Week Nine Musings

Kolbitsch and Maurer's The Transformation of the Web article frames many of the points we've already touched upon in previous in-class sessions with a focus on transformation. We really haven't talked much about chaos, complexity, and the theory of self-organizing structure. The current transformation they write about (driven by blogs, wikis, podcasts, vodcasts, etc.) seems rather dependent on it. I am sure Monday's class discussion will thrive, but since I will miss the discussion upon attending the 2007 VAC consortium meeting, I feel the need to offer up some thoughts in advance:

1. Regarding the issue of a "neutral voice or point of view", I believe Wikipedia should continue to try and find that middle ground. And yet, as Burt Kosko points out so well in his book Fuzzy Thinking: The New Science of Fuzzy Logic (published by Hyperion in 1993), the middle ground is often not very sexy and our human brains aren't really wired well to retain or respond to neutrality in fact.

2. The concept of using taxonomy and ontology to organize social media as it bubbles up through participation of the masses is difficult to do. And yet, I am hopeful that someone will come up with a better solution than what we have today: Free form tagging systems and overly architected top-down approaches that inhibit growth while standards are thoughtfully derived. Anyone have a solid middle ground process worth trying?

3. Does StumbleUpon have the right mix of features to help us socially mediate what constitutes the best Web pages out there and provide a solid opportunity to channel surf the Web as we similarly channel surf the television? Seems like there is an opportunity to help us encounter new ideas through a socially-assisted suggestion process that blends all the available information streams out there.

4. In regards to faster publication cycles, there is a limit to how fast we can publish news and information. We really can't do any better than instantaneous. And, so, although we see dramatic changes now in terms of how fast information is made available to us for discovery and comment, we will run up against a wall someday soon. Just like we will run into the spatial limit of our geography here on Earth (very few of us will be connected from space in the short run). Time and place are being redefined right now, but that sense of change has to settle down eventually.

5. Seems like we are ripe for a consolidation service that will cross-link all of our socially mediated information. We enter something in Facebook or MySpace and we gain access to it from either client. If we do that right, we'll find it easier to add new features and have everyone participate. We're bound to get past text as a potentially limiting common denominator faster that way.