Link Out

The abstract experiment continues as I try do my small part in furthering the music weblog world by giving writers proper Movable Type sites. My motives are selfish, I want RSS feeds and all these music blogs are on blogspot... Beyond that though the theory is that communication tools like RSS will help this little part of the blogsphere grow to be healthy and strong. Hence the "experiment" bit.

In any case we are now proud hosts to two new music(ish) weblogs. Sasha Frere-Jones may well be the best music critic of the now, so get reading. And his friend Jessica Hopper seems pretty brilliant too. Its all there for your reading goodness.

And of course if you know of any people with real taste in music who need to be equipped with weblog, send them my way...

DJ v. Blogger

Anne discovers iWire teasing us about his "bloggers are like DJs thesis", and I for one want to hear more.

Its actually a subject I've thought about a bit. Not to get too detailed, but both are excellent examples of "human filters". Both involve large amounts of sifting through the surpluses of western society in order to highlight their choices. The blogger focus on information, while the DJ on music, both of which there is far to much of for most people to have to time to find the best of on their own.

As information multiplies and the ability to produce recorded music increases the need for this filtering becomes more and more crucial. Instead of filtering all recordings we just filter all the djs (and music critics too) and rely upon those that filter to our taste. Same with blogs.

But there are also some very potent differences. Among the most interesting is the approach to time. A blogger and a DJ are in completely different spheres. Blogs and time is pretty simple, its a full on charge straight ahead. Newest first, and keep putting that new stuff first. No real beginning, no real end to it. The DJ on the other foot, is all rhythms and loops, repeat, rewind, rebuild and redefine. A blog filters a post once and then runs along to the next little blip. The DJ might filter a record into every set. A breakbeat, grunt or snare, might get repeated for ever, shifting slightly with each reiteration, occasionally exploding across a million records like G.C. Colmen's "Amen Brother".

The DJ and time are perhaps in a deep love/hate relationship, the DJ a slave to time, she has perhaps an hour or two allocated to spin those records. But if they are spun right time, the master, disappears completely. All that is left is a moment, a moment on the dancefloor, a moment in the club. A moment that might last forever, as the universe collapses inward on each dancer.

And now time tells the blogger, get your ass back to work... To be continued, perhaps by me perhaps by another filter...

Blogging for Dollars

Weblogs, Inc. is the latest attempt to make cash off weblogs. This one's got renowned booster/asshole Jason Calacanis on board. The focus is niche industry blogs and I wouldn't be surprised if they become one of the first companies to really make cash in this space.

One flaw popping at me though. No RSS. Now I can understand why a business wouldn't want to use RSS, it lets people read the site without actually visiting it. And in targeted niches a blog might be able to reach 99% of its target audience without RSS. Might. And for something like Calacanis' personal blog, his readership will suffer. Personally I'd read it if it was in my RSS feeds. But that feed does not seem to exist...

Google = Evil?

I've had some concerns about Google for a while now, plus one bad experience with them. Now its starting to look like the concerns are real and the bad experience not exactly unique. Not cool. Google seems to rapidly getting less human, more profit motivated and more powerful. Lets hope the competition can step up quick. An open source non profit search engine would be ideal. Actually having a couple competing non profit search engines would be ideal...

The End of Open?

Clay Shirky has some unusually dark thoughts on the future of openness:

I also have the same pit in my stomach about email in 2003 that I did in 1997 about usenet. I loved usenet as well, too literally and too well — in the early 90’s, I poured two years of my life into that sink. But by 1997, I could see that the twin pressures plaguing usenet — volume and spam — had no easy solution. That’s how I feel now about email, and what makes it worse is that its starting to be how I feel about openess.

...

And the thing that makes me sickest is that I may already have lived to see the high water mark of openess in my lifetime. Email’s loss (and in some ways its already happened, so enormous is its current debasement) is both tragic in and of itself, and possibly a warning about the future.

Now I'm certainly not going to argue that he's definitely wrong, unfortunately there are very real risks to the future of open systems. But at the same time I think he's not giving openness enough credit. In essence he's saying that the problems of spammers, free riders and shear volume are going to outstrip our ability to counter these issues within open systems. Here are a few reasons I hope this isn't going to be true:

• Not all open systems are automatically at risk to these threats. How do you spam my RSS feeds for example. Open systems can be coded to narrow the volume of information, not increase it.

• As more and more systems fall to these vulnerabilities, more and more effort will be placed in creating solutions. Better spam filters for instance. Imagine a spam filter that ranks your incoming mail by where someone is in your social network. Friends obviously shoot right through to your inbox, as do people fully interwoven in your personal network (ie they are friends with 4 of your friends). Those on periphery of your network or not in it at all get additional scrutiny, perhaps they get crossed referenced with people that appear in your RSS feeds or to directories of company's reputations.

• The proliferation of human filters. This is key, as the shear volume of information increases there is tremendous value placed in filtering and sorting information. This creates a valuable market niche that people are rushing to fill. DJs filter the massive amount of recorded music. Bloggers filter their niches, while services like the Lycos 50 filter popular culture. In many sense the internet functions like a city with information industry ala Jane Jacobs The Economy of Cities. Specialization begets more specialization, creating a rich meshwork economy.

Guess we'll be finding out soon. I'm certainly not writing off email yet, although I'll certainly admit its getting more and more of a chore and less and less of a pleasure. Ultimately I think we'll have something much better and I have hope it will be an open system.

Flash Driven Blog

Polarfront is a hot little flash powered with a highly experimental interface. Usability is a bit circumspect, but they get major respect for building it and playing around. Faster processors and playing with stuff like this will bring us to the future someday...

More Flash blog stuff at actionScriptHero

Abstract Experiment + k-Punk

Abstract Dynamics is now proud web host to an excellent music weblog: k-punk, go read it.

This is the hopefully the beginning of a larger experiment in getting music bloggers the fuck off of blogspot and onto a software that supports RSS feeds and proper comments. Hypothesis is that the community will grow and quality of posts improve. And if not at least I'll be better able to follow what's up in music world.

Many thanks to Mark from k-punk for being a willing first participant in this experiment, and big bonus points for maintaining the story that I'm actually the one being generous...

So far so good on the experiment, I expect I'll be able free Movable Type blogs on my server to more music bloggers in the next few days. Write me if you want some. Don't think I'll be able to host as many as I'd like, but anyone currently writing intelligent stuff about good music on blogspot is eminently eligible.

Linkage: Ticketmaster, Quicksilver Metaweb

Due Diligence: Toppling Ticketmaster

Quicksilver Metaweb, the official wiki for Neal Stephenson's latest book, Quicksilver. Released all of yesterday...

Why IAEA?

Welcome to the International Atomic Energy Agency, wtf? Its not the site the befuddles me its the fact that I've been getting a steady stream of refers showing up in my log from iaea.org. At first I thought it was some odd anomaly of the network, but its been a few months now. It doesn't seem to be coming from their search function, and there aren't and apparent links on their site to mine. So...

