EDUCAUSE | CoranteSSA

An Interview with the Berkman Center's Charles Nesson

mpasiewicz — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:09:00 -0600

At Corante's Symposium on Social Architecture, the Berkman Center's Charles Nesson was gratious enough to sit down with me for a few minutes during one of the breaks. It was a short, but fairly interesting and entertaining interview, but I genuinely appreciated the opportunity. The running time for this recording is approximately 8 minutes.

SSA: A Case Study In Web-Based Civics: Katrina and Recovery 2.0

mpasiewicz — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:02:00 -0600

This disucssion was quite interesting and I wish there had been more time for it. It was lively and entertaining. David Weinberger covered the session in more detail than I.

I noted that if we want to talk about emergency response systems then we have to talk about the digital divide, municipal networks, the internet as a utility, the telecom rewrite act, etc. The general consensus from the speakers seemed to be that we should focus on major metropolitan areas first ... seems to me that we'll just be making the divide wider if we take that approach. That being said, I guess I can't imagine that we could get any traction at a national policy level if we can't make progress on the digital divide ... not to mention the potential ignorance regarding implications for the use of technology in society among policy makers in DC today (assuming the reports from the speakers are true).

They talked briefly about matching making services provided to help facilitate recovery too.

Folks interested in this topic might be interested in podcasts we did with Mike Roberts, former CEO of ICANN, George Loftus, Lev Gonick, Ken Spelke, John Lawson, and Doug Van Houweling, president and CEO of Internet2.

On a related note, John McNutt's coverage of the topic last month is worth a read.

SSA: Engines of Meaning: How Will We Scale Our Understanding?

mpasiewicz — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:45:00 -0600

The presenters, Mary Hodder and Kevin Marks, started off by taking a quick historical look at creation and consumption of information and highlighted those times in history that saw order of magnitude leaps in both.

They talked about at some length about trust networks and social filters.
They pondered how people find people, groups and information to trust.

As that discussion progressed, I thought of the need for some form of affinity engineering to find existing groups to join, to find individual people within existing groups or individuals to create new groups ... the question becomes how we scale that activity up and down depending on the context. This type of activity happens very organically. We can't predict the weather accurately for more than 5 days, how in the world can we predict the course of human behavior? I often wonder what we can learn from open source communities.
One might ask a person (an intermediary, like a librarian for source materials or an authority/expert, like a professor for source information and opinion). One might also consult a search engine (another intermediary of sorts). I like the idea of a hybrid system informed by social habits (in mass or from an affinity group) using a range of techniques including maybe full-text indexing ... perhaps combined with some lexical analysis; professional metadata; affinity metadata; and tags. Right now, my personal consumption tools vary widely. Maybe one day we'll even develop some interface/vocabulary for deriving meaning through non-verbal communication and voice inflection.

They talked about three dichotomies:

Man vs. machine
Global vs. personal
Professional vs. Amateur

There was talk of semi-structured metadata and microformats. A lot on folksonomies ... someone wondered when some critical mass might develop ... Kevin noted that, for now, it is enough that there are more people doing it than before. Someone else asked about the killer app for tagging ... someone suggested digital photos ... with inexpensive creation of digital images creating a volume of images and relatively low threshold applications for tagging, I think it makes sense, but more generally, I suspect that it will prove increasingly valuable for anything that is hard to get full text from (at least today) ... rich media (audio/video/images). There was also talk of the potential for [t]aggregation and possibly micro tags(?).

Someone noted that current technologies are quite crude; do we get another order of magnitude greater ability to find meaning if emerging technologies become more advanced. When we get a greater quantity of people online?

The discussion frequently degenerated into talk about blogging, etc .... not a lot of future tense ... nothing especially forward looking. Again, very few expressing any potential reservations about the future. There was some talk of content that authored under different personas and the reliability of content that had commercial component to it ... again, mostly a contemporary discussion on a long running question.

Someone spoke briefly about push vs. pull ... information that comes to me vs. information that I go to. Then there is also information that follows where you go ... whether you're on your primary pc, someone else's machine, or on your PDA ... having your information at your finger tips, click or tap, (or upon voice command or perhaps via some other mode of interaction).

I thought that this session had great potential, but I left it a little underwhelmed. Hopefully there will be some interesting coverage of something along this line at the CNI event that I'll be podcasting at in early December.

The organizers of this event also had an IRC session setup for the participants. The speakers of this session elected to put the backchannel irc on the screen. It was an interesting experience ... some complained about competition with presenters and the irc spectacle behind them. I suspect that it would have worked better if not in the same general location as presenters ... perhaps projected on a screen to the left or right of presenters. I also wondered how this might work for larger sessions and/or for larger conferences. I'm sure this has been done before, it is just the first time that I've experienced it directly. It reminds me a little of what some folks are doing in classrooms.

