Social Synergy

The TechnoSocialGap

Blogging about Wikis: A cursed blessing

It seems that some of the small experiments that I have done with blogging about ObmWikiHive? were mostly successful in attracting spammers.

This is why I believe it’ll better for me in the long run to build ObmWikiHive? slowly, and socialy, rather than through publicity. The blogosphere is a good place to get people to read these pages in short bursts. But, the trade off is that you then get spammers swarming on you for months afterwards. And, the blogging doesn’t really attract valuable participants.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the chance to be paid to launch and help grow some VirtualCommunity projects, and do some Wiki:CommunityBuilding using different SocialSoftware platforms, including different WikiEngine installations, such as SocialText, and DokuWiki, and MoinMoin. Plus, of course, launching ObmWikiHive? and KaboWikiHive?. Plus, I’ve worked with DrupalEngine, WikiCalc, Wiki:PloNe, and some non-open source platforms.

To be clear, what I am describing above is not just installing a site on a server and hoping that people will come along and use it. These are projects where there are people actively involved and interested in collaborating online, using text/audio/images and other media.

SilentBarrier

So, in that experience, I (SamRose) am finding that some elements of our WikiCulture that we incorporate into the OddMuse “interface”, plus UseModMarkup? can be a SilentBarrier? to participation for some people. Yet, and this is vey important, these same properties and patterns can be required elements for the participation of people who are immersed in WikiCulture. In fact, some of the InterWiki and WikiNet “functions” will not work unless you are using certain conventions, like CamelCase, etc. So, it is not possible to create easy InterWiki “links” between engines like DokuWiki and MediaWiki, and engines such as OddMuse and MoinMoin, for instance. This is causing the emergence of a TechnoSocialGap? in the internet KnowledgeCommons?.

Emerging Ideas

WikiCreole

People have proposed and have begun to adopt WikiCreole as a standard WikiSyntax and markup. This can at least facilitate InterWiki connections. SocialSotware? and blogging platforms such as DrupalEngine and WordPress are starting to incorporate tools that allow for the import of WikiCreole marked-up content.

WikiCarburator

MattisManzel introduced some OddMuse -centric ideas in WikiCarburator, and AlexSchroeder added some thought there, about the pros and cons of emulating tools that allow for quick and easy contribution. One of Alex’s points was that emulating blogs in wiki can create force the conversation in wiki from NonLinear? to Linear. ArchitectureLeadsPeople?. People follow the lead of InformationArchitecture of SocialSoftware.

MattisManzel has been carrying out the WikiCarburator experiment on OddWiki, ObmWikiHive?, and elsewhere. It would be interesting to see him discuss an overview of what is evolving from it.

MicroContribution and RapidIdeaEntry

Ideas were also explored in MicroContribution (BayleShanks ?) and RapidIdeaEntry. The idea that “people should be able to make a small contribution to discussion or decision-making on an issue (rather than being forced to either contribute nothing or to pledge tons of time to it).”

There are drawbacks or pitfalls to this line of thinking, and some of them are addressed in MicroContribution (and by AlexSchroeder’s comment on WikiCarburator).

MicroContent and MicroBlock TransClusion

MicroContent? is a sort of “shorthand” system HansWobbe is experimenting with. The pattern allows people to make quick note entries, that he refers to as a MicroBlock? of text, then TransClude?? those into different pages. “The MicroBlock?? should include its own Name (URL) so that it can be edited directly, regardless of of the document (context) within which it is found.”

InterWiki and InterSocialSoftware (OneBigSoup) KnowledgeCommons Evolution

From my experience (SamRose), there are some people who will not use wiki at all to participate in conversation and KnowledgeCommons? building. Wiki itself is a SilentBarrier? for these people. They often will use blogs, forums, social media sharing and SocialBookmarking, and SocialNetwork sites, however.

And, in my experience, there are some people who will use wiki, but will only use very simple wiki, like commercial offerings such as WetPaint? and WikiSpaces?. Or, they will only use MediaWiki or similar PHP wikis, for different reasons. Yet there are others who will only use Python or Perl based wikis for other reasons, such as traditional SocialPatterns? or programming language preferences.

One huge drawback is that these preferences are creating “silos” of OpenContent. The blogosphere is seperated by TechnoSocialGap? from the WikiNet, and both are sperated from forums and SocialNetwork sites by a TechnoSocialGap?. The “TechnoSocialGap?” is literally a social gap that originates in technology.

I know that this issue has been addressed in many forms over the years in many wikis, such as OneBigSoup, and others.

MicroFormats

One of the promising emerging areas is MicroFormats, which can potentially allow data and information to transcend the TechnoSocialGap?.

The best way to develop MicroFormats towards the goal of bridgign the TechnoSocialGap?, is to try and bridge it right now with existing tools, and then think about how existing or yet-to-exist MicroFormats could enhance and facilitate that bridging even more.

WikiHiveBusinessModel

From OpenBusinessModels WikiBlog

 One of the ideas that I am exploring is an actual WikiHiveBusinessModel:

• Setting up and optimizing a WikiHive for a group, project school, organizations, communities.
  • Hosting and administering the WikiHive.
• Teaching people how to use the WikiHive effectively, how to create a KnowledgeCommons with a WikiHive as it’s core. Effectively incorporating the WikiHive into other knowledge, community, networking, and personal productivity tools.

Open Questions

• Is OddMuse software in it’s current state ready for this type of application? (I plan on creating a Wiki in this WikiHive that will be used for brainstorming, and developing OddMuse for OpenBusinessModel applications).

Possible OddMuse Developments for OpenBusinessModel Applications

• Incorporating PinkoMarketing and community bloggingtools. Emulating or improving on http://spreadfirefox.com model. Voting mechanisms via Perl scripts
• RevenueSharingModel manangement. Incorporate OpenID URL as an option for UserName, to automate Knowledge work/contribution tracking.
• Analyze OddMuse fitness for heavy traffic applications, Spam countermeasures, bot countermeasures.
• Supporting MicroFormat development in OddMuse
• WikiCalc TransClusion
• OddmuseToInkscape development
• TransClusion of Video and Audio content
• GnuPlot? development

This package of tools could also eventually be incorporated into the CommunicationsTower project.