The paranoid in me says it must be a cover for TIA or something. But then I get occasional hits from .arpanet anyway, something I didn't even realize still existed and probably is run by the NSA. And the IAEA is a UN org anyhow, not a US government one.

So before I go into tinfoil hat territory, there has to be a real explanation for all this, perhaps the IAEA is really a spam operation ;) No really, anyone have any ideas?

Idiot Savant or Mad Genius?

Steward Butterfield has a great guest post on Many to Many about yesterday's Social Networking: Is there Really a Business Model? event. Especially interesting to me was this bit about Friendster CEO Johnathan Abrams:

After a few flashes of what appears to have been a trademark grimace, Abrams took the strongest position of the evening, declaring that Friendster is not a social networking business and observing that "When I started Friendster, I never imagined that it would part of a 'space'".

In fact, Abrams deried the idea that there was any sort of space here at all, perhaps astutely adding that this buzz seemed to him like 'push' or 'web servives' — not just in being areas which ended up overinvested, but in that they were not real 'areas' to begin with, just loosely associated businesses (or pseudo-businesses) grouped around a hot topic. Abrams came away with the nice line "When I hear entrepreneurs and VCs talking about a space, it means there is trouble ahead."

Damn, that's brilliant, this man just went up in front of an audience of venture capitalists and stabbed them where it hurts. That's like telling a runway model she's gained 5 pounds and her tits are sagging. I'm sure the VC ate it the fuck up too, no one talks to them like that, they are the ones with the big bags of money after all. Is this more idiocy from Abrams or is he really a brilliant psychological game player? I mean imagine the VC talking about the investment: "sure he wants 10 million, but imagine how much it will save us in our BDSM bills..."

Unfortunately for Abrams, Occam's Razor takes hold here, and there really is no evidence that Abrams is a genius psychological manipulator. I mean if he's that good, why the hell can he not get a date? Absent a harem he's been keeping secret to keep up this bumbling image, I'd have to say Abrams really is a fool. A damn lucky one who happened to stumble into a 'space' that he doesn't even realize exists.

Saddest bit is most of the time Abrams would be right, 'space' is an early warning sign of VC bullshit. But enhancing social networks with tech is a real business space, and yes there is actual money to be made there.

Data Mining the Amazon

couchprojects | Data Mining the Amazon

[via Magnetbox]

Wikiflow

[via Joi Ito's Web: IBM's History Flow]

One from the Logs

:: souljerky/threshold ::

Africa Designs

. : : african creativity unites : : .. : : S W I K I R I : : . : : SWEET MAMA AFRICA! : : . . . . : design : . . . . . . . . . .

antics and gang rape

hallucinations & antics . tobias c. van Veen .. ./ /. . ./ .. /. /. /. . .. . ./ ./ . /. .. . .. / /. has been playing fast and loose with its text size and now has the best looking weblog around.

On a more serious note tobias also brings ill news: 'Polish artist DOROTA NIEZNALSKA was sentenced to 6 months of confinement in her community for "violence to religious feelings."'

Among the suggested punishments *GANG RAPE*. An ill world indeed. Damn.

Friendster Warfare

Damn, the friendster war is heating up.

Pretty fucking absurd, if you invented a wildly successful product would then wage war on your users and try and destroy everything they like about your product?

The weirdest bit is that friendster is still growing rapidly despite a management that is completely hostile to the actual users. And on the flip, Tribe.net, listens closely and talks to its users, but is pretty much still born so far. None of the dynamism of friendster there, despite the fact that they welcome it. Could it be that friendsters antagonistic relationship to its users actually helps drive some of its success. Action is more fun if its illegal after all...

[via connected selves: Attack of the Smartasses]

The Technoarchy

Technoarchy: a form of oligarchy where society is controlled by those who use technology the best. Unlike traditional oligarchies technoarchies are generally emergent. For the most part they are not created deliberately, but rise out of the properties of the dominant technology of the time, ie the networked computers of the 21st century.

According to google it was used with a potentially similar meaning once before, in an essay I have yet to get my hands on. If anyone knows of any other prior uses, please let me know. Same goes for other words with a similar meaning.

Expect an essay in the near future.

Visualizing Friendster

[via connected selves: visualizing friendster]

Brightly Colored Food, Small Worlds and Social Clouds

Met up with Chad Thornton of brightly colored food yesterday. Chad emailed me a few days back noting that

1 - we went to the same school
2 - he read this site
3 - he once played in a band with a business partner of mine
4 - he knew two of my cousins.

and of course we shared a similar interest in interface design. and I quickly learned he used to be roommates with a good friend of mine.

But some how we'd never met.

These sorts of dense interconnections never seize to fascinate me. At the same time though, I come to expect them, they are so common. You can never predict the specifics, but they occur with regularity no matter where I am. Small world.

Except that its not, we live in a huge world. 6 billion people we are told. And as interesting as the interconnections are, I'm getting more and more interested in the lines of separation.

Things like friendster make it more and more clear that we exist in large scale social networks of hundreds of thousands of people. I call them social clouds at the moment. But beware I use the term cloud, not to represent what these networks resemble, but the emphasize the amorphousness of our knowledge of the dynamics of these networks. If they even exist, their existence is somewhat unproven, the evidence is anecdotal and peripheral at the moment.

Now some of these clouds and clusterings are pretty easy to guess at. Geography and religion are age old forces creating large scale social networks. Organizations like universities and governments generate their own large scale clusters. In the internet age, shared interests is a pretty efficient creator of such groupings as well.

I'd hypothesize that social networks also are divided by more arbitrary and random reasons. An exchange program between two schools creates a social flow. A chance meeting between two consummate networkers leads to a blending of their social clouds. A short love affair between a high school guidance counselor and college admissions officer leads to tight connection between the social networks of the two schools. The same admissions officer however hates the smell of another high school counselor's perfume, and rift grows between the two clouds.

Two people with similar backgrounds and education might live blocks apart, but drift through very different clouds. A meme might percolate through one cloud a year before the other, despite both clouds being in the same target market. Just as we find surprising connections between people I suspect we'll find the disconnects are just as surprising...

Googleholes

Steven Johnson: Googleholes

Google Metamorphosis

Ok, so Google isn't turning into an insect, but there is something Kafkaish about the place. Alert readers of the site might have noticed that some Google AdSense powered ads showed up on the site a week or two ago. Don't look, they aren't there now, so let me kick you the story.

I'm an info junkie and an early adaptor. New technology comes around and I'll play with it. Not blindly cause its new, but with a critical eye, I want to know what it does, how it works and if its useful. So of course I signed up for AdSense the moment I heard about it, didn't even cost anything. If fact it could have even made me money.

Sign up was as easy as they come, the Google simplicity was on point. More importantly though Google was serving based on the content of the page so the ads promised to be relevant to reader. I was impressed, they started serving up ads that were genuinely interesting to me, at least from a curiosity standpoint. I've always felt that when advertising is done right its actually a good thing. If the information delivered is useful to you then you're happy to see an ad. People hate ads cause they see to many that aren't interesting to them, and that sucks, especially if they try hard to grab your attention.

