Saturday, January 29, 2005

Bush: "we know how to set an agenda, and achieve it"

Bush finally made a quote that I, and many of his opponents can agree with. It feels odd. Creepy even.

His "we know how to set an agenda and achieve it" quote may be a memorable one for sure. The double meaning is perfect for bringing together both his supporters and opponents. It's not clear on whether the agenda he was talking about was a hidden one.

Friday, January 28, 2005

American Reality - Community Building Ideas

American Reality

The new American Reality will be mapped out in the web in real time.

Communities are build on foundations of shared values, common culture, on common identities.

The web has enabled communities to transcend space and time, to be formed instantly through electric current.

The way in which the new cultural landscape is shaped will depend on how humans cope with this new reality.

Communities are engines for creative expression. Out of communities come new ideas, new words, new values, and new institutions. If communities are able to be born out of the internet, those ideas, words, values and institutions will inevitably replace others born out of old communities.

In internet will enable the destruction of many of our current institutions. Who is on the chopping block? The press, for one. Various governments are not far behind. Particularly those who are the most oppressive, but not oppressive enough to suppress their citizens' access to the internet.

Most things that depend on information exchange can be enhanced or completely overtaken by use of the internet. As this is realized, massive change is upon us.

Do Some People Hate Learning?

It seem to me that some people hate to learn new things. Or perhaps they don't hate to learn, it stresses them out to have to learn things, because it's hard. Yes, learning can be hard. But if I stopped learning, I'd be dead.

What the hell is the point of being on this planet if you already know all you need to know? Learning new things is one activity that you can never feel guilty for doing as a leisure activity. No one calls you lazy when you're reading a book.

But when I encounter some people, it becomes clear that not everyone thinks this way. Being an idea man, it is quite startling to realize that some people think that it is boring talking about concepts and ideas, even when they relate to important or exciting things. I sometimes accused of "thinking too much" or "overcomplicating things". Yes, it's true, though it may be hard to believe.

But it is especially frustrating for me to work with people who are so far away from logical/conceptual side towards the instinctual/material side. Because some of these people react in ways which make it clear that they think that their way of doing things is better, because it's "simple".

People who are instinctual rather than logical often have to do things that require logic and a structured approach. And they struggle through doing things wrong until they happen upon a solution that is "good enough". It seems to me that being instinctual is a function of having a low threshold for stress on the logical "side" of the brain. Being forced to think logically, systematically, is harder than using instinct, so being forced to think that way is highly stressful for the instinctual person.

Or maybe some people just hate to learn?

The Canadian Spotlight on the American Media

The CBC's The Fifth Estate had a good show last night called Sticks and Stones
that deconstructs the American media post-9/11. This is one of the few big media shows that seems willing to delve into a lot of the muck that lefty bloggers spend most of their time on. A lot of people hate the CBC, but I for one can't imagine our media landscape without it. Canadians are in a unique position to study American culture being both immersed in it and yet still detached enough to not lose our perspective. The CBC has been vitally important for providing this perspective since 9/11, since the American media has quite clearly gone off the rails.

Of course to the subjects of the show, folks like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter et al, the program is probably a perfect example what they've based their careers upon, that is the "left-wing bias" of the mainstream media. Personally I'm tired of the debate over whether the media slant to the left or to the right, or are simply lazy, or are slanting to the right to avoid being labelled as left, or vice versa. It's a stupid and never-ending argument that doesn't really get us anywhere. But let's also not forget where the argument started either. If nothing else, debunking the idea that the media is uniformly biased to the left will leave the public with only one option: thinking critically at all times. What a novel concept.

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Building Online Communities

Online communities: groups of people connected by cables and wires. Transcend space and time. May be permanent or fleeting. May grow, shrink, collapse, split off into factions, amalgamate with others. Great creativity can be achieved. Disagreements may escalate to high levels, as disputes are public and reputations are at stake.

What are the central themes of the great online communities? What brings people together?

What subjects are there that demand having a SINGLE place as a info resource/portal?

Many subjects might be best served by a single location, or a few locations. Many subjects would differentiate on style then, if there are no distinguishing factors in terms of content. The content is irrelevant for the most part, because the content is assumed to be there based on the community.

It would seem that capturing a solid community could be very profitable over time.

building a kick-ass blog

This is about how to build a kick-ass blog. And what you say, what would make me, of all people, to think that I have even the slightest idea how to do such a thing? Well, for starters, I'm starting from scratch, so I don't. But personally I think that kick-ass blogs are going to start really cooking soon. So this is the start of my new project:

"Building Kick-Ass Blogs: A Living Case Study"

BKAB will be my motivation to continue working on my blog. It will be the product of itself. So crazy it might just work. A meta-blogging exercise from start to finish? I guess it has to be done doesn't it?

So one thought that I think is that when I write, I should write conscious of the spiders. That is, I should remember that people search by phrases and keywords, i.e. they search for meaning. They try to choose the most meaningful words. (That is of course only when they aren't seaching for pornography or shopping for furniture.) It seems to me that the work that Google and others are doing is going to turn out to be a revolution in information management (too obvious?). What I'm talking about is this: once people get used to the informal style that is the most effective way to communicate on the web (?) and hence the dominate mode, the potential for sharing ideas and other media over the web could be astonishing.

You hear about people getting book deals and making serious cash by nailing a certain audience. It really doesn't take that much work to create a huge blog, in comparison to a real job, that is. Hopefully you're not a big-time blogger who's been on TV and are run off your feet constantly doing promotions and appearances and shit. If you are, I thank you for reading this far. How kind. Keep reading if you feel like it. I'll try to keep it interesting. How's this so far? Advice?