Parakey, and Emerging WebOS Ideas

  Spectrum Online reports that Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt are working on a system called "Parakey", which  essentially will be a downloaded application that turns your PC into a local server, and allows you to seamlessly drag web content (photos, text, movies, calendars, bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc) into you Parakey "site", and easily control who can and cannot view it with a color coded "key" system.

The system will employ it's own programming language (dubbed "JUL" which stands for “Just another User interface Language"). The code will be open source, in the hopes of attracting  developers to create new applications for the platform. The goal will be to allow people to share content online  directly from their computer,  with more control over who can view it and how. And, with easier  publishing capabilities than current systems that force people through many layers. Quote:

Grandparents love seeing their kids and grandkids on Flickr or Snapfish, but they’re often too intimidated to put their own pictures on these sites. The reason, in part, is that they have to jump through many hoops: dragging pictures here, uploading them there. Parakey, inherently (and potentially profitably), is aimed at making it easier for them—and everyone else—to get their stuff online.

It’s not just grandparents who aren’t using the Web as much as they could—it’s everyone. Right now, Ross says, “we have two wildly advanced platforms—the desktop operating system and the Internet. That leaves users with a frustrating choice. Do you want to create content with powerful tools in an ad-free environment and bury it in a system that’s accessible anytime, but only in one place and by one person?” The alternative, he says, is weaker tools and an ad-heavy space that can be accessed by anyone anywhere, but only when you’re online. “We don’t believe people should have to make that choice,” he says.

   
The goal of lowering the technological barrier for users is shared with the goal of making a system that allows developers to make many different content and event streams work well together:

  JUL applications are themselves comprised of other applications that come in all shapes and sizes. The interface for Mrs. Anderson’s recipe application, for instance, might include much smaller ones such as a metric-to-English-units converter or photo-goes-here. “You’re not thinking at [the HTML] level anymore,” Ross says. “You’re thinking one level up. That will make it easier to build desktop applications on the Web.” And despite Ross’s connection to Firefox, Parakey will work with any browser.

JUL applications also notice Web events that take place when someone is reading a Parakey page—an update to a sports score, for example, or a new blog entry—and instantly update the page accordingly. Users of these applications don’t have to request these updates, and neither do the JUL developers who wrote them. They simply include “formulas” behind the scenes that reference different information sources. If a source changes, JUL automatically reevaluates the formulas—much as a spreadsheet does.

Parakey will be a for-profit venture, unlike the non-profit Firefox web browser project that Parakey founders Ross and Hewitt helped create. Parakey apparently intends to profit from an advertising system whose details have yet to be revealed. 

From my own perspective, it seems that Parakey has more than a small chance of succeeding. Although, the area that it is entering is heavily contested for sure. Microsoft and Apple both have efforts to build these functions into their operating systems. Google and Yahoo are quickly buying up the best "pieces" (flickr, del.icio.us, JotSpot, YouTube, etc) that will allow them to potentially build an integrated system for web sharing. Yet, they both currently lack tight integration and ease of use across networks.

The paradox of a company like Yahoo buying a company like Flickr, for instance, is that  Yahoo, on the one hand, needs to get Flickr tightly integrated with the rest of Yahoo's tools (like Yahoogroups, del.icio.us, etc). Yet, huge part of the reason that Yahoo buys an existing system like del.icio.us or Flickr is because of the enthusiastic existing user base. But, if Yahoo or Google make too many changes too soon to a platform like del.icio.us, Flickr, or YouTube, they will risk driving people away, and into the arms of hundreds, sometimes thousands of competing systems. So, this time problem leaves an opening for a system like Parakey to possibly pass through and succeed.   To succeed, it is likely that Parakey will need to:

•     Give people an easy way to move from sites like del.icio.us, Flickr, or YouTube to Parakey  
• Tap into similar energies that made the Spreadfirefox campaign succeed, but this time for an expanded audience (early adopters [creatives and teenagers], as well as Mothers and Fathers/Grandparents).
   
• Possibly consider using an increasing consumer awareness and inevitable backlash to their advantage, over web service providers co-opting the rights of content published to their sites. This could be used to their advantage by including an easy way for people to attach re-use rights, like creative commons licenses, to their content that they share. This can attract early adopter creatives, who then tend to attract mainstream users.
   
•     Work before the Google, Yahoo WebOS, and Microsoft and Apple desktop-to-web efforts emerge as contenders.  

My hunch is that the publicity circulating about Parakey is going to create pressures in this sector of the market, and send a lot of people working in this area back to the drawing board to think about  , whether Parakey itself  succeeds or not.

Another interesting related phenomenon is that users of more difficult-to-use open source social software are also working toward ways to tie together many different open source tools. For instance in Communitywiki, we are thinking about ContentRouting:

(image by LionKimbro  )

Some elements of the  ContentRouting idea is actually remarkably similar to the Parakey idea, except that the ContentRouting idea is being developed in open spaces, and largely enabled by (though not necassarily restricted to) open source software applications.  Yet, ContentRouting also has the potential to interface with very many online destinations (wikis, blogs, social networking sites, etc). One currently working example is OddmuseToInkscape, which allows a few different ways to  automatically route an Inkscape    image directly to  an  Oddmuse   wiki instance. 

Data Mining: If There is a Bright Centre to the Blogosphere...

Link: Data Mining: If There is a Bright Centre to the Blogosphere...

Matthew Hurst has an intersting visualization of the "blogoshpere" on his datamining blog:

   

The two bright spots are boing boing (largest spot) and engadget (next largest spot) in the "technology" blogs area. The other large pinkish mass below that is the social-political blogs area, which Hurst roughly describes as having more dispersed linking, vs. the "one way" linking back to boingboing and engadget in the tech area.

