value until it is linked to other information. My focus with weblogs as a hybrid communication and content management tool as been with attempting to pre-suppose the potential uses of any given chunk of information and assign it to categories. Thus the chunk is repeated multiple times in various “streams” that are aggregated by topic, audience, or some similar organizational concept. While I believe this exercise has value in that it [explain value here], I believe that this approach is not sustainable over time. As the number of categories I’m using increases, it becomes more difficult to scan the possible array of possibilities when I’m making a post. I also find myself reluctant to create new categories and often attempt to “squish” the post into an existing category. The result of this activity is a huge array of topical HTML and RSS repositories that (so far) nobody looks at. I’m not too worried about readership, but the primary motivation for dissecting the stream of posts into topical or audience-driven streamlets is to provide a filter for an audience. I imagine a side benefit for myself of being able to jump through these filtered streams to review progress in a particular area or with a particular group. OK, so I’m convincing myself that this approach is not entirely misguided. It has its limits, however, and I must come up with better criteria for the designation and use of categories.
I’ve toyed around a bit with the TrackBack features of the Moveable Type weblog tool, and it has stimulated some new ideas regarding the interconnection of these chunks of information that make up our weblogs. If I read something in your weblog that I’d like to comment on, I can write my comment in my weblog and “ping” (or notify) yours (if the feature has been enabled) to tell it I’m creating the reference. In doing so, I create a new link between two (hopefully) related chunks. This is possible because a “hook” of sorts was created that allows me to attach my link. Right now the functionality is quite rudimentary, but even in its basic form it allows me to see a dynamic list of posts that refer to my post. This is fundamentally different from comment systems because the conversation is taking place across the network—my comments are a part of my “space” and therefore have context through both location (on my weblog) and association (through the link to your post on your weblog).
In addition to allowing pings to an individual post, a category can be given a TrackBack URL. Individuals making posts can ping this category “hook” and add their chunk to a defined group of thought (again, a category can be topical, audience-focused, etc.)
I find this conceptually fascinating and must begin to re-think my methods of interconnecting information. Without having fully explored the functionality as implemented in Moveable Type’s TrackBack convention, I immediately find myself wishing for additional functionality:
- I want to be able to categorize the link itself. If I think of the link as having an identity of its own, there are certain characteristics that I’d love to be able to identify. What if I clicked on the “See Related Information” link below a post (which would bring up the TrackBack listing of URLs that have “pinged” that particular chunk), and saw a listing of links organized by type of link? Commentary, Definition, Historical Background, Other Examples, How To, Biographical Data, etc, etc, etc… I’d also like to be able to see basic information such as the link’s author and when it was created. (While I’m dreaming, what if these links had a rating system built in—something like Amazon.com’s reviews that show up beneath any item they sell?)
- While the method for achieving this one is completely beyond my imagination, I would love to be able to reference discreet components of your post. I want to chunk up your chunk. I envision this as follows: When you click on “See Related Information, perhaps the result is simply an overlay on the original post (currently this would probably be achieved with a pop-up window, but I digress…) Maybe the discreet chunks of your post that have been pinged now show up as hyperlinks. When you mouse over the chunk, a popup list of defined links (Definition, Comment, etc.) is generated.
- I want an easy way to generate TrackBack links to my own posts (this may already exist). This could also enable individuals who didn’t author either of the chunks of information that are being linked to create and characterize a connection.
1:30:45 PM 
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