Here’s an excellent inter-blog thread on whether hyperlinks do in fact subvert hierarchy: Doc made that part of his new year wishes. Dave Rogers objected. Doc replied. Mark Bernstein calmly sorted through the claims.

I agree with Mark’s sorting-out. Nicely done.

When I wrote that “hyperlinks subvert hierarchies” phrase, I must have used the word “subvert” for a reason. I believe that I used it to hint at the effect of hyperlinks on power relationships. So, it seems the truth of the statement depends on whether existing hierarchies are in fact being subverted by the Web. And that’s hard to evaluate because it’s such a broad statement and because it’s still early days. In support of the claim I’d point to changes in how businesses behave and the role of the mainstream media. But you could counter that politics hasn’t changed much, and I would counter that that’s going to be one of the last hierarchies to change, and you could reply…etc. And you could point to the emergence of new hierarchies in various Web domains, and I’d point to ways in which they’re substantially different sorts of hierarchies, and I’d point to Web domains where non-hierarchical social forms dominate, and you could counter-claim…etc. And these are interesting conversations to have. But not to settle. Not yet.

I’d also add that I agree with Dave that humans compete. But – to state the obvious, with which Dave agrees – that’s not all we do. We also collaborate, sympathize, coordinate, love, give way, support, woo, encourage, cooperate, share, and surprise one another with “Hang in there, Baby!” cat posters. The fact that we compete does not necessarily mean that power hierarchies are inevitable or that they have to be the dominant institutional/social form.

PS: There’s a sense in which the book I’m working on is in fact an elaboration of the notion that hyperlinks subvert hierarchies, where the hierarchies are taxonomic but the effects are on institutions. [Tags: hyperlinks web docSearls daveRogers markBernstein EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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Dan writes:

Starting in 2006, I’ll be putting together a nonprofit Center for Citizen Media. The goals are to study, encourage and help enable the emergent grassroots media sphere, with a major focus on citizen journalism.

I’m thrilled and honored that the center will be affiliated with two superb universities in a bi-coastal partnership.

The two universities: UC Berkeley’s Grad School of Journalism and the Berkman Center. Woohoo! With this sort of backing and Dan at the helm, the CCM is likely to be a hotbed of ideas, innovation, and research. I think this is an ideal situation for Dan, and thus good for all of us. There’s no one I have more respect for than Dan, and I have a very good feeling about this new project.

FWIW, I’m more convinced than ever that citizens are going to be keepers of the public record (as Jon Udell has put it) more than they’re going to be journalists, and that the biggest effect of blogging on journalism is and will be the moving of the editorial function into the hands of readers. [Tags: DanGillmor media journalism berkman JonUdell]

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The most powerful institutions in our society don’t like the Net much. Oh, they like their reduced IT costs and they like their delusion that they can use it to market their messages to billions of us essentially for free, but they don’t like what so many of us feel is the liberating, connected value of the Internet. These institutions look at the Internet and see a mix of threat and opportunity. We — some goodly set of us — look at the Internet and see hope.

But one large institution may turn out to be special, as Charlie Nesson of the Berkman argued against my despair a couple of weeks ago: Universities. And here’s a little sign of hope: According to the NY Times, seven American univerisites have agreed to make freely available software they develop collaboratively. Janice Brand, who blogged the NYT report at CIO, says:

Peter A. Freeman, assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at the National Science Foundation, came up with today’s best quote: “It’s the science, stupid.’ It’s not the intellectual property.”

Bingo. And it’s the culture, stupid, not the copyright.

(Thanks to Kurt Starsnic for the link. Kurt also makes a good point about the Web coverage of the NYC transit strike.) [Tags: universities internet]

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One Web Day is getting even more exciting. This is Susan Crawford‘s idea for a global celebration of the Web and its values of connectedness and creativity. As with Earth Day, its up to each locality to decide how to celebrate the day … and even what constitutes a locality is up to each locality.

Last night there was a get-together in NYC with a bunch of us on the phone. Too many good ideas.

So, mark your calendars for September 22. And start thinking about how you can celebrate the Web.

[Tags: OneWebDay SusanCrawford]

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Last night at the Berkman Holiday Party — pretty much what you expect: dry sherry, fair trade cigars, male and female strippers with Ph.D.s — I apparently had SJ Klein’s idea. SJ is a dedicated Wikipedian (who, according to his Wikipedia entry, won 3rd place in the Cambridge area vegan cake stable height contest in 2002), and we were talking about the bruited idea that Wikipedia might brand particular revisions of an article as stable and reasonably reliable so that people could more easily link to a Wikipedia entry without having to worry that it will be different when readers follow the link.