The Possibilities of "Synergizing"

[reblogged from P2P Foundation Weblog]

A set of dilemmas that I face, and that I presume a lot of other people face, in collaborating and cooperating online are:

• Information overload: There is so much to process from each group, with discussions, and output from the group. As time progresses, it can sometimes get beyond the ability of any individual to keep track of the evolution and progress of one group. Let alone many.
• Timecrunch (too much to do, too little time to do it): Networked digital technology empowers us to do many things that we could not do in the past. The benefits of this are vast in proportion. Yet, one of the byproducts is that many of us as individuals end up running out of time in our daily lives. So, we end up having to pass, or being only marginally active in some activities that might enhance our overall individual goals through participation.
• A proliferation of diverse tools, process, and goals: I write for three group Weblogs. I participate in 10+ different wiki communities. I use, help develop, and have business based around TeleCommunity Software. I have my own Weblog. I copy most of my posts from all of these blogs into an experimental wiki called a "bliki". I also participate in discussions in several google, yahoo, and other-"groups". I'm also part of different private conferences and message boards online. I use Secondlife. I am part of a few different social networking sites. I also subscribe to several different email listservs, and, I communicate with 20-100 different people via email every day. Everyone who participates in these different groups are also a part of many other different collaborations elsewhere themselves on an individual level.

Each one of these ways of online participation is a slightly-to-highly different system of social software tools. Each group that I am a part of tends to have it's own unique goals, although some of those goals overlap with other groups and projects that I work on. Yet, I only have so much time each day to spend trying to participate in each group.

A friend named Garsett Larosse (  http://go.webassistant.com/to/garsett/) gave me some examples of how to "synergize" all of the different things that I am doing, all of the different demands on my time.

"Synergize" in this case refers to Buckminster Fuller's concept of "synergy". The definition of "synergy" being:

syn·er·gy
n. pl. syn·er·gies

1. The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.
2. Cooperative interaction among groups that creates an enhanced combined effect. (from dictionary.com)

So, I started thinking about ways that I, as an individual could "synergize" my activities among the many projects and groups that I am a part of.

An example would be thinking about and applying ways to make work that I do on one project benefit other projects in some way, if possible. Like, if I write something in one wiki, and then re-use that page in another wiki by linking to it instead creating a whole new page with the same name in another wiki, for instance.

However, I also discovered that synergizing can scale beyond the individual, and into the group(s) the individual is part of, and between groups.

Human "synergizing" refers to three actions:

-The action of one person synergizing their work across many
"projects".

Thinking about this could start with asking:
Is it possible for me to reuse work, insights or resources from one structured project in other structured projects (taking into consideration all of the re-use restrictions, agreements, non-disclosure, etc that may apply)?
Is it possible for me to structure the way that I work in a way that makes it easy for me to apply my work in many ways, in many projects?

-The action of many individual people synergizing their individual work  together into one group "project"

Thinking about this could start with asking:
What are the roles of the individuals in the group? How do they communicate? What are the goals, or the desired outcomes of the group? How can each person then better apply synergizing their individual energies and work into their own roles, and the desired outcomes of the group? How can each person better synchronize with all of the others in
the group?

-The action of many groups of people synergizing their work across many
projects

Thinking about this could start with asking:
How can the desired outcome, the goals, and the work output of the group help other groups? How can the output of other groups help our group? How can the group better synchronize and build relationships with other groups?

Overcoming Roadblocks

So how can we as individuals and groups overcome the three roadblocks to human synergy (information overload, timecrunch, diversity of processes)?

Well, I am not the only person thinking about this, actually.

For instance, the wiki community I am part of, CommunityWiki, has employed InterWiki tools, like NearMap. So, if you type the name of a page shows up on another wiki in the "NearMap", but not on CommunityWiki, it will automatically link to the other wiki. CommunityWiki also employs RecentNearChanges (and RecentFarChanges), which unifies the recent changes of many different wikis. Since most people keep track of wikis via recent changes, this gives an easy and systematic way for wiki communities to collaborate, help each other fight spam, etc. This is group to group synergy (at least among wiki communities). CommunityWiki is also exploring, in OneBigSoup, ways to let many different types of social software systems collaborate via creating software tools that work better together. The "OneBigSoup" exploration is at least a start at removing the roadblock of too many diverse processes. It points in a possible future direction of the evolution of the tools we used, and suggests some ways to get there.

But in the meantime, we are still stuck with the three roadblocks to synergizing out individual, group, and group to group workflows. We are still stuck with many different tools, and many different conversations, and many different individual and group goals. Some people simply throw more technology (more tools) at the problem, which helps some people, but slows others down or even grinds them to a halt. They must now keep up with yet another set of processes, and even more information, with the same amount of limited time.

In the present environment of networked digital technology, and of growing online collaborations, I think that it is time to stand back for a moment, and look at what we can do as individuals, and groups to synergize our work. To get more done with the same amount of time.

I have been trying to develop processes to synergize my work on an individual level. I have also been hypothesizing ways that a group can synergize the work of it's individuals effectively, and how a group can synergize with other groups effectively as well.
Individual scale synergy: Mapping, Social Bookmarking, and RSS, and Refactoring To The Rescue?

One of the things that I have begun to do on an individual level is to map out what I am doing in these many different areas, and how they relate in my mind. You can do this mapping with a visualization tool, like Freemind Mind Maps (here's and example from Jim Benson's blog). Or, you can use a tool that allows you to create a personal taxonomy of online information, like del.icio.us (I use both del.icio.us and TeleCommunity Software). The point is to use one of these tools that allows you to see how what you are doing in many different places online is connected, and allows you to quickly look at those connections.
Almost all of the different social software tools I describe above (blogs, wikis, email via gmail, message boards/groups, TeleCommunities) employ RSS tracking. So, I am able to add feeds to a feed reader like bloglines and track new content among all of the groups that I am working with. I'm also able to search these feeds quickly for specific areas of content. In fact, I can search them for keywords from my mind map, or my tagged personal knowledge base. Or, I can search for words that relate to those keywords. This allows me to see where one fruit of labor created by me can possibly be refactored into other efforts, other groups that I am part of, effectively.