Another participant mentioned the MSMDX (Media Streams Metadata Exchange) project. It looks interesting, but I haven't had a chance to follow-up on it yet.
http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/msmdx/blog/introduction/

Books mentioned in the session include

Nonzero by Robert Wright
http://www.nonzero.org/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679758941

- and -

Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573223077

SSA: How Will The Social Web Change Media?

mpasiewicz — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:25:00 -0600

Not a lot to relay here. I expected more on participatory, journalism, citizen/grassroots journalism, and with all the talk of flickr, maybe photo journalism ;) Those seem to be among the more interesting sweet spots for the intersection of the social web and the media. A few web sites were thrown up, but there was little to no discussion or elaboration about them. Most tools and practices are still very primitive, but they'll get better. The one site that wasn't mentioned, but is most interesting to me is IndyMedia ... an organic, transnational organization that has at least a little bit of history to it.

The discussion again seemed very focused on what has happened/is happening today. I would have love to have heard more about future hopes and fears. No one mentioned interactive TV ... it will be interesting to see if/when the cable/satellite industry joins with major media to make this happen and what the dynamics will be. It will be driven by the internet, by software and technology, but I wonder if it might not manifest itself in the way that many people expect it might work. Perhaps they'll all move too slow and the inertia that is forming on the Internet will be the only force that shapes the way that media is produced, aggregated, distributed and consumed in the future. I'm not convinced of that yet. In an era where kids are growing up with fast paced, game based interfaces that provide constant interaction and feedback, I'm not convinced that we'll be poised provide the richness that folks of the future will want with the current pace of change in infrastructure ... computer prices will have to drop, Internet2 will have to become ubiquitous, screen prices will have to drop radically, screen sizes for mobile devices will have to change ... a lot of this will happen overtime, but I suspect the sleeping giant that is major media, cable and satellite companies will awake with strong will to redirect some technology its way ... but maybe not, maybe they're too bound to quarterly profits to invest during this time of disruption.

There was a little talk about remixing and open/closed content.

As far as I could tell there were no meaningful projections on when the two will begin to blend together in a more meaningful, pervasive way. There was also no talk of interdependencies required to facilitate greater investment and attention ... costs of screens, size of screens, the digital divide, etc. Again, very, very little about the potential risks involved if these technologies get hijacked. Does society at large really understand the risks?

I would have also been interested to learn about the rapid spread of memes etc. Does that make us more susceptible to propaganda and brash decisions?

Someone from OSTN, the cable industry might have proven an interesting addition to the panel. Of course, this was a topic that could have easily gone on for several days.

For those of you that don't know about OSTN, you might be interested in this podcast with Internet2 driven service.

http://connect.educause.edu/OSTN_INTERVIEW

Public Radio Exchange is also kinda interesting
http://www.prx.org/

SSA: Is Social Software A Mirror Or A Lens?

mpasiewicz — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:19:00 -0600

There were definitely no parsimonious answers to the question. There was talk of both the wisdom and the tyranny of crowds, a little bit about different personas that people project online, and a brief, but really interesting discussion on sociocultural issues ... an item really interesting to me when talking about standardized tests, learning styles, etc.

There was talk of each link in technorati.com about a common topic providing 2 degrees of separation of coverage ... that was interesting to me. Clearly everyone blogging about the event is covering it in a slightly different way. I wonder about how many degrees of separation people will tolerate before moving on ... and/or if there is someway to do some statistical analysis about this. Kinda interesting ... I'll file it away for another day.

Also interesting was someone's comments on postering/tagging in the physical world where kids put up flyers on posts ... not tagging as in defacing property (graffiti/vandalism) ... putting up posters/flyers for low-fi meet up style events. I didn't quite follow the whole point, but I like the idea. The information in the two paragraphs was either from the wrap-up or from this session. I jumbled up my notes and can't quite remember.

Rant: The session was setup so that no one in a second tier seat could ask a question ... you had to move to the front (naturally, I was in the back). More on this activity here. Of course, the rule was broken at the end of the session when a presumable "somebody" wanted to pose a question.

Just a minor urke ... 'seemed like an unnecissarily disruptive thing to do.

Getting started at Corante's Symposium on Social Architecture

mpasiewicz — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:19:00 -0600

Corante's Symposium on Social Architecture is about to begin and I can't wait.

Last evening we toured a Degas exhibit. Hearing the docent speak of draft drawings as leaving trails of information about a master's work raised all sorts of imagery in my head ... wikis, knowledge management, etc.

Further, in thinking about the range of works that Degas provided for us made me think of issues of digital preservation. I wonder if parallels could be made of physical preservation of art ... drawings vs. pastel work vs. paintings vs. sculpture ... media/medium ... at risk works, etc. Perhaps someone has already done that. If you had to come up with an example of a digital work that could serve as a contemporary of a piece in an at risk media (like a charcole sketch on newsprint perhaps; or maybe one example of one with a little more durability ... a photo on resin coated paper), what would it be?

