It's this years' "Long Tail" – the new book about how the Internet is shifting boundaries and distributing power. The book is called "Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder." David Weinberger, who touted the takeover of the geeks in an earlier book he co-authored with Christopher Locke, The Cluetrain Manifesto", has definitely hit the sweet spot this time.
Weinberger posits that we have entered into a third order, in terms of how we deal with ordering information. The first order is simply the physical organization of stuff – you have a bunch of books and you organize them according to theme. The second order brings in taxonomy. You start to develop classifications – meta-information about what is organized. So you have a bunch of books and you have a card catalogue. In the third order, the information has escaped all limits. The books at Amazon.com are more or less miscellaneous in their location. They don't need to be stacked in any section. The end user provides the taxonomy (or categorization) and hunts the books out. This is what's happening with all of our information. One of the tech guys at Wikipedia told Weinberger that he couldn't explain where a topic is located on his site. It isn't located. No matter how popular or obscure the topic, it is equally miscellaneously out there in wikipedian cyberspace along with everything else.
Resultantly, the end user supplies the taxonomy, makes the connections, and supplies the meaning. You might say that he or she strolls up to an infinite buffet of potential information, and chooses her "a la carte" combination plate in each and every circumstance.
But when I recently interviewed Weinberger for my NeoFiles podcast, he wasn't completely satisfied with the "a la carte" notion. For Weinberger, a la carte is only about an individual's selections. He related the metaphor to Negroponte's '90s concept that net dwellers would order up personalized news/information packages that could be called "The Daily Me." But Weinberger thinks that we are also – and more profoundly – gathering from the miscellaneous chaos of information through conversation and connection. We are engaged through social networks, blogs, del.icio.us lists, ad infinitum. We lead each other towards the stuff we want or need, and we start to notice and make meaning together.
It's also a six degrees of Kevin Bacon Virtual world in which everything links to everything else within six clicks. Location, to the extent that there is a location – a branded website perhaps – doesn't much interest us either. It is only the stuff that we can pull out of the miscellany that gets our attention. The only trusted "brand" is our circle of virtual friends – those with similar interests (or maybe , Boing Boing)
Everything is Miscellaneous
Everything is Miscellaneous Blog
My Interview with David Weinberger (sorry for the Skype fuzziness)
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Is Work Play? Can It Be?
One of the stated goals of Pajama Nation is that small entrepreneurs and freelancers enjoy an a la carte lifestyle working for themselves. An ideal has apparently been developing over the past decade or so – the ideal is that work can be play. In the industrial age, most of us worked in non-creative and rather mechanistic -- if not downright oppressive -- jobs. (Nobody would claim that coal mining is fun). Today, an increasing number of people work at gigs that involve some thought and creativity – design, participating in the invention of new tools, creating and being part of media; whether it's big media or decentralized net media.
Indeed, some of the biggest industries in the world are dedicated to fun and games… literally games. They're making fun out there, but they may or may not be having fun. One hopes that they are.
During the boom of the late 1990s, a certain percentage of young folk in the advanced nations lived, ate and slept at their dot com businesses and they enjoyed the hell out of doing it. Maybe you remember the media write-ups about young men with nose rings skateboarding to work; the in-house massages; the midnight raves and the all day hacking sessions. Work and leisure were no longer in nice little compartments – work being something you do from 9 am – 5 pm on weekdays, and leisure being something you do the rest of the time. Life was 24/7 and people worked hard and played hard. (It's fine if you're 25, of course. The rest of us may want to work easy and play easy, but we're still seeking that same internal state – life as undivided continuum.)
Social critics have noted that the very idea of a "work day" is an artifact of the 17th Century. One of the features of a Pajama Nation is that we no longer "punch the clock." The integration of work, life and play is one of the greatest hopes for human happiness.
One great place to start thinking about all this is by reading "The Play Ethic", a book and a website by England's Pat Kane.
Indeed, some of the biggest industries in the world are dedicated to fun and games… literally games. They're making fun out there, but they may or may not be having fun. One hopes that they are.