Are these posts at all useful?
Is there anyone out there?
Beuller?

I guess a secret to a good blog is to use common language. Whether it is to a crowd of teenagers, or a crowd of 30-somethings, you should probably speak their language. Nobody likes reading garbage. And yet, I think I may have written a lot of garbage...

So what? Does that matter anymore? This idea of the "informal style of blogs"...I guess for me the blogs I like the most have a very informal style. It makes it easier to read. I get the point quick, and get out. We can't exactly all sit around reading blogs all day, can we?

I do, but that's beside the point.

Ok. So I've learned a secret. Informal style works. Overblown flowery phrases that never end and have meaning so nuanced as to mean nearly nothing are not necessarily effective. Check.

But perhaps sometimes, if you can pull it off.

Anyway, back to the blog. It seems to me that another secret to having a kick-ass blog is to aim for "power words". Words that are packed with meaning; words that are are not clichés (yet), but everyone knows exactly what they mean. Words like rake. Or snake. Or rather, not everyone, but your group of readers knows, and it touches each one in the same way. Being too ambiguous is worse than being boring. Ambiguous rants at nothing and no one but your own crazy head mean a lot to you (me) but potentially very little to others. So keep it real, homey.

Ha, so I'll "keep it real". My "keep it real" of course is in an ironic way, but not like in the ironic way like: I'm gonna "KEEP IT REAL" 'cuz I'm all wacky and clever and white so it's funny when I say "KEEP IT REAL". But I'll "keep it real" in the ironic way that yes, I know it's a huge cliché, and I really do wish I cud writte beter.

Ok, so from now on. The tone is informal. I'm not writing for anyone but myself, anyway, so no need to impress anyone which big words like: PHOSPHORYLATIVE.

I have no idea what that word means.








A9's Photo Database

Ok, so A9, Amazon's web-scraper or whatever you call it, now has photos. Combined with its yellow pages feature, it allows you to do a virtual walk-through of 10 US cities, block by block. Eventually they want to cover the entire country. Amazing stuff.

It will be interesting if they can last without being sued for posting copyrighted material or pictures of individuals who might not want their image made public. Like, say for example, this guy.

Link to Metafilter discussion.

Digital Ad Tracking

A system will soon be in place to track television commercials with unique IDs. This will reduce waste caused by networks playing the wrong ad, but will also open the door to linking ads to sales directly, once the RFID system is implemented. Supposedly the system allows for "multiple versions of ads, modified by city or even household". (emphasis mine)

Personally I don't need my television any more inside my head than it already is, but maybe that's just me.

Link

Monday, January 17, 2005

blogs = everything

Ok, bad title. But the idea is this: using your "blog" as your personal life manager. Use it for taking notes, keeping your calendar, storing your personal links, documents and other information. Publishing the content you want others to access. Managing your personal brand. The blog as your "outer self". Managing your own brand may soon be necessary for every individual as our personal information becomes less and less closely held. Try googling yourself. If your name exists there, your brand is being managed by someone else. Examples abound of people's electronic identities being displayed for the first time through embarrassing or less than flattering ways (e.g. the guys whose names appear on escort service message boards). These cases illustrate the inevitable "outering" of private information that occurs beyond our control.

The reaction to this will be a mix of regulation, new technologies to protect privacy, but controlling ones identity will be a difficult task for most. Information is horded by corporations and governments and huge investments in information technology during the 90s and beyond ensure that such projects will continue. Database technologies are cheaper and easier to manage for businesses of all sizes, and a large industry has been created to provide information/data management services for companies in all markets. The effects on privacy are potentially dramatic. Faced with such change, one must reflect on the nature of privacy itself, and notice that our concept of privacy is relatively new.

The outcome of any efforts to protect our conception of privacy will be challenged by the huge momentum of the technological changes. The internet cannot be turned off. (Lessig) Digital content is difficult to lock down. Efforts to lock down digital content are met with fierce opposition from the internet community, since what is technically deemed piracy is a large part of the appeal of the internet - free content of all types. The internet is valuable precisely because digital content is difficult to lock down. It is made to be shared.

The growth of the "blogosphere" is something to watch. If the growth of blogs does not tail off, it is clear that people are using them not necessarily to acquire a large audience. The vast majority of blogs do not have more than a handful of readers. If having a big audience was the driver, most blogs will disappear sooner rather than later. A sizeable proportion of bloggers use their blogs to manage their online identity. Some of those online identities are different from their real-life identities. Some manage their online identity like their personal brand. Those people are a type of celebrity.

Proper celebrities are famous for more than just having an online identity. Celebrities are likely going to use blogs/personal webpages to manage their personal brand. The internet, despite its reputation as being the source of low-quality of information, is in actuality used as if it is the gospel. Experienced users are able to determine the validity of different sources of information, and can compare multiple sources to guage the reliability of published facts and figures. Official webpages are seen as more reliable than unofficial webpages, even if the content of an unofficial webpage is superior. Celebrities are increasingly using their personal webpages to debunk rumours, present their ideas, connect with their fans, and put a more personal touch to their image.

Blogs provide the opportunity to make a good first impression, something that may become indispensable in the information age, when a google on your name might reveal something you'd prefer to remain private. Having a personal weblog that appears first on google searches might be enough to divert the majority of name-googlers to your own "story", rather than the newspaper article about your arrest for drunk driving.

Controlling your own online identity through "self-outering" may become the best option for celebrities and even everyday people in the information age.

Friday, January 14, 2005

Technorati's tags

Technorati has initiated a service to aggregate blog articles by tags, similar to how Flikr does it for images. Cool!

All I have to do is add a little tag right here, and my post will get added to their feed.