But Google was getting close to the advertising wholy grail, ads that people really want to see. And not just because they are funny, because their interests and needs match with an advertiser. Naturally I was interested on what Google served on my site, so I clicked on a few ads. Nothing in the terms of service indicated I shouldn't and Google provided no backdoor into the ads. Was mildly interesting, and I moved on.

Then I decide to place the ads on the subpages of the site. Now that was interesting. Each page now got its own specially tailored set of 4 ads. Most were quite different. Now I was really interested. I clicked on almost all of them. Some were great, sites on globalisation in Africa, philosophy books, and political sites. Others were somewhat relevant, and a few were pretty wrong. A couple right wing organizations would pop-up. The word Iraq seemed to trigger only ads for those Iraq's most wanted trading cards. Felt a bit guilty clicking on all those links, but hey, it was my site, and there didn't seem to be any other way to see what was getting linked. Plus I posted a huge link list of most of sites I visited, figured they deserved some free linkage for advertising on my site.

That sedated most of my curiosity, but I was still wanted to know more. Google never told which links were getting clicked, why a given link would get served, or how much a given link was worth. But they did give frequently updated reports on the total clicks and the total money earned.

My site's pretty low traffic (I was on course to make maybe a $1 a day), so I found I could inter a bit more info by clicking on a few links and then checking the reports. Most of the links were worth about 10¢ a click. Some were closer to a penny it seemed. And one page in particular stuck out. I had used "cash" in a post title. And that seemed to trigger ads for borderline loansharking operations. "Instant Cash". Not exactly my favorite kind of people.

What was interesting was that these links seemed to be worth a lot more then most, close to $1 a click was my guess. The post in question was pretty long and political too. It could have easily triggered a lot of other ads.But the "cash" seemed to win out every time. The loansharks were obviously willing to pay a lot more per click. And this seems to have triggered Google's ad placement algorithm to give them priority. Interesting. Wonder what the tipping point was. Larger archive pages with that post on them weren't getting the loanshark ads. Made a mental note to research more later.

Instead I got a terse letter from Google informing me my account was cancelled. I guess I had clicked on one click to many. I was a bit worried that all my clicking on the "subpage" day would trigger something in their system, it had pushed my click through rate to 40%. But it also resulted in a whole $12 of money, not exactly high impact. Figured a computer might notice it, but then a human would get involved and it would get worked out.

Humans, yeah remember them. Turns out they are in short supply at Google. The first letter was almost certainly computer generated. And the tone was nasty. "Subject: [#2801845] Account Terminated", what a way to start off an email... I was a bit taken aback by the brusk language. I expected at most a warning, which I hoped might actually lead to a dialogue about making more info available to people serving AdSense ads. Instead I got accusations:

"It has come to our attention that fraudulent clicks have been generated on the ads on your site(s). Please understand that we consider deliberate attempts to violate our policies and compromise the integrity of our program a serious matter. Furthermore, your actions have cost Google and our advertisers both time and money. Actions such as this are not tolerated by Google."

Hmmm, guess they are sort of new to customer service. I reviewed the terms of service, I wasn't in violation, although it did say they could cut anyone off. Time to get a human involved. I wrote back asking for a review of the situation and included by phone number. As I sent out the email I noticed the return address. adsense-spam@google.com, hmmm maybe its not going to be as simple as talking to a person.

After a day of no response I decided to call them up. Took some digging on their site but I got the phone number. It lead to a labyrinth. There were a surprising number of dead ends. If you want to talk about "x" hit 1. Hit 1 and you find out that google won't talk about x. Great. As far as I can tell there is no way to get a human on the phone at Google without randomly dialing in extensions. This was beginning to feel a bit like 2001, slowly dealing with a computer out of control.

On Saturday night I got an email back. It seemed to be written by a human, but was signed the "The Google Team". They had no problem addressing me by name though, a nice demeaning touch on their part. Still accusing me of fraud too. No details as to what that fraud was though. Great.

Figured I'd give one more shot, wrote back explaining everything I had done that might have set their computer off, and tossing in some suggestions on how to make it better to boot. Pretty much given up at that point, but it was worth a shot. No love back on their part. Guess the experiment was over.

The worrying thing about it for me is the inhumanness of it all. The money was pocketchange wasn't going to turn it down, but it would have been server costs and small xmas bonus at best. But I enjoyed watching the ads, seeing what got served up, and actually getting paid at least a token amount for writing. And the more I look at Google the more worried I get.

Google of course is still the best search engine around. But there is something brewing there I think that's a touch unsavory. They hold their information really tight to their pockets. They'll gladly lead you to other people's information, but won's share their own. Even their trends pages is hidden and sparse, in pretty dramatic contrast to the Lycos 50 and Yahoo Buzz Index. They've got a treasure trove of data, and it doesn't seem like they plan to share it. Too much potential profit buried there. But that just makes me jealous.

What makes me scared is that they are dangerously close to becoming the only search engine that matters on the web. And that gives them tremendous power. If they use it well then its all good. So far they have done a pretty good job. But they are young, they could change. Going public could change them. Political pressure could change them. Greed could change them. And the fact that they refuse to put out a human face doesn't bode to well. I'll be keeping my eyes open.

Connect Selves (and the march towards digital social networks)

connected selves is a new research blog from danah boyd. She's doing some interesting work on social interaction in digital networks, should be an interesting and informative read.

Semes

tobias c. van Veen's Hearing Difference: The Seme is now online. Good stuff from the space where culture and sound intertwine.

more too on the "vicious speed of the blogworld".

With the introduction of AOL, I think we're going to see... well: let's think. While maybe this will spurn the same online energy that propelled the "everybody should have a homepage era" (which led to such increased dot-com speculation, for one thing), I also think the speed at which the massive accumulation of blogs will slow down the whole operation will be increased. Thus the entire blog phenomenon will crash & burn much faster than even the dot-bomb. Which is too bad--because for years I've been toiling away on the Net without feeling much response anymore. Netnumbness. Mailing lists are still the best bet, but "online communities" like Rhizome.org have failed to create a cohesive connectability--in part because the digerati have been somewhat resistant to such attempts (perhaps the bitterness over previous online communal failures still rings to close). But blogging is reversing that trend. In only just under two weeks of getting my feet wet in the blogworld, the response has been exponential. I guess the responsibility now lies on me to keep up with the pace.

And yes its true the blogsphere does seem to reward the frequent posters (hence the success of the odious Instapundit). But quality gets rewarded far more. Like in music, "faster!, faster!" can only go so far before some slows it down and concentrates on making it good. One quality post a week should keep any blog alive.

As for AOL introducing blogs. Gets a shrug from me. Don't think it will change a thing. Its another isolated live journal world. Blogs will outlast most failed online communities because they don't try and be communities. All it takes is one person to make a blog. More then that though, blogs allow for a far greater degree of subtly and nuance to develop then say mailing lists or bulletin boards. That's why you don't see the rapid acceleration of disagreements into shouting matches that plagues email lists. Well its part of the reason.

and yeah, reading tobias' site has got me back to listening to electronic music for the first time in months. An old mix of his from 2000 fills my headphones right now, premium techno styles. [warning RealAudio].