During the boom of the late 1990s, a certain percentage of young folk in the advanced nations lived, ate and slept at their dot com businesses and they enjoyed the hell out of doing it. Maybe you remember the media write-ups about young men with nose rings skateboarding to work; the in-house massages; the midnight raves and the all day hacking sessions. Work and leisure were no longer in nice little compartments – work being something you do from 9 am – 5 pm on weekdays, and leisure being something you do the rest of the time. Life was 24/7 and people worked hard and played hard. (It's fine if you're 25, of course. The rest of us may want to work easy and play easy, but we're still seeking that same internal state – life as undivided continuum.)
Social critics have noted that the very idea of a "work day" is an artifact of the 17th Century. One of the features of a Pajama Nation is that we no longer "punch the clock." The integration of work, life and play is one of the greatest hopes for human happiness.
One great place to start thinking about all this is by reading "The Play Ethic", a book and a website by England's Pat Kane.
What Are We SEARCHing For?
John Battelle of FM Media recently pointed out an academic paper that explores what people value in search engines, and what the creators of search engines try to achieve. The piece is titled, "Is Relevance Relevant?" -- which seems to be a great general question for the age of blurred focus. The piece points out that search engines have been criticized for providing too much and too little information and shows the conundrum faced by businesses due to the fact that users hate heavily monetized, busy search engines, but of course, the ads and the other monetary schemes basically ARE the business.
The piece also references the good old days when Alta Vista -- with its academic orientation – was the leading search engine and implies that relevance as an objective idea has perhaps been abandoned in favor of "satisfying users."
I sometimes wonder why it's so hard to find really intelligent interesting content on the web that was so easy to find back in the mid-90s. This might be the answer. Google has replaced real intelligence with a mixture of business interests and the "wisdom of crowds." Thus, when I ego surf – let's be honest here, who doesn't? -- I no longer seem to find fascinating complicated criticisms of my work. Rather, I find an endless circle jerk of sites pointing out that some piece that I've written exists – the posts point at the article and point at each other. There are no thoughts, just fingers pointing in various directions. (I think this idea was expressed in a scene in The Beatles' Yellow Submarine) In some ways, this is the way the net looks today.
Not that I want to bring back Alta Vista. But here's an interesting thought from an interview I did with Cory Doctorow a few years back:
"It's pursuing the deviance, what Bruce Sterling called 'Wooing the muse of the odd' that actually creates a system that has a lot of perceived value. I think that every single one of us is an edge case. There's this amazing Bill Gates quote from Davos last week where he was talking about how Microsoft was going to get back into search and compete with Google and someone said, 'You know you guys did a pretty crappy job with search the first time around.' And he said, [paraphrasing] 'Yeah. You know what we did? We focused on the 20% of the queries that represented 80% of what people were looking for instead of the 20% that were really odd. But what we found out is that the whole perception of value lives in whether or not it meets those little queries.'"
So the answer my friend is further down the long tail, not back toward an academic elite.
Read "Is Relevance Relevant"
The piece also references the good old days when Alta Vista -- with its academic orientation – was the leading search engine and implies that relevance as an objective idea has perhaps been abandoned in favor of "satisfying users."
I sometimes wonder why it's so hard to find really intelligent interesting content on the web that was so easy to find back in the mid-90s. This might be the answer. Google has replaced real intelligence with a mixture of business interests and the "wisdom of crowds." Thus, when I ego surf – let's be honest here, who doesn't? -- I no longer seem to find fascinating complicated criticisms of my work. Rather, I find an endless circle jerk of sites pointing out that some piece that I've written exists – the posts point at the article and point at each other. There are no thoughts, just fingers pointing in various directions. (I think this idea was expressed in a scene in The Beatles' Yellow Submarine) In some ways, this is the way the net looks today.