"Refactoring" can sometimes acceptably consist of wholly reusing/reposting multiple places. Or, it can mean talking about and recontextualizing in a way that each group can understand and use.

Mapping, tracking many different social software formats via RSS, and using these maps and aggregated feeds as a way to to figure out how to reuse/refactor our work when possible. These are all effective ways to reduce the three roadblocks to "synergizing" our work on an individual scale.

Synergizing Many Individuals On The Group Scale

So, you've mapped, you've started feed reading, and you've started reusing and refactoring as much as possible.

Yet, the practices/processes of each group, and the goals of each group are still so varied that you still must spend a lot of time reworking related work from one project and one group to another.

So, how do we synergize the work of many individuals, who all participate in many groups and projects, into our group project in an effective way? Getting everyone to use the same software platform is obviously not realistic. However, getting every group to help each individual link and connect work from your groups to other groups is within reach right now, no matter what social software or processes you use.

The way to do it is to acknowledge up front that the individuals who make up the group are usually active in many different ways with many different groups, and make it easy for them to incorporate relevant content from the other groups. Right now, many groups give some way for individuals to introduce themselves, or even have a home page for each participant, or a profile of some type. This introduction, this profile or home page could be expanded into a way for individual people to synergize across groups right away.

The idea is to state the goals and and areas of focus of your group, and then let each participant have the freedom to show how their work in other groups is connected to the focus and goal of the group. It's important to realize that if you want the benefits of this individual-to-group synergy, that part of your core goals and focus as a group must explicitly be to allow and encourage this individual connecting and refactoring from elsewhere.

Synergizing Groups To Groups

If you are able as a group to successfully encourage and promote individuals refactoring relevant work from other groups and efforts into your group effort, the natural progression is to seek useful partnerships between groups. This should not be delegated to one individual who happens to be a part of two groups, however. Instead, the group itself should have a collective apparatus, a program, a group method, a group process, for approaching other groups for partnership. A basis of the partnership can indeed be the fact that individuals connect both groups. But another basis should also be either shared group focus, shared group goals, or both.

The little secret here is that: groups that encourage individuals to synergize, recontextualize or refactor relevant work from other groups will already have a some degree of either shared focus and/or shared goals. The other little secret is that: groups made up of individuals who actively try to map themselves, aggregate sources when possible, and synergize, refactor reconextualize will have an easier time of synergizing on individual to group, and group to group scales.

If we start with synergizing our own individual methods, we get the benefit of using time more effectively, cutting down on information overload, and we start having more time and clarity to work in diverse social software environments with many different groups. If we work as a group to encourage and enable this individual synergizing, we get the benefit of more and better participation from more people in the group. And, if we as a group create a group apparatus to seek out synergetic partnerships with other groups, based on connections between the focus and goals of our groups, we'll gain the benefit of scaling collaborative participation.

I want to leave three questions to each of you that reads this:

1. What is the best way for us to "synergize" our work as individuals across many groups?
2. What is the best way for groups to encourage and enable the individuals who make up that group to do this?
3. What is the best way for groups to create a way to work with other groups that share some basis of focus and/or goals?

How We got To "Hyperlogic": Lessons From Hacking the Human Mind Via Social BookMarking

[bliki|what is a bliki?]

In a recent previous post, I gave a critique of Marc Fawzi's "The Unwisdom of Crowds" post to his Evolving Trends blog.   Lots of discussion and healthy debate ensued with Marc both here and via email. I still stand by my criticisms, but I think that they tell only part of the story of the blogging adventures of Marc Fawzi. So in this post, instead of just criticizing Marc, I am going to try to outline what I see as being valuable in different ideas that Marc is conveying on his blog.

From what I can tell, Marc has planned and performed an important experiment. Examining his experiment and it's results can help inform us about the nature of the EcosystemOfNetworks, and how people create and use different peer production social software systems, and the nature of the blogosphere in general. And, it can help inform teaching, learning and communicating online.

Marc's experiment began with his post back in Jun 24 2006, titled From Mediocre to Visionary. In that post, Marc wrote:

 

"There are many examples of "Web 2.0" celebrities (both companies and individuals) who are currently surfing some big waves (pretty much on their behind as I did in Puerto Rico) without any insight on how to properly surf the hype wave they're riding, yet they seem to be magically levitating above it on a carpet of thin air (again, like I did in Puerto Rico.) When they finally land, and land they will, we'll all rush to the scene of their landing and yell "loco! loco!"

But for those of us who cannot delegate our success to a statistically odd event (as in being at the right place, the right time and being carried miraculously by a massive wave of hype simply due to curiosity and good luck) we must strive to understand how to find the big hype waves across time and hype space and how to properly surf them."

Basically, in quote above, Marc is talking about how he discovered in one way or another, that the power law of the network we call the "blogosphere",  described by Clay Shirkey, by nature tends to amplify certain messages, even if only for a short time.

Shirkey's now widely familiar "Power Laws, weblogs, and Inequality" article describes how there is a "Predictable Imbalance" in the readership of blogs. A small set of webloggers  account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world. His article contains graphs that show this Power law phenomenon. (Of course, Chris Anderson has now popularized this, and connected it to many other phenomenon in his great book, The Long Tail). Shirkey's article also suggests that the network system we call the "blogosphere" will tend to stay this way, to stay in a state of "homeostasis", that the few popular people will tend to stay popular. He also states that "freedom of choice makes stars inevitable". So, in an open system where no one is forced to link to or read anyone else, Shirkey is saying it is inevitable that a few people will come to gain the majority of links to their sites, and readers.

Now, what I have noticed myself in my few years of blogging experience is that bloggers at all levels of the power law distribution have utilized different channels to both find and promote content.