Also in rotation, a downtempo mix from by an old friend dijon. The problem with many ambient mixes is they try really hard to sound like they were recorded on a train following the silk road. Dijon's mix actually was done on his laptop as he crossed China, a far better proposition.

Finally to make it three, Andy Weatherhall's Hypercity is quite possibly my favorite mix of all time. I usually not one for smooth, but this one I can taste in my mouth, sublime.

More Suburbanizing of Information

Is the internet a suburban sprawl of information?

Causes for hope seem so few these days, but one might be that these zones of safety will nurture great ideas from the left (and for that matter from every subgroup). But can strong leadership emerge without continuous exchanges and clashes among differing groups? Isolation, which is also expressed in sanitized shopping malls and gated communities, through gay (and liberal) inner-city ghettos, and by newspapers sectioned to serve private interests, is another potential also built into the structure of the internet.

Anne Galloway on Marginwalker]

Bitpass - micropayments Grow Up

BitPass is live. Back in the dot.com boom days, you'd say they've discovered the holy grail. But things are more sedate and realistic now so lets just say they have a working system of micropayments that will enable a large range of economic possibilities that never existed before. I've been pretty skeptical about micropayments in the past, but I think their time may have arrived. The internet has created a relatively frictionless economic plane, which makes it possible to distribute content that is best priced in the $1 and under range. Bitpass lets you sell things for as little as a penny. And the user interface is quite nice. I've be experimenting as soon as I get the free time. More soon.

The Revolution Will Not Be Idealized

Damn, my friend Adam Greenfield is in a dystopian mood today. He writes from Seoul, South Korea:

Show me a case where e-mail or blogs or smart mobs really and unambiguously did bring down a tyrant. Show me a situation in which even one high-school bully was put in their place with the aid of this technology, let alone the pathetic tinhorn strongmen that still ru(i)n so much of this pretty sphere... I mean on the macro scale. Is the planet as a whole detectably better-off in the wake of a decade of decentralized, low-cost-of-entry information availability? Are we better informed, less superstitious, more open-minded, more curious, stronger, less afraid? Do we make better choices?

Christ Adam, take a deep breath. I almost bought the new PDA with the "end tyranny" button, but Howard dean outbid me... Seriously though, this is important; revolutions do not solve problems, they transform problems. The French didn't just wake up one morning in the late 1700's and say "we have no king, life is perfect". Gutenberg didn't print out his first bible and then kick back and watch the world fix itself while making love to Helen of Troy. We live in an imperfect world. Perfectly imperfect some would say.

Life is good, life is bad, times are good, times are bad. You still have the power to set your own pace. And no you aren't going to end poverty by building a website or chatting on IM. But a scream in Calcutta can now be heard in East New York and that means something. Think of baseball, think of averages, improving the world is not about instant ending of tyranny, its about subtly tipping the balance. Its about crafting systems that encourage positive behavior. Its about solving problems slightly faster then you create them. And make no mistake, humans are spectacular at problem solving, but they also are quite skilled at making new messes. That's reality for you.

But if we can solve 2 problems while only creating one, we are improving the world. The results might not be as instant as Viagra, but odds are they will be far more satisfying. One step, deep breath, the world is filled with inexplicable beauty set against the nastiest tragedy and mixed into a poetic swirl. There are moments of perfection and moments of despair. Enjoy them all, its more fun then giving up...

Hallucinations & Antics . . ./ New Blog Alert

hallucinations & antics . tobias c. van Veen .. ./ /. . ./ .. /. /. /. . .. . ./ ./ . /. .. . .. / /.

hot shit from the edges of music, design and culture. I blogged one of tobias' essays in the past and now he's got a weblog, check it. Good shit, and hopefully signs of new breed of blogs, ones tuned into hip hop and techno, electro and punk rock. Ones that look fresh and understand design (ie they aren't a generic template and they don't look at all like anything made by Kotke (sp?)). Fresh styles are emerging, watch out.

Flash Based MT Blog

Samuel Wan : News, Information and Resources: Flash-based Blog

Had a thought about making a flash interface for a Moveable Type blog. A quick google surf found Samuel Wan's prototype. Doubt I'll have time to do anything with this for a while, but here it is for archiving and you're pleasure.

Been moving away from Flash for a few years now. The purity of raw html and open standards was refreshing. But now I'm think I may be at a turning point. The need for open standards and compatibility is still there of course, but I think it can be maintained while being integrated into a more lush and developed flash landscape. Something to think about at least...

ePatriots

ePatriots is a new grassroots online campaign to raise money for the Democratic party. DailyKos is behind it and I like it so far. But note I'm not a member of the Democratic party, I just hate Bush. And I really like the way the fundraising operation is moving towards aggregating small contributions rather then focusing only on the big money. There is a real opportunity to change a bit of the political balance here, even if we are a long way from any real equality in the system. Check it out, I'll be exploring it more too.

Email and the Friendster Network

Over the last few days I've actually been using Friendster as a replacement for email for some of my friends. And its really nice. No idea if its sustainable, it requires people to check Friendster rather frequently to work. But in our increasingly spam filled world it makes a lot of sense. What better way to filter out spam, but to create a network where only your friends and friends of friends exist? My email filters create some of that functionality, making it easier to sort friend from spam. But I still get the crap. In Friendster I can be reasonably assured that no one is pushing breast implants on me. And if they did I could immediately identify their connection to me and let their friends know about the misbehavior. In other words the system is set up for social self regulation. Now if only that functionality was built into my mail client...

The Social Web Hits Mainstream

BusinessWeek Online: Technology Special Report: The Social Web

Friendster Futures

Friendster just keeps on growing. Every day seems to see another social segment jump on board. And its getting a lot closer to being useful to. Not as a dating service mind you (does anyone know of someone who actually got some do to Friendster?), but as a way to connect friends and visualize social networks.

Its the way they've changed the bulletin board that really shows the way to the future. A few weeks back the Friendster bulletin board was filled with often obscene posts from people far off on the fringe of you're extended social network. And it turned people off. But today that problem is gone, and the bulletin board is suddenly an extremely potent tool.

The change? The bulletin board now only shows posts from your first degree friends, the people you have confirmed your linkage too in the system. And with that change the board suddenly has become an excellent way to exchange a level of mundane but useful information with your friends.

Imagine trying to tell your entire social network you plan to hang out at Bar X tonight, or see movie Y at 7:00. Obviously you can call a few friends, old school style, but its not going to cover much of your network. You could send out a mass email as well, but after a couple of those you are going to transform into a spammer. Better save those bulk mailings for the bigger events you want to booster. You could post to a blog too, but how many of your friends really read it daily?

The Friendster bulletin board fills a previously unoccupied space. A way to casually announce mundane events to your entire social network without working too hard, or transforming yourself into a spam farmer. Of course there is plenty of room for improvement, Friendster doesn't account for many of the subtleties of social dynamics that allow society to keep functioning. But its power as a tool seems to grow daily. There is something here and I think its quite potent. More soon.

