Gosh, I’ve been using Flickr for ever, but I still find it frustrating to go through my contact’s photos. I have searched for all sorts of tools to make it easier but none of them satisfy me. I have seen bits a pieces of what I want from different apps and hacks, but none have them all.
Any suggestions? Anyone want to build one with me (I can’t code to save my life)?
I’ve heard a lot about Matt Web through those closest to him, but never really met him.
Matt is half of an interesting and insane design duo, Schulze & Webb (I have met Schulze, BTW). It’s safe to say that Schulze & Webb are racing forth, defining what happens when you mix design and Web and bits and atoms (and mobile).*
At the end of last year, Matt wrote down some notes on essays he’d wish he’d have written, but didn’t. The notes are a loosely connected series of topics that joggled more than a few conceptual pinballs in my head.
Surface binding
One topic Matt touches on is ‘surfaces’, basically, recognizable bits of structure (data) on the Web. This is really about micro-formats.
But, and this pleases the bio-geek in me, he compares Web surfaces to protein surfaces and browsers as recognizing these surfaces and making sense of the surface structure.
If I understand it, there are patterns in the categories of structures in Web pages. Matt seek the range of these types of structures to be finite and stable, hence such a classification of types to recognize is possible.
Hm, this may be a solution to extracting meaning (tying to another thread of though of mine). I suppose this begs for some taxonomical survey of Web structures, if there isn’t one already.
Refactoring code
It was a blast from the past for me when Matt stated his wish that code not be refactored, but added to. In the late 90s, I was at an amazing talk by Marvin Minsky to us biomedical post-docs. Minsky also said that we should not rewrite code, but patch it – there was value in the old stuff.
Matt likes to use biology or chemistry example, but doesn’t here. So I offer: Genomes are not necessarily refactored by evolution, but usually written over. And a lot of variability in the genome is derived from cutting and pasting of new and old code, rearrangements, duplication, and divergence of old code, and repurposing of old code (and don’t get me going about ‘junk DNA’).
Bringing about change
Matt has a few great points on change and ultra-stability. But one thought that is radically funny is devilishly deviant: drive badly to accelerate the adoption of self-driving cars.
He takes it further in relation to mind enhancing drugs.
For example, ‘erectile dysfunction’ was hyped and marketed as a problem, so that pharma could create and sell the performance enhancing drug, Viagra. Therefore, Matt asks, we could start pointing out a problem with mental abstraction as a risk. Then, after papers and studies and articles come out about ‘the problem’ a market would arise, demanding solutions to the ‘abstraction problem’. Then pharma could be provided with the material to persuade regulatory bodies that pharma should and could come up with the solution to the problem, for the benefit of business and society.
Heh, that’s be something cool to try (reminds me of the Frindle). Kinda like a Saffo Mind-bomb for the future.
Path through services
Fred Stutzman who writes on social networks keeps pointing out the need for services to answer the ‘What’s Next?’ after adding all your peeps to the network. On a similar note, Matt mentions the never-ending game quality Flickr has (indeed, Flickr was first called the ‘Never-Ending Game’). The game aspect keep leading the users back, ‘auto-catalyzing’ engaging behavior.
In the end, Matt’s insight is to keep the path the user takes through the services to never end (and designed to bring in others, to grow).
I think that this path is not always the utility (feature of service) path, nor the best path, though I have no examples to base this on. Also, with the mobile lifestyle in mind, how can that path have interruptions and long gaps?
Product evolution
his very last topic is about evolving a product locally. Matt devises a vending machine that optimizes the product flavor based on popularity.
For me, it touches a bit on what randomness can bring a product. Since most products are about consistency, could a machine be made to randomly dispense a product to surprise the buyer? Kinda like Bertie Bott’s Beans. Indeed, there is a drink that sort of does this.
What’s with the biology?
Until I read this big article by Matt, I had not really read any of his ramblings (though I have seen him speak and read some of his more formal writing). The biggest surprise was the number of hard-core biology (and chemistry) examples. It could just be my bias to see these topics stand out, but I think I need to ask some folks what the story is here.
For example, one of his notes completely surprised me with the items places in one sentence, ranging from metabolics, to tectonics, to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (need to follow up in this, too).
I think he’s just a well-read curious guy, who revels in mixing disciplines. For sure, this guy is as scattered in his interests as I am. And tis explains all the interesting things he and his gang spout off. I suppose I do need to introduce myself to him, if only for his bio references, but also because we have a lot of overlap in the people we interact with (though his are much tighter in time and place than mine).
As for you, go read him. He’s a trip.
*Indeed, the crowd Matt hangs with, which I mostly follow second-hand via @blackbeltjones and @anti-mega, are all brilliant and creative.
What got me thinking all over again about the Semantic Web and how to find, navigate, recombine, and contribute to the flow of knowledge was a brief series of meetings with the folks at BioMedCentral. Of course, it helps that I am also a bio-geek.
BMC Bioinformatics had a special supplement on semantic e-science in biomedicine. The articles were very interesting, especially since seeing a problem solved in another discipline gives many pointers as to how to solve similar problems in your own discipline.
If you read the quote below, about infoglut, complexity, social networks, and information sharing, once sees similar activities in the social and living Web we all use.
But so much of the BMC Bioinformatics supplement is about librarian-like structuring of data. What’s more, there is an element of structures that authors need to understand and adhere to to make their publications and data more machine understandable.
Yet, what is the benefit to the author? Currently, scientific publications establish primacy, prestige, and are a tool to get grants. By going through the extra effort of adding semantics to their data, what then does the individual author gain?
The rise of tagging and folksonomies were not only about helping others, but arose out of tools that made things easier for the user. Can we change the mentality of the scientist to understand the other benefits of adding semantic info to their data and publications, benefits that are different from traditional science publishing?
How may we do this?
Link: BioMed Central | Full text | Introduction to semantic e-Science in biomedicine:
Advances in biotechnology and computing technology have made the information growth in biomedicine phenomenal. With the exponential growth in complexity and scope of modern biomedical research, it is becoming more and more urgent to support wide-scale and ad-hoc collaboration and exchanging ideas, information and knowledge across organizational, governance, socio-cultural, and disciplinary boundaries. Researchers working on one aspect of analysis may need to look for and explore results from other institutions, from other subfields within his or her discipline, or even from completely different biomedical disciplines.
Fred has written a ton of great articles on the nature of social networks, and what works and doesn’t.
This article (link below) gives me pause to my thinking that the trend is towards a ‘me and mine’ ring-fenced social network. But, at the same time, does a good job of showing that Social Relevance is something a mobile can do quite well.
Read this guy to understand more about different types of social networks and how the type of network affects its longevity and use.
Link: Unit Structures: Social Network Transitions:
I’m almost certain that the experience will be mobile based, incorporating geolocational data and personal beacons. We’ll still want a rich social experience, but this experience will be secondary to the core situationally relevant need answered by the site (be it positional data or otherwise).
Doc Searls has a really good article on the state of the Web (from last fall).* He talks about the ‘static’ Web and the ‘living’ Web.
The static Web is about sites and content. The living Web is about time and people.
What really sums it up for me is the comment at the end of what his son, Allen, expects out of a ‘World Live Web’ (below).
Link: Linux for Suits – The World Live Web:
His original vision of the World Live Web was a literal one: a Web where anybody could contact anybody else and ask or answer a question in real time. When he first encountered the Web, as a researcher, he saw it as something fundamentally deficient at supporting the most human forms of interaction: the kind where one person increased the knowledge of another directly.
*In case you’re wondering, I found a pile of notes I never wrote about. Hence some references to some really old articles in the next few posts.