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October 10, 2006
danah boyd disputes the ComScore report that says that more than half of MySpace visitors are 35 or older. It smells wrong to her, and she’s trying to find additional research or insight. My hunch is that danah’s hunches are very likely to be right, especially on issues such as this. [Tags: danah_boyd myspace comscore]
October 9, 2006
Charles Leadbeater—the author of an early book on the new economy, the “deviser” of Bridge Jones’ Diary, and an advisor to prime ministers—has posted a complete-but-not-final draft of his new book, We-think: why mass creativity is the next big thing. You can read the whole thing on line and comment on every line. (It’s got a cool commenting system attached.) I’ve thumbed through it, and it looks like it’s got tons of good examples of what the new collaboration looks like.
And The Guardian has run a great excerpt from Steven Levy’s upcoming book, The Perfect Thing: How the Ipod Shuffles Commerce, Culture And Coolness. Levy makes the question of the Ipod’s randomness not just interesting but fascinating. He’s a heck of a writer. [Tags: charles_leadbeater steven_levy everything_is_miscellaneous]
September 27, 2006
I just got back from 1.5 days of meetings with members of the CIA’s intelligence analysis community who are interested in what social software can do for them. There were six of us “experts” and about 50 CIA folks. These are the people who put together analyses and “estimates” about what’s going on in the world so that our leaders can ignore them and do what will get them re-elected (or, in some particularly Oedipal cases, do what will make Mommy love them more than Mommy loves Daddy). In short, these folks are among the few representatives of the Reality Principle in our government. I would like them to be able to do their job ever better.
We weren’t given any confidential information (well, except that Mrs. Wanda Appleton of 123 Elm St. better stop what she’s been doing…you know what I’m talking about, Wanda), but we agreed to blog only generalities so that discussion could be frank. Here are my generalities:
This was a totally fascinating set of sessions. The CIA folks there included visionaries (e.g., Calvin Andrus), internal bloggers, the people behind Intellipedia (an in-house wikipedia), folks from the daily in-house newspaper, and some managers not yet sold on the idea of blogs and wikis and tags.
It sounds like there’s a fairly vibrant blogging community already, including some senior people. But, there’s cultural tension over, for example, whether a blog that contains any personal information means that a government employee has been misusing tax payers’ computers. It is a culture in transition, as you can imagine.
It began with an informal presentation by one of the analysts (first-name only, no email address) who took us through a typical day. He gets evaluated on the basis of the written reports he produces. There is some collegiality — more than I encountered as an academic — but the back-and-forth of commentary isn’t captured. It all comes down to the finished written document. (No document is ever finished, the panel said.)
The panel overall stressed that the issues were social, not technical. Also, we pushed for building memory by capturing more of the work-in-process and by linking linking linking. I personally would like to see the Agency get past the cult of expertise, moving instead to a view of knowledge as social. That means showing work in progress and capturing the discussion during and after publication. But that also means changing how analysts are evaluated and promoted. One of the participants said that already one’s “corridor reputation” affects one’s career. There should also be — and will also be — an e-corridor reputation that helps advance you because you’re a great commenter, a frequent contributor to the wiki, or have a blog that’s getting read.
The people we met with are serious about understanding the opportunities, experimenting, piloting, and evangelizing. I liked them. I would like them to get better and better not only at understanding what’s happening in the world but also at not being “spun.” [Tags: cia blogs ]
Keep in mind that we met with the report-writing analyst side of the Agency. As for that other side where they engage in “operations” — unrepresented at this meeting — I sure would like them to stop torturing people. But, hey, I’m just a crazed Boston liberal.
September 22, 2006
Can’t you just smell One Web Day in the air? I know I can’t. But nevertheless, this is the big day. So celebrate the Web, and try to make it a little better for us all. Then let OWD know what you’re doing by posting a photo of what you’re doing and tag it “onewebday2006.” And use that tag for whatever you contribute to the Web in the name of OWD today. [Disclosure]
At the Berkman Center at 12:30, we’re have a little party. You’re invited. We’re going to talk about the Web’s value to each of us. Then we’re going to make a video thank you card (and a paper analog) and drop it off at Tim Berners-Lee’s office. Sir Tim is at an event in London where, by the way, where OWD’s thank you will be conveyed to him officially, although that may be a secret.
Here’s what I think I’m going to say during my allotted seconds on the thank-you video:
Thank you, Sir Tim, for not keeping even a little tiny bit of the Web for yourself. Because of that act of generosity, a billion people have been able to engage in the little acts of generosity called links that together are making a better new world.
Something like that.
PS: Here’s the BBC’s coverage of OWD. [Tags: onewebday2006 web]
September 18, 2006
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve done little except revise my book. All day, every day. Well, I’ve had a couple of events I’d committed to, including a keynote at the Scottish Learning Festival that I leave for tonight—I was supposed to be done with my revising by now—but basically I’ve been head-down in my book.
Which means I haven’t had time to read other people’s blogs.