Another Example of Internet Polarization

Don Park continues to see the darker potential of social software and the internet, a side that many seem content to ignore.

What I find interesting here is that two major groups emerged, both highly dependent on the Web and mobile networks for organization and communication. The two groups are not likely to merge at any time and, even if they do, another oppositional group is likely to emerge.

There is plenty of hype and noise about how the internet can bring people closer together, more open, more democratic, etc. But its increasingly apparent that the same tech can amplify differences and drive people apart. My gut is its pretty much a wash, for every marvelous advance, there is an equally troubling development. But with enough care and thought we can tip the balance slightly towards the positive.

Firebirds Against Redmond

Mozilla Firebird 0.6 is the latest version of Mozilla/Netscape/Phoenix/Whatever. Its also the first one I'm seriously considering making my default browser. Using it now. It actually starts up in a reasonible time, which is key. Added a couple extensions to emulate the Google toolbar and make tabs work the way I want them too. So far so good. Can I finally kiss Redmond good bye? Well I still use Windows, but otherwise I'm clean. Checked out Joe Kral's 17inch Powerbook today, big but sweet, maybe I'll be back on a Mac come next computer purchase?

Yahoo Buzz RSS Feeds

Nice, Nice. Jeremy Zawodny has links to the brand new Yahoo! Buzz RSS Feeds. Nice going to make obsessive tracking of cultural trends even easier. Hope the Lycos 50 can catch up.

PageRank Growing Pains

Jeremy Zawodny's declares: PageRank is Dead. Like Zawodny my PageRank has been downgraded to 0. Google doesn't like the style of links coming in, mainly from my State of Emergence mirror blog I think. Think its a bit early to declare it dead but it certainly has growing pains. They are smart people over there in Mountain View, think they will learn that rewarding the communities aware of the power of linkage. Of course they hyperlinkers aren't quite as flush with ad money as some linkage unfriendly corporations, so we'll see how the big G handles this...

Websites: Reloaded No More?

Quiet Death of Re-launch

The Dark Side of the Social

Insiteful discussion, on Don Park's Blog, about the potential dark side of social software. Shades of the suburbanization of information?

Dead Press

"the tech press is gone now. It's been routed around." -Dave Winer

[via way.nu]

RSS + Blogger

How many users is Blogger losing by not having valid RSS feeds? And how many readers are the users losing? I'm at least 10x more likely to read a blog if it has a working RSS feed...

CSS Zen Garden

css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design

for web design geeks only, but very cool if you happen to be one as I occasionally am.

Beyond Friendster: Openness and the Future of Social Networks

Posted this at marginwalker.org, reprinting it here for your info and my archives.

There has been a lot of talk of Friendster and its kin in the network lately. The sharpest of the observations so far comes from Marginwalker's co-founder Adam Greenfield. As usual Adam's observations are right on the mark. However his conclusion throws me off a bit:

Something tells me these services won't reach their maximum potential until they can incorporate our less salutary feelings about association: the latent but powerful distinctions we make, the dislikes and fears we, however subtly, import into our presentation of self. These are precisely the shadows we may have "gone online" to escape in the first place, but they are a part of what we've always meant by "social," they serve a function evolved over a very long span of time, and I believe we ignore them at some disservice to our ambitions.

Now Adam may very well be right, but I really hope he isn't. We have the ability to use services like Friendster and its descendent's to effect profound changes on the make up of society. Instead of giving into the base discrimination (or "shadows") we incorporate into our daily life I think we should be using technology to eliminate the subtle biases that underlie our culture and selves.

Openness is a potent tool. The public emergence of homosexual culture over the past 35 years provides a telling example. Before Stonewall gays and lesbians stayed hidden from society. And as a result homophobia was able to flourish. You can be certain a lot of homophobic conversations took place in front of closet homosexuals who were too afraid to speak out. Now in 2003 the stigma of homophobia, while still present, is rapidly fading. Major presidential candidates are making gay rights a campaign issue in America, and only the far right gives a damn. Its pretty damn hard to be homophobic when you become aware of the fact that a handful of your friends happen to be gay. And at least in urban America its pretty damn hard not have a handful of gay friends.

The very openness that Adam takes offense too in Friendster, to me is an engine of social change. It forces us to reevaluate some of our hidden prejudices and calls into question some of the forces that segregate society. Now its entirely possible, as Adam seems to imply, that when faces with this sort of info, people will just look upon their friends for the worse. But I personally believe that in the long run the results would be positive. There is a mess of small discriminations that drive many of our social interactions. And when placed into larger contexts they just look silly.

Sousveillance is a term, coined by Steve Mann, which has been gaining some buzz of late. Its roughly the opposite of surveillance. Instead of a power watching over the people, sousveillance is the people watching over a power, and as a corollary watching over themselves. The openness that the architecture of Friendster creates is an integral part of a sousveillance society. And we as a culture are going to have to either learn to embrace the openness or attempt to make it go away.

This is all part of a larger emerging conflict between transparency and privacy, and we are going to dealing with the ramifications for a long time. But for the moment what I'm really interested in is how do we build better social networking technology? Adam is probably right that Friendster, LinkedIn and company are just the beginning and I agree that the ideal solution is an open source one. An open social networking standard which permits people to choose and build their own interfaces. I think some standard will inevitably be emerging in the next few years, and hopefully its not a proprietary one.

The question I have is what do we want this network to do? Is it there to cement our social networks and further our interactions within them, or is the goal to open up our social boundaries and push us towards new cultural understandings? These are delicate lines to walk. And if we build the right structures I think there is a tremendous opportunity to change society for the better. But there is a constant threat of building the opposite, tools which reinforce existing inequalities. How do we ensure we do the right thing?

Flight Risk: the Blog as Future Fiction

"...she's a flight risk."

Intriguing. Visited a few times, never been able to dig deep enough into it. I like what I see though. May be real. Probably not.

I'm all for blogs a medium (or part of a medium!) for fiction. Wrote about it a bunch in an altsense thread a while back. Good discussion. My comments are under the name abe1x or a variant thereof.

Salam Pax Returns

Where is Raed ?

Only read a bit so far, loads of stuff written from Baghdad during and after the war. Extremely interesting so far. You just can't get this stuff anywhere else.

Sidebar Links Mirror

I've mirrored my sidebar links here. I only really did to make it easier for me to surf on my Treo, but maybe someone else will find it useful. But yeah you can still get all the links off my sidebar. And if you're wondering how I get the most recent posts to show up, I'm using the MT-RSS Feed plug-in to do it.

Emperor, New Clothes

The current buzz around social software reminds me of the excitement around web services last year... The new monikers allow people to talk about old concepts as if they were new...

- Jason Kottke: The emperor has new clothes

Farewell to Back to Iraq (for now)

Christopher Allbritton has a great post on leaving Iraq, A Farewell to Arms. His experiment with user supported blog driven journalism has been a great success. His reports were great and the concept is fully proofed. He's dedicated to developing the form and I wish and all other indy journalists the best of luck. He's got some reflections on the experience and should be returning to Iraq soon to go deeper into the fractured rebuilding on the country (countries?). Can't wait to read more.