Even prior to the widespread rise of blogging, community channels like Usenet and later Slashdot existed. Slashdot, of course, has a group of editors who submit news stories. The news stories are usually just a short blurb about a link to an article on a site somewhere else. The Slashdot community then will comment and discuss and debate the article. They also rate each others comments. Slashdot became so popular that people coined the term "The Slashdot Effect" to describe a phenomenon where "a popular website link[s] to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic."  Slashdot also allows users to submit ideas for stories. But what actually goes on the site is controlled by a few people.

When Social Bookmarking first emerged, many sites emulated the del.icio.us model, which is basically to take browser based personal knowledge bases and put them into one shared site,and allow users to share them in different ways. This is has turned out to be a very effective way for people to share knowledge in a quick and decentralized way. In del.icio.us in particular, users can look at what is popular, but the emphasis in del.icio.us is more on the individual first, and giving the individual useful tools to contextualize knowledge and information in ways that are meaningful to the individual.

In contrast, one social bookmarking site, called digg, tends to focus more on the popularity of a link. digg doesn't let you tag what you post with whatever it means to you. Instead, it has a predefined set of topics. digg is actually similar to Slashdot in many ways, except that digg allows anyone to submit a link to something online. Then, digg lets everyone in the digg community vote on the the items submitted. digg also lets you comment on items submitted, and lets you rate other's comments similar to Slashdot. Blog content from both popular and obscure bloggers makes it's way onto digg regularly.

So, what does this all have to do with Marc Fawzi's blogging experiment? Well, Marc guessed that if he looked at what was being talked about in the blog community, and on digg, he could use the mechanisms of digg and the uneven distribution of attention and linking in the networks of blogs to at least temporarily move "up" the power curve in a very fast manner.

So, Marc set out to create a controversial message that tied together two already controversial subjects, and suggested that they would battle each other. His message was Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?.  Marc guessed that this message would grab the attention of people because it used the trick of presupposing that there is only one side or the other to take on the issue. Polarizing the debate from the start. Wikipedia 3.0 argument was for a controversial subject called the "semantic web". Marc then submitted a link for this to digg. The trick of polarizing the debate worked, and his submission received many diggs. Both popular and obscure bloggers pay attention to digg, and use it as a source for fresh content, and possibly also as a "barometer" of what their audiences are interested in. So, Marc's post began to spread quite fast through the networks of popular-to-obscure blogs.

A few days later, Marc posted an autopsy of his experiment, titled "For Great Justice, Take Off Every Digg". He also reported that he had received 55,000 hits to his site in just a few days. In "For Great Justice...", Marc writes:

"Since digg is an open system where anyone can submit anything, user behavior has to be carefully monitored to make sure that people do not abuse the system. But given that the number of stories submitted each second is much larger than what Digg’s own staff can monitor, digg has given the power to the users to decide what is good content and what is bad (e.g. spam, miscategorized content, lame stuff, etc.)"

Marc had exposed that at least one possible way to "game" the system by appealing to our human nature. The human mind likes to take complex reality and split it into dichotomies, to make it "black and white". Broadcast media and political propaganda have taken advantage of this aspect of human nature for years. We are largely entertained and informed by these dichotomies. Charles Cameron actually created a tool to map diagrammatically these dichotomies (see: HipBone Analytics). He calls them "symmetries".  Charles writes:

The central analytic approach used here is the recognition of         symmetries - homologies, parallelisms, and oppositions between         positions. This has long been the natural, almost instinctive way in         which humans have evaluated "fairness"

So, Marc tapped into this instinctive nature in people. But he also showed that systems designed the way that digg is designed, if left wide open, can amplify it. He also showed that a system that is focused on popularity above meaning, like digg, will amplify human nature to be impulsive. Today's digg superstar is often tomorrows digg dustbin relic. digg as collective system moves on to the next trend at rapid pace.   

Marc's experiment was actually also apparently designed in part to be an argument for semantic web principles. Marc's idea is that Artificial Intelligence could enhance Semantic web approaches. Whether or not it turns out that his specific mechanics end up working, I agree with him that if we are contextualizing knowledge and information first in personal knowledge bases, then sharing these online, eventually we will be able to attach so many individual meanings and so many dimensions and facets to so many things, that we we'll need AI assistance just to keep up with all of the variables, and to make things findable in any useful way. When we take into account that we will also be able to extend this meaning and searchability to virtually "everyware", these ideas start to make more and more sense. Of course, we should also consider the possible problems that could emerge from creating a Socio-cybernetic society.

In debating with Marc via email, I was initially very much against the idea of forcing a "split" or polarization, as he did, to grab people's attention. However, I also can see that it can be useful to help people understand the larger picture who already thinking in a polarized way, provided that you actually give that larger picture, and don't just reinforce the polarizations.

Also, I wanted to mention that although I had criticized Marc's metaphor of "tribalism", which he used to describe the behavior of people using digg, I discussed with Marc that I didn't think the he was off base overall. I wrote to Marc:

"...Now, McLuhan actually agrees with you, for the most part. He ALSO used the metaphor of a new tribalism do describe what he thought the new connected future might look like. Here is what McLuhan said in 1961:

"The electronically induced technological extensions of our central nervous systems, which I spoke of earlier, are immersing us in a world-pool of information movement and are thus enabling man to incorporate within himself the whole of mankind. The aloof and dissociated role of the literate man of the Western world is succumbing to the new, intense depth participation engendered by the electronic media and bringing us back in touch with ourselves as well as with one another. But the instant nature of electric-information movement is decentralizing--rather than enlarging--the family of man into a new state of multitudinous tribal existences. Particularly in countries where literate values are deeply institutionalized, this is a highly traumatic process, since the clash of the old segmented visual culture and the new integral electronic culture creates a crisis of identity, a vacuum of the self, which generates tremendous violence--violence that is simply an identity quest, private or corporate, social or commercial."

So, McLuhan also used the metaphor of "tribal" to describe what he saw emerging in our time. He was really accurate on his prediction of the direction of technology. But he saw new types of tribes. his tribes were "electronic culture" tribes. McLuhan knew, even before there was anything like the internet, that the direction of technology as an "extension of man" was going towards what he called a "global village". What he meant by a global village was that people in our time were going to become highly connected to the point that distance between us would eventually be largely erased. We are now headed  towards that direction. So, McLuhan guessed that people connected in this global village would start to "retribalize" into new groups.

