Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, March 10, 2003

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Social Software's Emerging Norms: "The last time there was this much foment around the idea of software to be used by groups was in the late 70s, when usenet, irc and MUDs were all invented in the space of 18 months. Now we've got blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, Trackback, XML-over-IM and all sorts of IM- and mail-bots. We've also got a network population that's large, heterogeneous, and still growing rapidly. The conversations we can have about social software can be advanced by asking ourselves the right questions about both the software and the political bargains between users and the group that software will encode or enforce." [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

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Bullies hit out over cyberspace: "Playground bullies have adapted their traditional tactics of punches and taunts to include hateful text messages and personalized Web sites, a UK children's charity says." [Google Technology News]

How to be familiar and different: the key to inventions which create diversity -- Comment()
The search service currently-known-as-Roogle has pointed some new traffic to this site. This service is indexing the RSS feeds of weblogs and will probably become quite popular.

But perhaps this tool is another step on the way to a monocultural weblogging community, where there are only a few voices audible, and all else is buried under. I have been thinking about this for some time. (See Weblog communities as islands: improving diversity and How to choose links).

I fear that the current weblogging toolset is serving a nonexisting (?) need for unity of purpose and world view. Perhaps there should become available new tools to suggest different choices than what your current local community of webloggers can provide. Or perhaps the widening of horizon is up to the bloggers themselves: they should actively try to spread their net of contacts wider.

Similar things happen with music. For example, hiphop started about 25 years ago (I'm not a fan so I may be wrong). At first, this music was something nobody knew to want, so it took some time to find new listeners. Nowadays hiphop is mainstream. There is still creativity but perhaps the real inventions in music happen elsewhere.

But how to discover the new developments? How should a tool to "search for new interesting music" work?

To make weblogging sustainable, there should be tools for discovering new and active communities, mapping them, and telling others about them. These tools could function as a travel agency for deciding on what island to take a vacation, and on what island there is good food for thought. (Thanks for Michelle Legare for suggesting this idea in her comment.)

These "suggest new music" (or "travel agency") tools are difficult to build. For example, I have had several times bad experiences of the Amazon music rankings. The reviews can be fine, and the cd may have gotten 4 or 5 starts, but still that music stinks (for me). How to build a tool which can also judge how my current taste could be developed?

This is a big problem also in the music business (or in music as an art form). Of course, the real genius in music is to making something new, so that it is a bit different from the current offerings, but familiar enought so that people will start to listen (and want more).

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Marston Bates: "Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." [Quotes of the Day]

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Scripting News points to The Tyranny of Email:

Okay, now let's look at [a] productivity-sapping attribute of email, that it misleads you into inefficient problem solving. Email is a communication medium. You send messages to others, you receive messages from others. Some of these messages are mere data transmission - FYIs so you know what's going on. Some are "noise" - 'thank you's, 'I got it's, jokes, etc. And some - many - are problem solving. You hear about a problem, and you respond with a possible solution, or a possible approach, or more questions. Nothing wrong so far - email is a good medium for problem solving. And it is so easy - you get an email, you think (sometimes), and you respond. Poof, you're done. [...] Except when you're not. Because there are some kinds of problems which don't get solved in email, ever. And as soon as you have that kind of problem, you have to stop, immediately, before you make the problem worse. [...] First, never, ever, criticize someone in email.

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Scripting News points to Writing for the Web: "Every piece of writing can benefit from being challenged. Years ago, while in a graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins, I taught a freshman writing course. I used to bring in published articles, for example from the Baltimore Sun, and ask the students to work with me on analyzing and rewriting them. The idea was completely shocking to them, at first. "But it's published!" they'd say. Yeah, and so what? Then we'd tear the stuff apart and put it back together again."

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Ming the Mechanic points to Saying No to War: "Given the corner Mr. Bush has painted himself in, withdrawing troops even if a considerable slice remains behind would be an admission of failure. He obviously intends to go ahead, and bet on the very good chance that the Iraqi army will fall quickly. The fact that the United Nations might be irreparably weakened would not much bother his conservative political base at home, nor would the outcry abroad. But in the long run, this country needs a strong international body to keep the peace and defuse tension in a dozen different potential crisis points around the world. It needs the support of its allies, particularly embattled states like Pakistan, to fight the war on terror. And it needs to demonstrate by example that there are certain rules that everybody has to follow, one of the most important of which is that you do not invade another country for any but the most compelling of reasons. When the purpose is fuzzy, or based on questionable propositions, it's time to stop and look for other, less extreme means to achieve your goals."

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IBM Unveils Technology For Handling Surges In Computing Demand: "IBM unveiled technologies on Friday to help IT organizations handle sudden surges in computing demand that can often take down systems." [Google Technology News]

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Dinosaur-Killer" Asteroid Crater Imaged for First Time: "A high-resolution map from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), released yesterday, has provided the most telling visible evidence to date of a 112-mile (180-kilometer) wide, 3000-foot (900-meter) deep impact crater..." [Google Technology News]

Weblog communities as islands: improving diversity -- Comment()
I wrote earlier about the similarity of weblogs: "When the outside world [...] changes there is not enough diversity in an island of weblogs to generate new solutions which meet the requirements of a changed world." Perhaps this kind of argumentation is not needed.

However, the diversity (or the lack of it) in weblog communities will be an essential factor in the success of weblogs. Too much similarity caused by, e.g., dominance by a few weblogs will kill the community. Thus measuring the referrals and making it easy to find out the "popular" weblogs may ultimately cause the whole system to collapse. It would be more useful to have tools for finding original thoughts and viewpoints on the interesting current subjects.

The weblog toolmakers should develop new search tools, which don't put too much emphasis on the popularity of a site. This would help the weblog ecosystem to survive: most of the weblog views and referrals would not be concentrated only on a few dozen weblogs, and new original thinking could have a chance to emerge.

Weblogs as worldview tuners -- Comment()
One more point about the dynamics of weblogs vs. the island model: I didn't specify in what space the evolution of the weblogs takes space. In fact, my point falls apart if there is no such space. However, here is a first try: the space of worldview memes. (I suggest a name for an element of this space: "wovi". Or perhaps introducing the term wovi is unnecessary, could "value set" be a good enough name?)

A wovi works as follows: input from the external world -> processing by a wovi in a human brain -> a response to the input. Of course, a wovi is never expressed explicitely, and thus never transferred in whole from a person to another. Rather, a weblog functions as a wovi-tuner, where you can observe the input-output behaviour of a wovi, and adjust your wovi accordingly.

How to choose links -- Comment()
Private Ink comments my speculation about the dynamics of weblogs vs. the island model? "The main similarity between my links was my person taste in subject matter. Case in point, I am interested in literature, poetry and the arts but when looking through the links, the thrust of the subject or topic is usually not to my taste, however the way they say it is. Nothing wrong with opposing philosophies, as long as you are willing to listen and try to understand." Good point. Perhaps the excessive similarity only applies to us who are focused on technology. Perhaps culture-oriented weblogs can bridge the gulf between the islands?