What can we learn from the art world's efforts to preserve the physical works of authorship?

They also have a blog setup for coverage of the event.
http://www.corante.com/events/ssa/blog.php

SSA: David Weinberger's Opening Remarks

mpasiewicz — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 08:57:00 -0600

David Weinberger opened the show by introducing the stage offering a few thoughts to get the juices flowing.

Rather than work through the handing wringing process of offering a definition of social software, Weinberger evoked UC California Berkley's Eleanor Rosch and offer some prototype examples of social software in practice ... blogging, wikis, listservs, sms, IM, chat, social bookmarking, tagging/folksonomies, social networking (linked in, friendster). What they have in common is that they're all connected, relatively low tech and inexpensive, house individual voices, and have a native social element.

He suggested that the social software phenomena has punched a whole in defences of standard business practices. He talked a bit about values and a culture war ... citing the google print power struggle as one example, but also talked about how social software will impact organizations (centralized vs. decentralized).

centralized - big, expensive, control, pryamids (top down)
decentralized - messy, sloppy, hyperlinked (bottom up)

He maintains a utopian view, but holds some distopian predictions.

He just briefly noted the uneven distribution of lurkers and talkers ... creators and consumers. He noted that today, social software (irc/blogging/wikis) is predominated by text and often attracts people with high verbal skills. He also cited worries about echo chambers, where folks reinforce their own predjudices and never get any new ideas. It is a term he doesn't care for. He noted that mainstream media often makes this comment about the world of the web, citing the media's criticism of deanspace as an example. He noted that it might be true if folks only visited the Howard Dean site, but that isn't the case. All conversation begins with some commonaility and then iterates on differences. He noted the term, echo chamber, more acurately describes mainstream media as their sites only link to themseleves. He did note some risk for social software, but they are generally more open and that increases the chances of overlap, idea infection and meme exchanges (he didn't use those terms, but I think that accurately communicates the thoughts that he was conveying).

SSA: Is Business Ready For Social Software?

mpasiewicz — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:50:00 -0600

Stowe Boyd, Kaliya Hamlin, Seth Goldstein

Outside of Stowe, there seemed to be very little representation from those that have lots of experience in large, traditional businesses. Stowe himself had a bias (that I share) against cubical world. I suspect that there are very few square pegs that fit neatly into cubicles at this show ... if there are, they aren't speaking up.

Stowe started with a quote ... "Managers would rather live with a problem they can't solve than with a solution they don't fully understand." - Eric Bonabeau Why are businesses looking at social software now? Will social software make a meaningful footprint in business process and management thought? When you introduce social software in buisness, everything eventually becomes bottom up.

He noted that knowledge management of the 90s was similar to strip mining people's heads.

Stowe suggested a potential backlash against social computing b/c of time managment studies ... noted reports that cite how many people blog at work, etc. He was largely dismissive of those studies. He noted that they aren't good indicators of organizational productivity. He wondered how these technologies are sneaking into business ... he (or someone from the audience -- I can't remember) pondered the question of how/why organizations deployed email ... what were the hurdles? They talked about experiences coming in department by department and then much later becoming integrated as a standard practice much later. I know that at EDUCAUSE much of this is coming out of IT and if I'm remembering our podcast with the COO of eBay correctly, they their adoption of wikis came out of IT and then spread to marketing/product development. Will any emerging social technologies have monumental effects on standard business practice? They talked about the reach of these technologies ... outside the firewall? Some noted that the influence of business often distorts the software and the network of users ... often times affecting the implict and explcit motivations of potentially meaningful contributors in the process.

Seth pondered the individual contributor's return on participation. He also wondered about secondary (residual) data (search history, etc.) that is being collected by Google, others ... He suggested that we all work for google; that we're constantly making their algorythm more effective. Seth believes that social software is a symptom of data availability (APIs) ... mashing up APIs. Seth is an investor in del.ico.us

Kaliya talked about a new data web that links to persistent data. For me that elicited thoughts of Plaxo, microformats and XHTML. I may have misinterpreted her, but I believe she was projecting a growth in commodity skills and contract labor.

There were a range of interesting discussions, but seemed a little off topic at times. I'm guessing that they may have been better served by introducing this session closer to the end of the day.

What they didn't talk about was the digital divide, the lack of broadband connectivity in areas outside of major metropolitan ares, learning styles and the psyche of different employees, etc. No one (in this session) talked about potential negatives associated with adoption of these emerging areas. I wonder if anyone is looking beyond potential for progress. Is this something that we want? How will these technologies and this emerging cultural phenomena work against us ... how might they hurt consumers, employees, unions, others? How will it affect employment? Well, I guess that is a little off topic too.

All in all, it was interesting and raised some questions that I'd like to spend more time thinking about.