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September 18, 2008
To Solve a Fact
I just watched Clay Shirky, whose thoughts I absolutely love, give the final keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York.
He talked about the internet, information overload, publishing, and filtering.
Before the internet, because publishing was expensive, we filtered content (media) and then published it. Now, because publishing is no longer expensive, everyone can publish, and lots of people do, filtered only by their own personal sense of which thoughts of theirs they (or the social media infrustructure into which they dump thier thoughts or record their lives) consider newsworthy. If we want to filter all that information, if we want to find quality, however we define that, we need to filter after publishing has already happend.
And we're still working on that, still trying to figure out how to do that gracefully, dynamically, in ways that evolve with the evolution of the tools with which we gather information.
It was a good speech. Not as exciting to me as some other Shirky. But certainly worth more thought and maybe, someday, some written response.
Right now, however, I'm tangentially locked in on a quote that Shirky presented with reference to the information overload problem.
Yitzhak Rabin, a man that had significant experience with a long-standing problem, once said:
If you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it's not a problem; maybe it's a fact.
And that's a statement that worries me.
Problems beg solutions. Facts beg acceptance. And I like solutions better than acceptance.
I think acceptance is dangerous. It doesn't have to be dangerous. Some people will read or hear that Rabin quote and see real value in it, see the pragmatism, the honesty, and the call to action. If Israeli-Arab conflict is a fact, some people will recognize that it's still a fact to be actively managed, a fact to in some sense accept but a fact that requires mitigation of the sort that strives to make it no longer a fact. Some people, however, will take that word fact too deeply to heart and get conservative,* get complacent, admit helplessness, and decide not to devote energy to changing something that, by some definitions at least, is unchangeable.
If the conflict is a problem, however, it must, by definition, have solutions, and I think it's useful to acknowledge the existence of solutions. It fights the feeling of helplessness. It fights complacency. It fights conservatism. It motivates.
Anyway, I think I might have digressed into something of a downward spiral of semantic frustration, but hearing that quote set me spinning, and I'd rather spin out in the open and hope someone responds and sets me straight or soothes me, so I figured I'd crank out another high speed, impulsive post to close out my 48 hours or so in New York.
Time to go catch the Chinatown Bus (and want to talk to the driver and ticket man but probably get shy about it and just sit and listen to their conversation, which, most definitely, will be in Fuzhou dialect and almost entirely incomprehensible, especially to a Chinese student that has been totally slack for a solid 9 months).
*Note: I define conservatism as the tendency to preserve and protect the status quo, even if it's suboptimal, and I don't like it. I don't think I've ever written much about my thoughts on consevatism as I define it, but I do explain myself a little bit at the end of this post, so, if you're curious or think I'm crazy, have a look, and let me know what you think. I'm still pretty confused about conservatism and how I feel about it, so I'd much appreciate any thoughts you might have.
He talked about the internet, information overload, publishing, and filtering.
Before the internet, because publishing was expensive, we filtered content (media) and then published it. Now, because publishing is no longer expensive, everyone can publish, and lots of people do, filtered only by their own personal sense of which thoughts of theirs they (or the social media infrustructure into which they dump thier thoughts or record their lives) consider newsworthy. If we want to filter all that information, if we want to find quality, however we define that, we need to filter after publishing has already happend.
And we're still working on that, still trying to figure out how to do that gracefully, dynamically, in ways that evolve with the evolution of the tools with which we gather information.
It was a good speech. Not as exciting to me as some other Shirky. But certainly worth more thought and maybe, someday, some written response.
Right now, however, I'm tangentially locked in on a quote that Shirky presented with reference to the information overload problem.
Yitzhak Rabin, a man that had significant experience with a long-standing problem, once said:
If you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it's not a problem; maybe it's a fact.
And that's a statement that worries me.
Problems beg solutions. Facts beg acceptance. And I like solutions better than acceptance.
I think acceptance is dangerous. It doesn't have to be dangerous. Some people will read or hear that Rabin quote and see real value in it, see the pragmatism, the honesty, and the call to action. If Israeli-Arab conflict is a fact, some people will recognize that it's still a fact to be actively managed, a fact to in some sense accept but a fact that requires mitigation of the sort that strives to make it no longer a fact. Some people, however, will take that word fact too deeply to heart and get conservative,* get complacent, admit helplessness, and decide not to devote energy to changing something that, by some definitions at least, is unchangeable.
If the conflict is a problem, however, it must, by definition, have solutions, and I think it's useful to acknowledge the existence of solutions. It fights the feeling of helplessness. It fights complacency. It fights conservatism. It motivates.
Anyway, I think I might have digressed into something of a downward spiral of semantic frustration, but hearing that quote set me spinning, and I'd rather spin out in the open and hope someone responds and sets me straight or soothes me, so I figured I'd crank out another high speed, impulsive post to close out my 48 hours or so in New York.
Time to go catch the Chinatown Bus (and want to talk to the driver and ticket man but probably get shy about it and just sit and listen to their conversation, which, most definitely, will be in Fuzhou dialect and almost entirely incomprehensible, especially to a Chinese student that has been totally slack for a solid 9 months).
*Note: I define conservatism as the tendency to preserve and protect the status quo, even if it's suboptimal, and I don't like it. I don't think I've ever written much about my thoughts on consevatism as I define it, but I do explain myself a little bit at the end of this post, so, if you're curious or think I'm crazy, have a look, and let me know what you think. I'm still pretty confused about conservatism and how I feel about it, so I'd much appreciate any thoughts you might have.
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August 08, 2008
Trapeze Wisdom, Balkanization, and Wikipedia
I got some great comments on my post the other day about Clay Shirky, Wikipedia, and the Cognitive Surplus.
One asked about niche communities and whether there'll ever be another Wikipedia-scale open source research project.
I responded once last night, but it was late, and I didn't have full brain function, so I just responded again. It's too long and ridiculous a comment for me to leave sitting lonely deep in a thread, and the metaphorical element gets silly, so I'll pull it out and throw it up here...
One more thought about the Balkanization of online communities.
I think there's a key difference between what Wal-Mart and CNN (and Yahoo!) offer and what online communities offer.
Wal-Mart, CNN, and Yahoo! offer (primarily anyway) goods or info for us to CONSUME.
Online communities offer consumables as well, but, compared to superstores and big box media, they offer huge opportunity for their users to PRODUCE.
Wikipedia is an unusual case. It's consumed at the 500lb gorilla level, but it's produced by consumers.
I think it achieves its hig
One asked about niche communities and whether there'll ever be another Wikipedia-scale open source research project.
I responded once last night, but it was late, and I didn't have full brain function, so I just responded again. It's too long and ridiculous a comment for me to leave sitting lonely deep in a thread, and the metaphorical element gets silly, so I'll pull it out and throw it up here...
One more thought about the Balkanization of online communities.
I think there's a key difference between what Wal-Mart and CNN (and Yahoo!) offer and what online communities offer.
Wal-Mart, CNN, and Yahoo! offer (primarily anyway) goods or info for us to CONSUME.
Online communities offer consumables as well, but, compared to superstores and big box media, they offer huge opportunity for their users to PRODUCE.
Wikipedia is an unusual case. It's consumed at the 500lb gorilla level, but it's produced by consumers.
I think it achieves its hig