But these new types of "tribes" will not be like the tribes of pre-history. 

They will instead be "Global-local" tribes. Some of them will organize around a place, or around concepts or ideas or technology. Some people will be part of many of these groups. One example of a scenario like what I am talking about can be found at OrganizedCulture  which is a page in the wiki community that I participate in."

I do agree with Marc that the web gives us more space and more connections and ways to organize around different specialized interests. And he is right that these sometimes become sub cultures and they sometimes do insulate themselves or filter their information through "trusted sources".

 

Hopefully, this post helped me "walk the talk" of trying to "show the larger picture". Because, I actually employed Marc's "splitting" polarizing tactic in my first post that was all negative criticism. So, this positive "support" is an attempt by me to display an example of how to go about doing what I am talking about (which Marc calls "Hyperlogic").

So, thanks Marc. If your were trying to get people to think, it worked on me :)

The business of hosting companies is prevailing on internet. Hosting companies that offer custom web design as well as affordable flash templates to their clients as additional services have to use latest microsoft software to clinch their customers’ demands. Though wireless router as well as a broadband speed internet connection is the main requirement yet they do necessitate strong security software in order to avoid any data loss.

Open Business Guide Launched

[reblogged from P2P Foundation blog]

[bliki|what is a bliki?]

If you are not already familiar with Open Business.cc, it's an open knowlege commons worth looking at and participating in.

The basic core concepts of Open Business can be found under the idea section:

 

"Open business is designed to help the little guy along on his journey to spread his idea while creating revenues in the process. In order to sustain a rich innovative global community, access to information and ideas is requisite. The goal of open business is to analyze and explain models by which people can share their knowledge and creativity with others guided by the aligned incentives of profit, individual success, and societal advancement. The operating ethic transcends zero sum capitalism to create opportunities of mutual gain for the individual and her subscribers alike. By granting increased levels of access to information, innovators; be they writers, musicians, computer programmers, journalists, or any form of consultant under the sun, can reap the benefits of advertising their product in a way that is infinitely more pure and true than any thirty second television spot: by allowing the genius of their creativity to sell itself to the customer through use."

The site also hosts a wiki for co creating a manual of Open Business.

Openbusiness.cc sent out an email today announcing their first in a series of published reports investigating sustainable Open Publishing concepts. This first report looks at how Open Publishing concepts help people maximize dwindling resources. The next report  "will cover OpenBusiness strategies more broadly
covering sectors ranging from music, video to services."  

Why Digg Is A Poor Example of "The Wisdom of Crowds"

In this post, I want to address Marc Fawzi's "Unwisdom of Crowds" post, as part of an analysis/debate that was initiated by Michel Bauwens of the P2P blog.

First, Marc lays out his case to compare certain behaviors online to human "tribal" behavior (as in hunter/gatherer societies). The following is quoted from Marc Fawzi's blog:

Web 2.0: Back to the Hunter-Gatherer Society

Observe: trusted individuals are once again the source of news in a society (i.e. bloggers)

Observe: word of mouth is once again how news spreads (i.e. viral marketing)

Observe: people once again hunt and gather in a crowd (e.g. digg)

Observe: people once again group things using words like small, big, happy, sad, funny, food rather than detailed hierarchical structures (i.e. tags)

Observe: impulsive production (minimal upfront planning vs. a lot of upfront planning) is back in style (e.g. Google “betas”)

Observe: once again, sharing between people cannot be explained with the strict concept of economic reciprocity and is being explained by the egalitarian and optimistic notion that what is good for all is good for one (YouTube, del.icio.us, etc.)

These are all traits of a hunter-gatherer society, i.e. a pre-agricultural society.

Now, I'm  going to address each of these points individually. Marc writes:

"Observe: trusted individuals are once again the source of news in a society (i.e. bloggers)"

First of all, bloggers are not the primary news source for most people in our society. Mainstream broadcast media is still the primary news source. The last time that Pew Internet Research posted statistics about blog readership, for instance, was in January of 2005, and at that time blog readership was declared to be close to 27% of all internet users.

Indeed, the internet gives people more access to more information and more perspectives from more parts of the world than they ever had before in the history of human kind. And, Pew Internet Research reports that among people with broadband internet connections, the internet is the first place that they are going to for their news. In the same report, Pew states that "mainstream media organizations dominate online news sources". 46% of of internet users access national television news sites, 39% use Yahoo news or Google News.

Furthermore, a huge amount of the material that bloggers write about is from mainstream media sources. Most bloggers are either just writing their opinions about this news from mainstream media sources, or just outright linking to it.

Marc's next point: "Observe: word of mouth is once again how news spreads (i.e. viral marketing)". 

It's true that many trends have spread quickly online via word of mouth. However, word of mouth message relaying online is not a one-to-one match with the way that news was spread in human tribal societies.

Word of mouth has remained a core part of communication and information dissemination throughout the evolution of human society. Examples can be given from all time periods and from all cultures. Indeed, we have retained many ancient and older traits that first emerged through many different stages of human evolution (such as burial of the dead, churches and temples, praying, oral histories) and we have re-worked these cultural behaviors into our societies as we have evolved over time. The point is that we retain problem solving from our past stages of human development as long as we find them useful.

Marc next writes: "Observe: people once again hunt and gather in a crowd (e.g. digg)"

Marc's metaphor is not actually totally off the mark here. Especially if we consider Marshall McLuhan's Tetrad concept:

The tetrad is arrived at through a process of asking questions, based on historical, social, and technological knowledge of the subject:

• What does any artifact enlarge or enhance?
• What does it erode or obsolesce?
• What does it retrieve that had been earlier obsolesced?
• What does it reverse or flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential?

These questions result in a set of four effects, namely: enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, and reversal.