Will T-Mobile ever get it?

T minus 1 year and counting. Been over a year now that Starbucks has been offering 3rd party wireless internet. Forgot the initial company name, but the service is run by T-Mobile now. And its a case study on how not to attract customers.

Would you rather rip off one customer or have 10 happy customers? T-Mobile apparently wants the former. From the get go the Starbucks wireless service had 2 pay options. Pay by the minute at super sized prices or unlimited access provided you commit to a year contract. What's missing is a middle ground, the space where all most all their target market lies. People's need for wireless internet comes in bursts, on random trips where they don't have access in an office or hotel. And when they have need for access they want it to be unlimited. If T-Mobile offered day passes for $10, weeks for $20 and months for $30 they'd be racking up customers. Instead they rack up animosity. I've paid them at times, but each time I do I hate them more. And I sure don't recommend them to people.

Writing this up now because for a second I thought T-Mobile had learned. They finally offered a month to month option for a sort of reasonable $40 I only need a week but I almost paid up, it make this week a bit smoother. Until I saw the $25 cancellation fee. WTF? What is the point of a monthly option if you get penalized for only taking a monthly. Could have easily bought 3 or 4 months scattered through this year at $40 a pop. Instead I'll be taking my business else where, thank you.

And just for google let me add that T-Mobile sucks.

Social Excess (Software)

The excesses of "Social Software" rings really true with me. Choice quote:

But there's something about the abandonment of concepts of 'online community' and the complete rejection of familiar terms and paradigms like the message board that worries me. There seems to be a bizarre lack of history to the whole enterprise - a desire to claim a territory as unexplored when it's patently not. And more importantly a remarkable lack of implementation and experiment around the place.

Agree completely, there is a feeling as if the theorists and idle chatters are running in one direction and the coders in another. Lots of talk, and a bunch of experiments from the coders, but not that much useful stuff yet. There is definitely a regression of sorts, the current blog driven communities are actually less cohesive then the old school message board ones.

What I think is happening at the moment is a case of taking a step or two backward in order to progress forward. Blogs have some serious advantages over boards, they promote high quality writing, archive better, and are far more standards compliant. But they also are significantly more ego driven then boards, and the conversations that arise are scattershot and often hard to follow. And as a result I think there are few conversations per community member, a fact that has been offset by the continued growth of the community.

I think we'll be seeing a resurgence of the bulletin board soon in the blogsphere. Already sites like Daily Kos and the Agonist are switching over to bulletin board systems for their comments. And I have a feeling a good way to integrate blogs, RSS, and bulletin boards is going to emerge soon. Or at least I hope it will.

Weblogs Information & Society

Weblogs, Information, and Society. Berkeley. April 10. 6pm. 9pm.

Moblog: On

The First International Moblogging Conference has a date. July 5 in Tokyo. Props to Adam for putting it together. Now if I can just figure out a way to get there...

Googlewashing Democracy?

The Register has an interesting article on the "Googlewashing" of the 2nd Superpower. Describes how quickly the phrase the 2nd Superpower went from being used to describe the protesting masses and switched to the blogging masses. Definitely shows how blogs can get overweighted in Google current Page Rank algorithm. But its also way premature in its critique. For one Google constantly tweaks its algorithm and more importantly a quick Google bleep is not a signal of a permanent trend. If the author's preferred use of the term has real roots its going to continue spreading, online and off. And over time Google should reflect this. $20 that Google's results balance out in a month or two. Or perhaps ironically this article will come up first...

The Quality of Information Increases?

Demand for news pushes web traffic to record levels

More Google Visualization

TouchGraph is another data visualization tool using the Google API, interesting, similar to Kartoo in a way. Got to say I like the Flash styles at Kartoo more then the Java of TouchGraph. Wonder how Flash is stacking up to Java in programming power nowadays?

[via Joi Ito's Web]

The First International Mob

The First International Moblogging Conference moves closer to reality. Should be a great time, best of luck to Adam in putting it together. Hoping circumstances line up and allow me to make the trip to Tokyo.

The Blogger as Independent War Reporter?

War looks more and more inevitable now. The last one in Iraq was a disaster in terms of independent journalism, although the Bush administration probably seems it the opposite. Arguably the fact that the Pentagon had almost perfect control over the presses access to info in the Gulf War 1 was a major factor in the fact that it was so easy for Bush and Co to manufacture the Gulf War 2. How different is this one going to be?

There are few online attempts to provide an alternative information source for the Gulf War 2. Hope they do a better job then the mainstream press did a decade ago.

http://www.back-to-iraq.com/ is a pretty much unknown journalist, Christopher Allbritton, going at it alone. This is a real attempt to be an independent journalist using an online blog as the outlet.

http://www.kevinsites.net/ is the blog of CNN reporter Kevin Sites. Given that he gets paid by a big cable network his ability to speak his mind is a bit more truncated. Still this blog appears like he might have a "what I do on my own time is my own business' attitude. Hope that its true and he can provide a really candid view of the war.

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ is the blog of Salam Pax an Iraqi living in Bagdad. No pretenses of being journalism here, but its never the less far more informative about what's actually happening in Iraq then anything I've ever read in the papers. Good stuff, hope it can stay up and Salam can get through this evermore inevitable seeming nightmare untouched.

Flashing the Map

Kartoo is a great flash driven tool that creates visual representations of search quires. Interesting stuff and maybe even really usefully.

Lynching Information

Saw Clifford Lynch speak over at UC Berkeley on Friday, courtesy of Ethan Eismann. Recently reformed OG blogger Peter Merholz also showed up.

Lynch took way to long to get to the interesting bit of his talk, research into collaborative filtering and personalization. Talked ended just as he started getting to the juicy issues. Did get a chance to talk to him about the issues of information segregation though.

The issue was one he new about from discussions of online newspapers, but still remains unanswered. He did note that when people configure online news sources they general will select very focused interests and then balance that out with some sort of filtered general list like the top Reuters feeds. So at least part of the answer lies in picking good filters that know how the mix up the info flow the way a good newspaper does.

Another interesting (but discouraging) part of the talk was his reference to problems in getting access to large enough groups of people to test out collaborative filtering ideas. More anecdotal evidence of the inverse Metcalfe's Law?

A Brand New Dance We Call the Google

The Google Dance. Be warned it contains more information then you probably ever want to know about Google's servers. Do not expect humor from this link. Thank You.

Flow My Information the Blogger Said

Information Flow is Ethan Eismann's new blog (finally). Time to update those blogrolls y'all. PC users get a special, limited edition, ultra elegant, minimalist version.

The Inverse Network Effect

The always insightful Clay Shirky has just released Social Software and the Politics of Groups. The underlying core: we have no antecedents for how nonlocal groups, and the technology that supports them should function. In other words there is almost no precedent for the way a group of people across the world can interact in a mailing list or chat room. And its equally difficult to design software for those interactions, as there is no precedent for thinking about the problems.

