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Sunday, March 10, 2002 |
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Ways of paying attention
Shelley asks:
Can RSS let people know that Jonathon Delacour's weblog has something worth reading? [burningbird]
Yes, if he writes a good title, one that draws me in. And if my software enables me to follow him (if I choose) on a titles-only basis. And if his allows me that choice.
Jonathon notices:
Previously, when I've written for books and magazines, I've left it to the editor and publisher to package my writing in a form that allows readers to experience it with minimal inconvenience. There are rules to follow; by-and-large, publishers follow the rules and readers are (unconsciously) grateful. [Jonathon Delacour]
Exactly. Jonathon is a wonderful writer. So is Shelley. Many, many more are emerging. Given that I can't pay attention to everyone all the time, my choice should not be all or none. I'd like to be aware of as much of what's available as I can, and to choose according to my (fluctuating) needs and interests.
It's important to note that this principle of structuring information is only one of many strategies. Not the only one, not the most important one. Blogspace is evolving other ways to manage the scarce resource of attention, even as it ratchets up the demands on that attention. One of the most crucial is the way in which we can rely on people, not software, as our filters -- a variant of the Google principle, or what I used to call Web mindshare.
"Paying attention" is an interesting phrase. It acknowledges that there is a cost.
11:46:09 PM 
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Helping Marc with a Radio script
Marc Barrot's still stuck. I'm hardly an expert on this stuff. If anyone wants to correct or augment my advice, please do.
11:34:29 PM
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Creative Commons
If, in fact, limited monopolies do not work, than how do we nurture our Farnsworths and Teslas?
There is, by the way, an effort-- inspired by Lawrence Lessig -- to address this issue. I gather it aims to empower creators of intellectual property to directly control its disposition, vis-a-vis the commons, and to reduce the transaction costs of flexible licensing.
11:22:13 PM
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Limited monopoly and the solo inventor
Limited monopoly and the solo inventor
The case against intellectual property is not that wealth is less important that freedom. It is that it is not possible to grant limited monopolies, and hence the government should not be in the business of granting unlimited ones.
Why isn't it possible to grant limited monopolies? Because they create wealth that is used to lobby the government for less-limited monopolies, which creates more wealth, which is used to lobby the government for even less limited monopolies. This is the story of IP in the US: every term extension has led to another term extension....The key problem is that intellectual property corrupts. Lucas Gonze. Re: Truth from the highest hits [decentralization]
Failure to defend intellectual property has ruined some of our greated inventive geniuses. The April issue of Wired has a story on Philo Farnsworth, who invented television but died broke. Margaret Cheney's Tesla: Man out of Time tells an even more heartrending tale. So desperate was Tesla to see his alternating current system brought to life, in the face of stiff competition from Edison's direct current, that he sold his rights to the technology to Westinghouse for a pittance. Tesla also died broke. More to the point, both men's creative energies were mercilessly sapped by their failure to defend their IP, and to translate it into even a fraction of the vast wealth their inventions produced. In both cases, society was thus deprived of follow-on invention, and follow-on wealth.
Neverthess, Lucas makes a compelling argument. If, in fact, limited monopolies do not work, than how do we nurture our Farnsworths and Teslas?
8:19:53 PM
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Bootstrapping the knowledge network
Bootstrapping the knowledge network
In the first stage, the tools encourage a degree of commentary and reaction to what you find or create (in k-logging mode). However, it also encourages a degree of stream of consciousness style. Progress, in that it can represent a contemporaneous record of the contextual issues that were top of mind. Problematic, in creating new content that eventually needs to be revisited and processed at a level once removed from the moment. [McGee's Musings]
It's true that I'm impatient for knowledge networking to reach critical mass. I thought the singularity would occur years ago, and I was wrong. I hope it's happening now, and while I could be wrong again, it's clear that something has changed. People are doing what I spent years of my life and hundreds of pages of my book advocating. They are migrating communication that is not necessarily private and interpersonal into spaces that are public and group-oriented. This behavior lays the foundation for all else that may follow.
We want nothing to interfere with the evolution of this behavior. In particular, we don't want burdensome rules and complex protocols to slow things down. The lesson of HTML, vis-a-vis SGML, must never be forgotten. At the same time, we would like -- if possible -- not to foreclose options unnecessarily.
It's been a while since I reviewed the forked path of RSS. In RSS .92 even the title of an item was made optional, which seems heretical to a metadata maven (like me) but makes sense when you are trying to bootstrap flow. RSS 1.0's approach, which requires item titles (as .91 did), and provides optional modular extensibility for arbitrary metadata, makes a different kind of sense.
I would say that RSS .92 (what Radio uses, BTW) is about promoting flow, and RSS 1.0 is about not foreclosing future options.
There was hot controversy surrounding these differing approaches. But nobody outside the relatively narrow world of users of RSS-oriented software heard a word about it. Just as well, as it turns out, because until there is a reason to care, people won't.
The progress that Jim McGee cites in his posting is becoming a reason to care. Once enough people do care, the problems he cites can be addressed. Maybe you could say that RSS .92 is the booster rocket, and RSS 1.0 the payload.
I don't think the boost phase would be compromised by enabling (not requiring) Radio writers to exercise the titling option in RSS .92, and then enabling Radio readers to scan titles (from .91. 1.0, and perhaps .92 sources). But in truth, it can wait. Until we get ourselves into orbit, it won't matter.
6:15:32 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jon Udell.
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