It seems to me that this is what Marc was really driving at with his blog posting, that certain technologies being used online may retrieve qualities from the past that had been earlier obsolesced. This does not mean, however, that we have regressed into a tribal state just because Digg may retrieve some of those traits.

Marc writes: Observe: people once again group things using words like small, big, happy, sad, funny, food rather than detailed hierarchical structures (i.e. tags)

Hmmm. This seems to be insinuating that a tagging "folksonomy" is by nature more primitive, or less advanced than institutionally-created taxonomies.

Folksonomies can be as high quality as any institutionally-created taxonomy. The quality of a folksonomy or taxonomy rests upon the quality of knowledge of  the people who create them.  If the knowledge of participants is equal, then a taxonomy created in a more top-down form may actually have a disadvantage to folksonomies, because:

• The taxonomy may not have the flexibility to adapt to emerging changes and new innovations. The few decision makers who create the taxonomy may be at a loss as to how to effectively categorize new emergences.
• many taxonomy systems does not have the capacity for multiple perspectives and epistemologies. Folksonomies give potentially limitless room for multiple perspectives and epistemologies. This also gives them a built in flexibility to incorporate new emergences and innovations effectively.

In short, folksonomies are an advance in human communication, not a regression.

Marc wrote: Observe: impulsive production (minimal upfront planning vs. a lot of upfront planning) is back in style (e.g. Google “betas”)

I am not sure how "impulsive planning" relates to tribal or hunter/gatherer societies? I think that it can be shown that even though hunter/gatherer or tribal societies may have lacked the invention of writing, that they still retained very complex knowledge bases, and and employed intelligent decision making to a very large degree. For instance, do the seasonal and tribal group decisions of Eskimos look "impulsive" to you?

Also, I don't think it's accurate to equate long term "beta" software release with "impulsive". I think that here, Marc is actually referring to what some people have dubbed "Perpetual Beta". The purpose of keeping a software product in a "beta" stage is primarily to encourage development feedback from the users of the product. User-innovation is proven to be an avenue of superior product development. "Perpetual beta" really means "we welcome user development".

Personally, I'd rather use products and services that welcome and take measures to incorporate input from the people who use the, than products and services that don't.

Eric Von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation gives several examples of how user innovation has created value and quality and useful innovation in products.

Marc writes: Observe: once again, sharing between people cannot be explained with the strict concept of economic reciprocity and is being explained by the egalitarian and optimistic notion that what is good for all is good for one (YouTube, del.icio.us, etc.)

We simply cannot tar all of these systems with the same brush. It's just not accurate.  The systems are designed to allow people to share knowledge in different ways.

For instance, Digg, which Marc uses an example in his post, is a system that is primarily focused on user-ranking of links (or how many "diggs" a link gets). Digg does possess a "topic" index, but the folksonomy aspect of Digg is downplayed, while the popularity aspect is highlighted. As a consequence of this interface design, Digg tends to be used as a link popularization system. People submit things to Digg primarily when people want to try and create a "buzz" about something.

Let's contrast this with del.icio.us. del.icio.us has an interface that focuses on the the individual creating a personal knowledge base. In fact, it takes one aspect of our personal knowledge bases, our internet book marks, and places them online, allowing us to share them with others, and allowing us to tap into the power of folksonomies at the same time. The quality of link collections is del.icio.us tends to be very good. And, the relevance of tags also tends to be very high. One reason why can be found in this quote from blog posting by Howard Rheingold to the Cooperation Commons blog (the quote is directly from this post by Trebor Scholz) :

"The social bookmarking site del.icio.us is a suitable example for the debate over individual versus network value. On del.icio.us, contributors, myself included, save bookmarks not solely because they support an imagined "del.icio.us collective;" they don't primarily want to support the Yahoo-owned project: they contribute out of self-interest.

Adam Smith talked about individual action that benefits the collective as the "invisible hand;" every individual contribution to the general productiveness of society intends to foster individual gain and is "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."

While Smith is controversial, his notion of the invisible hand is useful here. A closer look at the invisible hand reveals that it does not exclude a simultaneous conscious support of a collective. The number of frequent contributors to Wikipedia, for example, is relatively small and their motivations for participation are not completely non-agonistic (pure sharing; higher goals; help humanity). Hanah Arendt argued that people have a keen interest in contributing to something larger than themselves but most contributors to this free encyclopedia are, however, driven by authorship pride -- and -- an urge to contribute to the public good.

An additional variant of motivation for participation is “agonistic giving,” which Benkler sums up with the sentence "I give therefore I'm great." Benkler adds other types of motivations: “individualist and solidaristic” (teams; assertion of my individuality) and “reciprocity” (p2p networks). In the context of sites like CiteUlike, del.icio.us, and others, I suggest that contributors are driven by a hybrid mix of motivations. They are not exclusively in it for themselves but they are also not completely driven by the idea of the greater good."

Moving on, Marc talks about how "The Crowd Has No Wisdom". Michel bauwens deals with this effectively in his blog posting here:

"Marc Fawzi maintains that crowds exhibit either average or lowest-common denominator intelligence, but what about the cases where, and I believe that has been demonstrated in James Surowiecki’s book (and podcast), such wisdom does exceed individual intelligence. Obviously this would require a detailed look into the conditions for this to be the case."

In particular, Suroweicki's book theorizes the following conditions  as being essential for the crowd to be "smarter" than any individual expert:

"There are four key qualities that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that people are bringing different pieces of information to the table. It needs to be decentralized, so that no one at the top is dictating the crowd's answer. It needs a way of summarizing people's opinions into one collective verdict. And the people in the crowd need to be independent, so that they pay attention mostly to their own information, and not worrying about what everyone around them thinks."

 

In systems that allow peer production, but downplay worrying about what everyone else around you thinks", the quality of the "Wisdom of The Crowd" increases.