What sprang to mind immediately was Metcalfe's Law which basically states that the usefulness of a network increase exponentially with the number of users. Perhaps there is a reverse law as well. That the larger the network the difficulty in designing new software increase exponentially. How do you test software designed to let 1000 people communicate at once? Its hard enough deal with the tech issues, working with the interface and social use models is a whole other story.

The classic example being that 1 person with a telephone is useless as they have no one to call. 2 people with telephones is useful assuming they want to talk to each other. The more people

Properly Domained

Abstract Dynamics now has a proper domain name! If you go to the old url you should be automatically redirected to this one: abstractdynamics.org .

World of Ends

World of Ends is something of the Cluetrain Manifesto part II. Same tone, and same mixture of insite, naivety and marketing speak. In other words worth reading, there are diamonds in the bullshit...

Moblogging Mo Hype?

Adam Greenfield proposes aMoblog Conference for Tokyo summertime. Well Tokyo sounds damn enticing, has been for quite some time. Moblogging on the other hand just doesn't sit right with me yet. A handful of smart people (Greenfield, Rhiengold, Ito, Eismann) are really excited about the idea, but I just can't catch their enthusiasm.

What really sets me off is that I seem to be closer to really moblogging then most of the boosters. I've been a nomad for 2 years now, I was one of the few Ricochet customers, I've uploaded files next to drug dealers at 1 am in Washington Square Park, I've had top of the line pda/cell phones for the past few years, I've used them to connect to the web a ton. I've actually posted blog entries from my Treo.

Its not that exciting.

So why are smart people getting so into the idea? A dream I think, its a step towards the mythical ubiquitous computing Xanadu. A hope for more dotcom style euphoria. And maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think taking pictures from a cell phone really is going to get you there. Its not that different then taking a digital picture and uploading later in the day. All it really means is there is less friction in the system. Info gets digital quicker, circulates a bit faster. Done. No revolutions, no ecstasy, just a slow excelleration of the velocity of information.

Burst a word

I may feel that bloggers have a big time overexaggerated vision of their worth as a media, but the rapid development of blog based datamining tools is pretty impressive. Daypop Top Word Bursts is a pretty cool social indicator. And it also shows just how marginal blogs are at the moment. These are words that a very small subset of the population is talking about, not what people are thinking about in general. Still its a great resource for info junkies like me. Should be interesting to compare to the Lycos 50, Yahoo Buzz Index and random Google droppings.

One Google to Rule Them All

Everybody loves Google, yes? It makes the internet work, answers our questions, plus its friendly and pop-up free. Brand Channel just named it the brand of the year, number one the world over. Apple built Google right into the interface to its new browser. Google is rapidly becoming essential, perhaps even omnipotent. And that is the problem. Google is rapidly become the biggest threat to the free internet around.

Saw Howard Reingold speak the other night, at KQED's Media Salon. Towards the end of the discussion, the moderator (whose name escapes me, sorry) posed a very interesting question. He mention that despite being in the television business, he often wishes that TV was never invented. The negative impact it has on culture far out weighs its benefits, at least in his opinion. The question he asked was:

"What can we do now in order to prevent us from looking back in 10 years and wishing the internet never existed?"

My head rolled around that a bit, as the conversation continued. All the usual fears of media monopolies, baby bells, and governments big brothering the internet to further their powers. All legitimate outside threats, but I wasn't getting too worried. The architecture of the internet still encourages free expression, and I've yet to see a model by which any of these forces could really seize control. Not that its impossible, but I'm not losing any sleep, yet.

My mind kept racing. Where was there a legitimate threat of the internet being controlled? It hit me. Google. The most powerful address online, the most powerful organization online. And we happily give it this power. For good reason too, its the best search engine around. But as its powers increase so do the threats it presents.

We rely upon Google to return legitimate answers to our search queries. And its won our trust by returning good results. So far its all good. But Google has the power to alter it search results. It can subtly send people to websites in favor of one political viewpoint. If Google blocks a website, how easily could we find it? Its easy to put something up online, but its worthless if no one can find it.

Search engines are highly centralized. There are only a handful of companies offering the service. As the volume of information grows it is likely that it will cost even more to start up a new search engine. The result? An industry that is relatively easy to control. Control Google and you've got the internet in a choke hold. Control both Google and the few companies competing with it and you've got the internet on lockdown.

Google has already shown a few warning signs. They've caved into pressure from the Scientologists and China and restricted search results. They leave all moral decisions to one of their founders. So far he seems to be doing a decent job, but how long can that last? What happens when it becomes a publicly traded corporation? And its profits start declining? What happens if the FBI knocks on its door and asks it to restrict access to "subversive" websites.

The more we love Google the more power we give it to. Its a classic catch-22, use Google and it gains the power to use us. And more importantly it increases the ability of other powers to use Google to use us. And as the internet becomes increasingly corporate and governments see it more and more of a threat, the risks increase. Less then a century ago, radio and tv were both seen as liberating, democratic technologies. And when used right they can be. But they are rarely used right nowadays. Lets make sure the internet doesn't fall into the same trap.

What can we do? Strengthening Google's competitors might help a bit, except it means living with inferior search results. But if one wants to hotbot will allow you to search using 4 different engines, one is Google, but Inktomi, FAST and Teoma are also available.

One idea for the lazyweb is a decentralized distributed computing search engine. The processing and storing of search results can be done on millions of computers on their downtime ala SETI@home. (On a side note, its pretty pitiful that the most popular distributed computing project around is devoted to something as impractical and absurd as the search for extraterrestrial life). The mechanics of such a system are beyond me, so I can only hope it's a possibility.

Until then all we really have is faith that Google and company will return reliable results. "Information wants to be free", yeah I hope so. Its pretty obvious that a lot of people want to control information. And if we want it to be free then we need to keep building the tools that will keep it that way.

Blogs Over Baghdad

Where is Raed ? is a blog from Baghdad. Good stuff. Bush and co want us to forget that Iraq is filled with people just like us. This is an excellent remedy. Spread the word.

The Rocks/Sucks Google Machine

Jeff Jarvis pushes some good insite into using Google to investigate brands. Search for band and "sucks" and see what comes up. The nastier the results the worse the brand.

Already works ok, could work a lot better with some concious effort. Have an awful experience with Charmin? Whip up a quick "Charmin Sucks" web page or blog post. Get an XML RFC geek to make it all machine readable for extra credit. And let Mr. Google do the hard work.

And since we like to say nice things too, don't forget those "Charmin Rocks" pages, for the days when it saves your ass. Or maybe "Charmin is the bomb", or "Charmin is the shit" but maybe that's going to far. No, the key is that every one uses the same words or else it falls apart. "Rocks" and "sucks" are the popular choice, live with it, embrace them and use them in war on bad brands.