So, I suggested that we don’t have to wait for Wikipedia to do this. Anyone could certify particular versions of particular articles as reliable. I could, you could, the American Association of Pediatrics could, because this doesn’t have to happen on the Wikipedia site. Dozens (hundreds?) of other sites already take Wikipedia’s content as their own, under Wikipedia’s Creative Commons GFDL license. So, why not encourage various authorities (personal or institutional) to create their own seals of Good Wiki Keeping, publishing a virtual slice through Wikipedia. So, for example, on the American Chemical Society’s site you could browse through the set of Wikipedia pages that the ACS has vetted; the seals of approval could be presented as authorized versions of Wikipedia – authorized not by Wikipedia but by anyone who wants to claim authority.

SJ has been thinking about this for a while. (That seems to be generally the case with him.) He wonders what happens to the pages to which the authenticated pages link, and he wonders what happens when someone tries to edit the authenticated page from within the authenticated site. Lots and lots of questions. But I think SJ has a good idea.

Not to mention that it would be a perfect example for my book about how knowledge is becoming miscellanized, and reclustered using different organizational principles. [Tags: wikipedia SJKlein EverythingIsMiscellaneous]

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David Stephenson blogs about the Wired article “Reinventing 911,” saying its discussion of Portland’s distributed emergency system validates his “Smart Mobs for Homeland Security” concept.

We should be definitely suspicious of the telcos’ insistence to Congress that their way of fetching emergency help is the best and only way. It’s so clearly an attempt by the telcos to trade on terrorism to maintain the telco’s unnatural hold on their market. [Tags: 911 terrorism security DavidStephenson]

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For twenty years, the perfect e-book hardware has been 5 years away. We’re now down to waiting for a cheap enough, lower power enough paper-quality display.

Once we have cheap e-books, the medium by which we read will also be a medium by which can write and respond. Reading will cease being a solitary act and will become a social one. You can see this already with blogs.

So, I’ve been assuming that the e-book will mimic the form factor of books: display a page, maybe make a rustling sound as the page is turned. But it’s taking so long for e-books to arrive that they may skip book emulation entirely and be general purpose browsers/composers. They’ll work better for blogs than for books. And this may be the final nail in the coffin of books.

Maybe. (I’d write more, but I have to work on my book…:)

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Liz Lawley has good coverage of my opening comments at the Corante conference on social software. (Thanks, Liz!) [Tags: coranteSSA LizLawley SocialSoftware]

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Doc’s posted a great (and longish) piece on saving our Internet. He cogently lays out the threats from the carriers.

His solution is important and right but, I’m afraid, not enough. Changing how we speak — reframing the issues — takes longer than we have. Plus, this particular framing is entangled with deep and deeply-motivated cognitive-economic systems being driven by the most powerful frame-makers in our culture: The media and government. So, yes, reframe! Never ever ever utter the phrase “intellectual property” again, for example. But I fear that we need much more than that much faster.

My positive proposal? Join me in my trough of despair.

Although yesterday, after giving two interviews in which I was relentlessly hopeless — heartbroken is actually the more accurate term — about the Net’s future, two people said things that gave me a little hope.

Chris Nolan believes that wifi will become enough of a consumer (sorry, Doc!) issue that Congress won’t be able to enact a new telco act that outlaws wifi sharing.

Then I talked with Charlie Nesson of the Berkman who made a case for universities becoming such a bastion of the open Internet and the intertwingling of knowledge that they make it impossible to close our Internet. The could be champions of our Net.

Speaking of universities, Frank Paynter a couple of days ago said he wished the university libraries would take more of the brunt of the challenge to Google Print than Google is. Google is, after all, a public company and many distrust it. It would indeed be very very interesting if Harvard, Oxford, the Univ. of Michigan, etc., were to offer their copies of Google Print’s scans to the public as appropriate. I agree with Frank: I’d rather see the Author’s Guild sue the Harvard Library than Google only because Harvard is out to educate people, not to make money for its shareholders. [Tags: DocSearls SaveOurInternet ChrisNolan CharlieNesson FrankPaynter google GoglePrint berkman]

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