The rest of Marc's post proposes a representational system as a "Digg killer".  Marc proposes that:

In an application like digg (or the “digg killer” to be exact) writers, content producers, social figures, business figures, and others, who are higher in the food chain than the consumer, and who are collectively referred to herein as ‘taste makers’, should be allowed to start their own channel (or page) where they list links they think are cool. If enough people ‘bookmark’ a given page then that means that the taste-maker in question is worthy of being positioned into the system’s hierachy at a higher level than that of the consumer. The taste-makers can then rally their followers (those who use them as taste-makers) to digg the links the taste maker has chosen to put on his/her page.

This is similar to parliamentary democracy where members of the parliament have to get enough votes on a given issue from their district in order to pass it into law.

The key here is that the ‘trusted’ taste-makers get to decide which links to promote for votes from their followers.

At the same time, people in the crowd should be able to vote the taste-makers in or out of the system’s hierarchical structure by bookmarking or un-bookmarking their page.

Anyone who has followers can become a taste-maker, but they would have to replace an existing taste-maker as the system has a finite hierarchy with finite number of taste-maker positions (e.g. in the thousands.) And once someone is elected as a taste-maker they would stay in the role for a certain period before they can be voted in or out of the position by their followers (assuming another contender has nominated himself/herself for the position.)

Marc, your idea is interesting, but I prefer a system that allows me to:

• Create and grow my own knowledge base, and create my own taxonomy that has meaning for me.
• Share my knowledge base and dyi taxonomy with others
• Decide who my taste makers are based upon my own judgment

Luckily, these qualities exist in systems like del.icio.us, and CiteULike. I agree that the hybrid of Hierarchy and "crowd" works better than the crowd alone, but there are already systems that let you be a hierarchy of one in a crowd of many, and let you scale yourself into the crowd as you see fit. That is the real advantage of peer production: more power devolved to the individual. Peer production systems need not lead to a cybernetic society. How we use these tools, and how we allow them to enhance our actions, or to control us, is our choice.

Crowdsourcing

[bliki | What is a bliki?]

Back in January of this year I blogged on smartmobs.com about an interesting blog posting from Jeff Jarvis.

The idea that I talked about at the time, inspired by Jarvis' post was that:

...on the" individual" level, we want to control the things that we create (and, that if we can't, we'll go elsewhere). On the "collective" level, we "create as we consume" collectively, and that the "crowd" itself owns the "wisdom of the crowd". If someone tries to "own" this crowd-wisdom generated from consumption, they make it less valuable by trying to disconnect it from larger networks to control it.

This shift in the way that things are designed and used was inspired by the success of open source software and the emergence of "Peer to Peer"(P2P) paradigms in ever growing areas of human problem solving. Some of the roots of these concepts extend back to work done at MIT, such as Gershenfeld's Personal fabrication ideas, Frank Piller's Mass Customization work, and Eric Von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation. Yochai Benkler also talks about commons based peer production concepts in his new book "The Wealth of Networks".

Recently Wired Magazing published an article titled "The Rise of Crowdsourcing". This article looks at how this phenomenon is beginning to be taken seriously by people on all scales of the business world, from small independent business people to huge corporations and their R&D departments, television programming producers, and more. A quote from Jeff Howe's Wired article:

Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D. …

Many companies growing up in the internet age were designed to take advantage of the networked world. But now the productive potential of millions of plugged-in enthusiasts is attracting the attention of old-line businesses, too. … Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblers suddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn’t always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It’s not outsourcing; it’s crowdsourcing.

See also: P2P Wiki "Crowdsourcing"

Bliki (blog+wiki)

[bliki | What is a bliki?]

From now on, in all of the posts that I make here in this blog, as well as posts to Cooperation Commons and Smartmobs, and original writings to any WebAssistant TeleCommunity, I am going to include a link to this site,which is called a "bliki" in terminology invented by Ward Cunningham.

So, what is a bliki, and why am I doing this? From the OddWiki-Center:

A bliki is a wiki in sheep’s clothing.

Bliki is an experiment in modifying wiki in order to make it more attracting to many users. It started with the day-pages, the go-to-bar, xtof’s bliki and the fete-d’internet-wiki css-dressing-up nicely for the party, building the tools-bar, moving edit today’s page to the upper right corner, renaming the wiki-forum to recent day-pages, giving the edit links a little olor, ready was the bliki.

We don’t know yet if it works.

A bliki is a wiki. Fullstop. For the beginning  a new brand name bliki sounds cool and works, but you soon realize it’s all just toothpaste. So don’t stress on the dualism wiki/bliki too much.

Some people are attempting to use these experimental "blikis" as a blog. I am doing something similar, but also a little different. I am taking blog postings that I have made elsewhere and copying them to the Social Synergy Bliki on a "day-page". Then, I am linking to this daypage from the front HomePage.

The purpose in doing this will be to (hopefully) create fuel matter for a WikiCarburator. I recently got involved with the CommunityWiki. They are exploring a number of ideas related to collaboration, cooperation, virtual communities, and social software of many different types. This all happens within an organic, community-wide "jam session" centered around wiki software. They practice with, and expand, and explore many of the concepts that first emerged within the WikiWikiWeb and Meatball Wiki (many CommunityWiki contributors are also Meatball Wiki Contributors). I joined CommunityWiki to learn by doing, and explore how I can apply WikiWay concepts to many of the different projects I am working on, and vice-versa. I plan on using knowledge already gathered in WikiWikiWeb, MeatBall Wiki, CommunityWiki, Wikipedia, Metacollab Wiki, P2P Foundation Wiki, and other knowledge commons to  help inform content that is in the Social-Synergy-Bliki. Ultimately, I also hope other bloggers will occasionally or even regularly import their own related blog content to the Social-Synergy-Bliki, or to create their own bliki, and post a link to it here.

Why import blog content into the bliki? I like the tools in typepad and other blogging software that allows me to ping other blog sites. I like the different advantages to using a blog as a way to communicate my thoughts as a kind of "outboard brain". Yet, I also like the inherent TheoryBuilding found in different active wiki communities. So, the "bliki" is a bridge between the blogosphere, and possibly other SocialSoftware and networks of wikis.