For those who want to go the extra mile, a few ideas. A rocks/sucks index page, where you can see the pros and cons of the brand lined right up against each other. Or a handy rocks/sucks page generator app. If it was really slick it'd two way link all the relevent "sucks" pages. That's like giving google a blowjob you'd go straight to the top of the list...

And there you have it, the Rocks/Sucks Machine. Make it, use it and spread the meme.

Linkage

newsQuakes is an interesting little app, with some potent potential. Very little documentation on it, but it filters news articles and maps them to of all things a map. It gives an instant geographic representation of what region of the world is in the news. Needs development though, it seems to only react to country names, and is presently mapping all US news to Los Angeles on the map for some reason. [via Jon's Radio]

The Guardian has an excellent article on the future of blogging, including the rumor that AOL is about to introduce a blogging feature...

Same paper also has an excellent round up of the NY music scene. As much as I love NY I don't buy the argument that this is the future of music. More like an exhibition game before some real innovators step up and twist heads into new sonics.

Open Futures

Open Content Network is a new infrastructure for delivering public domain and creative commons content. No idea if its hype or really useful, maybe someone could tell me? Worth checking out none the less.

Window Shopping: Reflections on New Web Browsers

Posting this from Apple's new Safari web browser, on my dad's G3. Quite a nice program, but still short of perfect. It is indeed fast and I love the stripped down interface, which removes major junk but includes a google search imput. The loading status indicator inside the url field seems great to me, although it seems to annoy some people.

The back button doesn't quite work as I hoped. I had been told it contained a universal history, allowing you to go back pages before the one you actually launched the window with. Only browser that I've ever seen do this is iCab, and its great. Launch a page in a new window and you can still go back a few pages to an early site. Makes no sense to me why a new window shouldn't be able to go back to the page that launched it.

The lack of tabbed browsing doesn't bother me mainly because I haven't spent enough time with a browser that supports them. And in the times I have I could never get them to do what I wanted. Namely open each and every single link as a new tab, while retaining focus on the current page. Would be perfect for what I assume is my unconventional browsing technique, where I open a dozen or two windows and then close the pages as I finish them.

My dad has a different problem with Safari, he's grown attached to IE on OSX's "page holder" feature. And for good reason. It splits the browser into two window panes. On the left goes the page holder web page. Clicking links on this page opens them up in the right pane. Amazing for pages with a lot of links. I want this feature on my PC laptop, but it seems to be a Mac IE only thing. Given that its one of the best interface improvements to the browser yet, I really hope its soon universal...

note: after first publishing this, I noticed that Safari is screwing up some of the type formatting CSS on my site. Isn't this supposed to be Apple's strength?

note 2: and then I noticed IE messes the same formatting up, guess its time to make a Gif...

The Ruralization of the Internet

Adam at V-2 points out several graphics that amply illustrate the socio-geographic divide that underpins the internet. The first is an excellent interactive graphic showing the distribution of blogs around the world. The result is remarkably predictable. The usual suspect of Europe, America and whiter of the English Commonwealth countries lead the pack, with Japan also showing up respectably. Mainland Asia and the Southern Hemisphere? Barely there. The second graphic, a map of all the wi-fi spots in Manhattan shows the same digital divide reoccurring fractal like on a smaller scale. Harlem and points north are poorly represented, while the far wealthier areas of the southern half of the island are virtually blanketed with points. The very scary exception is the chunk of downtown comprised almost entirely of government buildings, which appears to be wi-fi free...

Now the digital divide is a well known phenomena, all be it one that still hasn't been solved. I'm more interested in the distribution of people and information on the internet itself. And what's worries me about those distributions is that they have very strong magnifying potential. That on the internet itself we will find a distribution of power, where certain social groups will find themselves in privileged places that allow for a consolidation of power.

I only have anecdotal evidence of the stratification of the internet, but its enough to be worrying. There are only a few strong social structures on the web: mailing lists, bulletin boards and their cousin the usenet, chat rooms, and linkrings are the ones I can think of offhand.

These communities often start out completely open, anyone can post or join in, provided of course they can find the place. But as these communities grow in prominence they begin to attract unruly members. Spammers and trolls are the most notorious problems. At the same time the shear effects of growth often hurt the community. Signal to noise ratios worsen, or the volume of the noise just gets loud enough to be annoying. The shear number of posts can discourage participation, and the new members often repeat old conversations at the annoyance of the old guard. The result is a need to regulate the community.

There are a handful of techniques of regulation. Slashdot and Kuro5hin style user moderation are among the most democratic. Often only a few individuals are allowed to moderate. But moderation is an intensive job, often its easier to just close the gates. Some sites like the late Dreamless hide their entrance so only those in the know can get access. Others like the Pho list require members to apply for entry. The most exclusive like John Brockman's Edge list are invitation only, a secret society for the information age. Linkrings like those found in the blogger community, are an organic form of invitation only. Bloggers tend to post links to other bloggers they like. Follow these links and you'll quickly wind up back at your starting point. These links tend to reinforce each other, strengthening the positions of the most prominent bloggers, while pushing others to the sidelines.

None of this is a huge surprise. It mirrors the processes found in governments, religions, secret societies and businesses. Like minded people tend to seek each others company and find that keeping others out increases the level of conversation. And often increases their power as well. The internet just makes this process fast and global. If news aggregators and the like represent a suburbanization of the internet, then this is a far older process, a tribalization, or ruralization of the internet.

Each social group is a remarkably isolated information bubble. It might have some established trading routes with other groups with similar interests, but thats about it. The nettime list for instance is limited to discussions of the social implications of technology with a dose of politics and art. Posts from the rhizome net art list, or the futurefeedforward scifi satire list are sometimes brought into the mix by certain trader individuals. But the subjects are well defined, and as insular as an isolated agricultural village. And since these groups often serve as news sources for members, they restrict the diversity of information even more then news aggregators can.

When power is thrown into the mix the result is stratification. A closed group with many powerful members serves to consolidate power. They have an excellent means of communication and sharing information. A group with a few powerful members and other less powerful ones can work as a funnel, bringing members into more prominent positions. And groups without much power? They just get locked out.

Combine this effect with the already existing digital divide and the result is amplification. For all the talk of internet revolution and how it evens the playing field its just not true. Sure there are opportunities for new groups to seize power, new ways for oppositions to organize. But like all revolutions the promises of power for everyone rapidly seem to be shifting towards power to a new group of people. The more things change...

One For the Dreamless Massive

Checked my server logs this morning and found I was getting requests from the legendary and long dead dreamless.org via the Wayback Machine. Guess nothing ever dies on the internet, although the archive is far from complete. Interestingly enough the front door for wayback dreamless is still locked the way it once was. Only those who know the backdoor can get in. Artifacts of the legendary designer's TAZ remain hard to find...

Kabloging on the Run

Sending this from my Treo 300, using a program called Kablog. Pretty cool if it works. Damn hard to put urls in though. Will change the structure of blogging if it takes off...

just added the hyperlink from my computer. Realized while outside that most posts I'll want to make from my Treo probably won't have any uses for links anyway. Who gives an F about hyperlinks when away from a computer screen? Perhaps the future is nature blogging?