Not that I want to bring back Alta Vista. But here's an interesting thought from an interview I did with Cory Doctorow a few years back:
"It's pursuing the deviance, what Bruce Sterling called 'Wooing the muse of the odd' that actually creates a system that has a lot of perceived value. I think that every single one of us is an edge case. There's this amazing Bill Gates quote from Davos last week where he was talking about how Microsoft was going to get back into search and compete with Google and someone said, 'You know you guys did a pretty crappy job with search the first time around.' And he said, [paraphrasing] 'Yeah. You know what we did? We focused on the 20% of the queries that represented 80% of what people were looking for instead of the 20% that were really odd. But what we found out is that the whole perception of value lives in whether or not it meets those little queries.'"
So the answer my friend is further down the long tail, not back toward an academic elite.
Read "Is Relevance Relevant"
What are we SEARCHing For?
John Battelle of FM Media recently pointed out an academic paper that explores what people value in search engines, and what the creators of search engines try to achieve. The piece is titled, "Is Relevance Relevant?" -- which seems to be a great general question for the age of blurred focus. The piece points out that search engines have been criticized for proving too much and too little information and shows the conundrum faced by businesses due to the fact that users hate heavily monetized, busy search engines, but of course, the ads and the other monetary schemes basically ARE the business.
The piece also references the good old days when Alta Vista -- with its academic orientation – was the leading search engine and claims that relevance as an objective idea has been attended in favor of "satisfying users."
I sometimes wonder why it's so hard to find really intelligent interesting content on the web that was so easy to find back in the mid-90s. This might be the answer. Google has replaced real intelligence with a mixture of business interests and the "wisdom of crowds." Thus, when I ego surf – let's be honest here -- I no longer seem to find fascinating complicated criticism of my work. Rather I find an endless circle jerk of sites pointing out that some piece that I've written exists – one after another. No thoughts, just fingers pointing in various directions. In some ways, this is the way the net looks today.
Not that I want to bring back Alta Vista. But here's an interesting thought from an interview I did with Cory Doctorow a few years back:
"It's pursuing the deviance, what Bruce Sterling called 'Wooing the muse of the odd' that actually creates a system that has a lot of perceived value. I think that every single one of us is an edge case. There's this amazing Bill Gates quote from Davos last week where he was talking about how Microsoft was going to get back into search and compete with Google and someone said, 'You know you guys did a pretty crappy job with search the first time around.' And he said, [paraphrasing] 'Yeah. You know what we did? We focused on the 20% of the queries that represented 80% of what people were looking for instead of the 20% that were really odd. But what we found out is that the whole perception of value lives in whether or not it meets those little queries.'"
So the answer my friend is further down the long tail, not back toward an academic elite.
Read "Is Relevance Relevant"
Read the RU Sirius Interview with Cory Doctorow
The piece also references the good old days when Alta Vista -- with its academic orientation – was the leading search engine and claims that relevance as an objective idea has been attended in favor of "satisfying users."
I sometimes wonder why it's so hard to find really intelligent interesting content on the web that was so easy to find back in the mid-90s. This might be the answer. Google has replaced real intelligence with a mixture of business interests and the "wisdom of crowds." Thus, when I ego surf – let's be honest here -- I no longer seem to find fascinating complicated criticism of my work. Rather I find an endless circle jerk of sites pointing out that some piece that I've written exists – one after another. No thoughts, just fingers pointing in various directions. In some ways, this is the way the net looks today.
Not that I want to bring back Alta Vista. But here's an interesting thought from an interview I did with Cory Doctorow a few years back:
"It's pursuing the deviance, what Bruce Sterling called 'Wooing the muse of the odd' that actually creates a system that has a lot of perceived value. I think that every single one of us is an edge case. There's this amazing Bill Gates quote from Davos last week where he was talking about how Microsoft was going to get back into search and compete with Google and someone said, 'You know you guys did a pretty crappy job with search the first time around.' And he said, [paraphrasing] 'Yeah. You know what we did? We focused on the 20% of the queries that represented 80% of what people were looking for instead of the 20% that were really odd. But what we found out is that the whole perception of value lives in whether or not it meets those little queries.'"
So the answer my friend is further down the long tail, not back toward an academic elite.
Read "Is Relevance Relevant"
Read the RU Sirius Interview with Cory Doctorow
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