Philosophy/Science

Data does not equal knowledge

Posted on by charlie

At LIFT 08 last week, François Grey gave a great talk about the intersection of grid computing, crowdsourcing, and science.

One thing that miffed me was when he was talking about the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) creating huge amounts of data per collision of protons. I don’t agree with people who stress the amount of data an experiment produces, comparing it to all the knowledge humanity has produced.

Data is not knowledge.

The LHC indeed will produce oceans and oceans of data, but the amount of knowledge will be much smaller. Indeed, when they make their big discoveries, each will be expressed in a simple hyperlinked publication – a regular scientific paper.

Long Now/Philosophy/Science

Alex Wright and the history of information systems over the past few billion years

Posted on by charlie

I got through another amazing Long New Seminar (long dog walks are great for that). This one was by Alex Wright, author of ‘Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages’.

What I thought was really well done is how he charts the course of the evolution of social systems from bacteria to humans today and showed how such evolution influenced information systems. Very interesting. He also reveals some lost nuggets of history, re-introducing some information systems visionaries that are not well known (particularly Otlet’s Mundaneum).

One other interesting thread of his talk was a discussion of literal and oral culture and information. In one of those Long Now kinda of twists, he points out that literal culture is actually not too old. But also, the way the Web is going, there are plenty of analogies to oral culture in terms of how we share and communicate in social networks.

Very interesting.

Link: Long Views » Blog Archive » Alex Wright, The Deep History of the Information Age:

That’s the pattern for the evolution of information, Alex Wright

said. Networks coalesce into heirarchies, which then form a new

level of networks, which coalesce again, and so on. Thus an unending

series of information explosions is finessed.

The Narrative

PR like this you can’t buy: Great videos from the N810 Giveaway Contest

Posted on by charlie

This is what marketing is about these days – don’t do it, just make great products that people are passionate about and let them tell everyone why they should get some.

ThoughFix had a N810 Giveaway Contest with really cool videos. They are from real people talking about what they want to do with the N810. From stay-at-home mothers, to adventurers, to comedians, the videos are clever, funny, and inspiring. Makes me feel good about our products.

And this is at the heart of the new marketing, the conversation.

Go and view the winning videos (link below).

Link: TabletBlog.com by ThoughtFix: N810 Giveaway Contest:

Congratulations to those who entered the Nokia N810 Giveaway Contest. There was a tie but the winners sent in their preferences on what they wanted more so they were given whatever was highest on their list.

General/The Narrative

Scobleized!

Posted on by charlie

Robert Scoble was at LIFT and I saw him using an N95. He and I had crossed at many an event and have many folks in common, but I had yet not introduced myself to him.

Well, partly because he was using an N95 and partly due to wanting to tell him my new role, I walked over to say ‘Hi’.

He then whipped up his phone and started recording live, with questions coming from his audience.* I basically told him what we were up to in Social Media Communications and such.

In any case, I got a ton of emails and SMSs soon after the broadcast. For those who missed it, here it is (below).


Alas, I haven’t seen it yet, only now sitting down at my computer since the interview. And qik is not being quick and I’ll just have to trust the positive comments from others until I get a chance to see it for myself.

Finally got to see it. Not half bad. Lays out our vision. Let’s see now if we get to see it all.



*Heck, this was real interactive TV and no one is calling it that. Interactive TV dies and then was reborn and no one noticed.

Announcements/General/Tips & Tricks

Putting stuff on YouTube – Nokia Conversations’ Channel

Posted on by charlie

For the past year or so, Nokia has been posting product and other videos (and other media) onto the Web, albeit, here and there. Now, as part of my new role, I’ll be posting a lot of things to the Web, too.

Indeed, even though we are building a site to put up some of our own content, we’re going to make use of tools out there to provide multiple channels for folks to find and recombine the material we produce. We will also, of course, scour the Web for cool things produced by others and link to them from our site.

We don’t have a name for the site, but you can guess what we’re thinking. We also don’t have a site, though we are in the process of getting it up and running.

In the mean time, we are still making and finding and pointing to stuff already out there.

Today we put up our first videos from the team (one of them embedded below), showcasing two phones that were launched today. As we produce more, I expect things to look better, feel better, sound better, and smell better.

Enjoy.

Link: YouTube – NokiaConversations’s Channel:

This is the YouTube channel for the Social Media Communications team at Nokia. We’ll be posting as many videos on Nokia stories, products, services, and people as we can get our hands on or produce ourselves.

Uncategorized

links for 2008-02-11

Posted on by charlie
Strategy

Something to keep an eye on: Distributed Social Networking Apps

Posted on by charlie

I met Chris Messina once back a few years ago when he was pushing Flock.

Now I see him doing this (link below), while mixing in the social media relationship space.

This DiSo will be interesting.

Link [via Brian McConnell]: DiSo | monkinetic weblog archive:

DiSo: Distributed Social Networking apps

DiSo (dee • zoh) is a new umbrella project for various open source social networking components that we’re working on. In the beginning, we’re largely targetting WordPress, building on the work Will Norris‘ has done with his excellent WP-OpenID plugin.