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June 18, 2008
The Sunlight Foundation has released its latest tool in the struggle for governmental transparency: CapitolWords.org. It scrapes the records and highlights the word used most often that day. For example, “tax” was used 23 times today. Of course, a calendar view is also available,
Kevin Kelly has a terrific piece about edge-notched cards. They’re interesting to me because I’ve been working on a piece that’s part of a piece, that may be part of some other piece that uses the history of the punch card as a way to trace the emergence of modern information. Edge-notched cards have an interesting place because the notches both indicate data and are used as a physical mechanism for sorting.
Kevin’s post was prompted by Alex Wright’s terrific article recalling Paul Otlet as a network pioneer.
June 14, 2008
In the June issue of Harper’s, Gary Keizer has an article called “Turning away from Jesus: Gay rights and the war for the Episcopal Church” that I kept trying not to like, I think because he’s too right and too good. But the article won me over. Alas, Harper only posts miniature, unreadable images of the pages, so you’ll have to do something primitive like trudge to your local library to read it.
Gary paints a picture of a church traditionally less interested in enforcing doctrinal homogeneity than in ministering to those in need. He personally favors the ordination of gay clergy, but the article focuses a level up from that: How can a church handle disagreement and difference? And he explicitly applies those lessons beyond the church to the country and the world.
It made me think of AKMA‘s idea of differential hermeneutics, a theory of interpretation (which is to say, of understanding) that assumes we’re never going to agree. He opposes this to what he calls “integral hermeneutics,” which aims at resolving issues, and thus showing that one person’s interpretation is right and another’s is wrong. And, yes, AKMA is fully aware of the issues that arise from his position. (I blogged about this here.)
I am convinced that Gary and AKMA are raising exactly the right questions, and are answering them the only way that lets us live together in peace, which is not to say in harmony or quietude. And I find what they say based upon their similar religious convictions to be quite in line with what I understand the Jewish attitude toward interpretation to be: The arguing continues all the way into the next life. If you’re so lucky.
June 11, 2008
At the Enterprise 2.0 conference (which I didn’t attend), Don Burke and Sean Dennehey from the CIA gave a talk on Intellipedia, the CIA’s internal wikipedia. As part of their talk, they cited a manual, including, I’m told, this from page 28:
(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of perÂsonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideraÂtion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of comÂmunications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonÂable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
Their point was that these instructions come from a 1944 manual on how to sabotage a business.
The session’s Web page points to the entire, amazing, declassified manual of simple sabotage.
June 10, 2008
Britannica has announced that it’s going to enable some measure of reader participation in the extending of the online version of their encyclopedia. You can see the beta of the new site here.
The detailed overview of the planned site says:
two things we believe distinguish this effort from other projects of online collaboration are (1) the active involvement of the expert contributors with whom we already have relationships; and (2) the fact that all contributions to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s core content will continue to be checked and vetted by our expert editorial staff before they’re published.
Excellent! We needs lots of variations on the theme of collaboration. Editing and expertise add value. They slow things down and reduce the ability to scale, but Wikipedia’s process makes it possible to read an article that’s been altered, if only for a minutes, by some devilish hand. It all depends on what you’re trying to do, and collectively we’re trying to do everything. So, this is good news from Britannica. It’ll be fascinating to watch.
To pick a nit, I’m not as convinced by Britannica’s insistence on objectivity as a value, however. The blog post says “we believe that the creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative process but not a democratic one.” It lists three positive consequences of this. The third is “objectivity, and it requires experts.” In a reference that makes you wish they’d at least once use the word “Wikipedia,” the post continues: “In contrast to our approach, democratic systems settle for something bland and less informative, what is sometimes termed a ‘neutral point of view.'” I think it would be reasonable for Britannica to tell us that an expert-based, edited system is likely to yield articles that are more comprehensive, more uniform in quality, more accurate and more reliable. But haven’t we gotten past thinking that expertise yields objectivity?
Anyway, I think it’s amazing that the Britannica, in its 240th year, is taking this step. Britannica will be better for it, and so will we.
June 9, 2008
AllVoices is a new site that lets anyone upload an “event,” which in other circumstances might be called a “news story.” The site enables the clustering of bloggage and msm coverage of the event in what looks like a useful way.
I like a lot about it. I just hope it doesn’t become the preserve of yet another homogeneous group, which is exactly what the site doesn’t want to happen.
(It could use tags. [LATER that day: A helpful person from AllVoices tells me that there are tags for user-contributed items but not for ones that the system susses out.] And, at the moment the registration process is broken.)
June 7, 2008
A new magazine, WE, is kicking off its live chat series with a discussion with, well, me on Sunday, June 15, 5-6pm German time (= 11am to noon EDT, I believe), live from Hamburg. Ulrike Reinhart, Steffen Bueffel, and Soeren Stamer will lead the discussion. You can see it here.
Note: I arrive in Germany mid-morning that Sunday, so this will be a good opportunity to see my inner crankiness break through.
June 6, 2008
Berkman‘s Publius project keeps rolling along. There’s already lots of excellent stuff there, exploring how the Net is constituting its own governance mechanisms and norms. For example, today Peter Suber and Melissa Hagemann discuss open access, science, research, and education. But you can just browse through the topics and be pretty sure you’ll hit on something well worth reading.
June 4, 2008
Seb Schmoller’s mother has been transcribing job titles recorded from 1836-1900. They include:
Tripe dresser, Purse maker, Boot closer, Comb presser, Pedestrian, Fluter, Hafter, Clock cleaner, Oyster dealer, Coffee roaster, Springer, Chaser, Tape printer, Cork cutter, Fleam grinder, Cooker, Comb buffer, German silver buffer, Horn turner, Gentleman’s servant, Comedian, Cow keeper, Anvil striker, Patent busk maker, Galvanist, Fibre dresser, Hair drawer, Paper ruler, Saw parer, Harness plater, Waterman, Sawyer of stone, Sugar boiler, Staghorn cutter,
Seb’s got a whole bunch more…
Debategraph.org has ambitious goals. It wants to provide a public, commons-based wiki where we can lay out the great political debates systematically, rationally, and calmly. The tool creates highly structured maps consisting of relatively atomized arguments. (The tool itself is pretty darn cool.)
I’m dazzled by it. I’m not convinced that debates can be commoditized the way knowledge can be, and I’m not convinced that debates won’t lose what’s really going on in them when they are forced into rational outlines, and I’m not convinced that debates are really about what they say they are, and I’m not convinced that the truly deep divides are actually debates. But, “I’m not convinced” means only that I don’t know what to think. More important, Debategraph gives us an infrastructure of some depth and power. We’ll figure out what to do with it. I hope.
Take a look. It’s damn interesting. (Thanks to Seb Schmoller for the link.)
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