The blogosphere and its local eddies are often thought of as bubbles, little hermetic worlds unaware that there’s a bigger world with bigger ideas beyond them. But not reading blogs now feels to me like being in a bubble. I’m cut off. I don’t know what’s going on, what people are talking about, who’s on a high, who’s on a roll, who’s just keeping on.
The truth is that we humans always live in bubbles. While our ideas and ideals may strive for the universal, we are embodied locally. So, living in a bubble isn’t an objection; it is our condition. The question is whether we seek to expand our ideas and—more important—our sympathy or we think our local bubble is the one that’s figured it all out (as per Mel Brooks’ immortal caveman anthem: “Let ’em all go to Hell, except Cave Seven”). Even the best intentioned of us still live locally—damn bodies!—so we’re talking here about trying, about a dialectic, about a failed awareness. But, that failure keeps our bubbles honest.
I look forward to breaking out of my bubble of self-involvement pretty soon now. I hear it’s been a mild September. [Tags: bubble blogosphere mel_brooks]
September 17, 2006
You know Richard Stallman’s “Free as in speech, not free as in beer”? I think we could stand to add one more: Free as in peanuts.
If you’re in a bar, speaking freely and paying for beer, the bartender sometimes will put out a dish of peanuts for free. I know that I’m capable of eating an entire bowlful and then eying the bartender waifishly until s/he refills it. But, I generally won’t buy peanuts in a bar, even if they’re reasonably priced. I get value from eating them, yet I won’t pay for them.
I’m sure economists have a word for this—probably something like “You cheap bastard”—but I’m going to make up my own anyway: freechasing, pronounced like “purchasing.” It means taking for free items you value but that you wouldn’t have paid for.
Freechasing is only interesting when it’s applied to goods that—unlike peanuts—are not diminished by being consumed. A while ago a teacher told me that she didn’t use a chapter of my book Small Pieces Loosely Joined because she didn’t want to ask her students to buy the entire volume. She should have instead freechased the chapter by printing up some copyright-bustin’ copies. Since she wasn’t going to buy the book, she wouldn’t have been depriving me or my publisher of any money. And freechasing the chapters would have created some value: She obviously thought it would have some salutary effect on the students (presumably as they sharpened their logical skills by ripping it to shreds), and it’d be in my long term interest to have students introduced to my writing.
Likewise, I’ve freechased some music that’s enriched my life and has introduced me to artists I’ve since bought music from. I bet you have, too. (Question: Is listening to the radio freechasing music? How about if you turn it down during the ads?)
Freechasing by definition does no harm and creates value. But, it’s sometimes awfully hard to tell if you’re freechasing or if you’re not. It’s so easy to freechase that early Dylan album that maybe I’m just telling myself that I wouldn’t have purchased it. And if they drop the Dylan album’s price far enough, maybe I would have purchased it if I hadn’t already freechased it. Counterfactual life is tough to figure.
Anyway, this idea isn’t new and the neologism is ugly. But it’s Sunday.
[Tags: filesharing free]
September 13, 2006
danah boyd has a terrific essay on Facebook and privacy. Now I understand what the big deal was.
Here is danah’s summary:
* Privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data.
* The ickyness that people feel when they panic about privacy comes from the experience of exposure or invasion.
* We’ve experienced the exposure hiccup before with Cobot. When are we going to learn?
* Invasion changes social reality and there is a cognitive cap to being able to handle it.
* Does invasion potentially result in a weakening of meaningful social ties?
* Facebook lost its innocence this week.
And here’s a snippet from the article that makes what I think is a crucial point for the privacy debate:
In the tech world, we have a bad tendency to view the concept of “private” as a single bit that is either 0 or 1. Either it’s exposed or not…
Privacy is not simply about the state of an inanimate object or set of bytes; it is about the sense of vulnerability that an individual experiences. When people feel exposed or invaded, there’s a privacy issue.
Now go read the whole thing. It will be on the test. [Tags: privacy : facebook danah_boyd]
September 9, 2006
From Jeneane Sessum:
In a manly move, Ross has given up his Office 2.0 podium spot to his Social Text partner and co-founder Adina Levin.
Well done, Ross. Of course, it helps that Adina is so freaking smart and a great representative of SocialText. [See Disclosure]
You may also want to see the comments on my post about Foo, especially the back and forth around Tim O’Reilly’s frank and thoughtful replies towards the end of the long thread. And Shelley has spun Tim’s reply off into its own thread on her site, which is gathering comment steam. [Tags: ross_mayfield adina_levin tim_oreilly shelley_powers office2.0]
September 8, 2006
September 22 is the first annual One Web Day celebration of the Web. We’ll be cheering it on at the Berkman Center with an especially festive session in my “Web of Ideas” series. I’m not sure exactly what we’re going to talk about, other than what we love about the Web, but there will be pizza.
Exact time and place are not yet set. It’ll be open to all, although we may have to set up an RSVP line. Details to follow.
And what are you going to do on One Web Day? [Tags: onewebday berkman ]
August 27, 2006
The second part of Mitch Joel‘s TwistImage Six Pixels of Separation podcast with me about Cluetrainy stuff (with a little Everthing Is Miscellaneous thrown in) is up. (Part one is here.) [Tags: marketing podcast cluetrain]
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