Seb's Open Research
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Saturday, October 19, 2002
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A level-headed report on blogging
Caslon analytics profile: web logs and blogging.
It's rare to find someone who has researched weblogs thoroughly enough to really know what they're talking about, yet has managed not to succumb to the contagious enthusiasm surrounding the phenomenon. This three-page report features lots of links, with quite a few that were new to me. Plus, the authors grant me one of their weekly awards. Here's a quote to spark your interest:
we suspect that the blog phenomenon is about to peak and that most will soon be stored in the part of cyberspace dedicated to hula hoops, pogo sticks and other fashions that reached their use-by date.
I'll let you read and think about it for yourself before I comment.
 11:32:08 AM
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On Google's relative trustworthiness
"Standards of truth" Compares Google to Library of Alexandria
"This essay at the 'Disenchanted' website includes the following summary:
A robotic descendant of an ancient library's servants forces a new generation to learn some skills that they just don't teach in school, these days.
But that doesn't do the article justice. The author begins by comparing the Library of Alexandria's practice of stealing books from incoming vessels to Google's spiders caching webpages. Later, he or she talks about common fallacies reported in schools and other reputable sources, and shows that Google often has more and better material refuting these than supporting them.
I don't know if I'm doing the article justice either, but trust me. You want to read this." [LISNews.com] [The Shifted Librarian]
10:13:44 AM
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Upcoming social engineering book: The Art of Deception
Want to buy Mitnick's laptop?. Mitnick, 39, pleaded guilty in March 2000 to wire fraud, computer fraud and intercepting communications. Under supervised release, which ends January 21, 2003, he has permission to use a cell phone and computer, but not the Internet.
Officials gave him permission to write a book, titled "The Art of Deception," which features a foreword by Wozniak.
Due to go on sale October 25, the book describes how people can get sensitive information without even stepping near a computer through "social engineering" -- the use of manipulation or persuasion to deceive people by convincing them that you are someone else. [Smart Mobs]
10:07:29 AM
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Web-based learning conference camblogged
NAWeb 2002 Blog. This is a bit of an experiment, but the conference has wireless access, and it only took a half hour to set this up, so it's worth a try. I have created a blog, linked to here, for the NAWeb 2002 conference. Anybody at the conference will be able to post updates to the blog (I'll post the information or if I'm lucky Rik will announce it). I am also bringing my webcam and will be sending live pics to the blog every 30 seconds or so from my computer. If it works we should have a great running commentary of the conference. If it doesn't work, I'm sure I'll learn some lessons (and you'll still get my blogs, so it's not a total wash). What will be really interesting is blogging (and webcamming) my own presentation Sunday as I give the presentation. The preconference starts Saturday and the conference itself runs Monday and Tuesday; I will start the blog Saturday evening or so. [OLDaily]
Best of luck, Stephen!
9:57:14 AM
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Building a digital commons
Kevin Kelly on Copyrights©. As Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, has pointed out, digitizing films is expensive. "Who is going to digitize these public domain movies?" he asks.
I have an answer: movie buffs. Not only have fans moved almost all of music into the digital era, they have been busy moving hundreds of millions of documents onto the Web and are producing millions of pages of daily reporting and news in Weblogs. And without the help of paralyzed publishers, avid readers have already converted nearly 20,000 books in the public domain. [Smart Mobs]
Wikipedia is another fine example of ordinary folks taking charge of building a digital commons.
9:49:03 AM
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Friday, October 18, 2002
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To assimilate information is to get the big picture
Gelertner on KM :: There's a very good interview with David Gelertner in CIO Insight, in which Gelertner talks about what knowledge management means in terms of computing experiences. [IASlash]
Gelertner (rightfully, in my opinion) points out that we should be less evolutionary and more revolutionary. I like that quote about information overload:
We're like asteroids getting showered by little space fragments. I think lots of people have the feeling that it's no gain to them to be hit by more little tidbits and fragments and jagged packages of information if they don't know the big picture, if they can't add it up, if they don't see where it's leading, if they don't understand the story line.
2:05:45 PM
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Shift happens. One person at a time.
Thom Hartman. "Change our culture, beginning with yourself.
Such a solution is among the most perplexing to grasp because culture, at its core, is invisible. Like the air we breathe and walk through, its presence is only felt when its resisted: at all other times its part of the nothing-around-us that we rarely consider and almost never question.
The idea of cultural change is also often unpalatable because any sort of real, individual, personal change in beliefs and behaviors is so difficult as to be one of the rarest events we ever experience in our own lives or witness among those we know. Its easy to send ten dollars off to the Sierra Club; its infinitely more difficult to reconsider beliefs and behaviors held since childhood, and then change your way of life to one based on that new understanding, new viewpoint, or new story.
But if such deep change is what we really need, I see no point in pretending that something simpler will do it."
[Leaders.net]
9:26:11 AM
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Connecting individual people is the killer app
 Wetware. Britt Blaser describes the next killer app:
I need an index of "amateur" experts with proven track records who are available immediately for high per-minute rates which I only pay when I'm satisfied, which means they have to be confident that I'll be reasonably satisfied. So we also need a reputation engine in addition to an expert index. They need to be "amateurs" for the same reason that the best bloggers are amateurs....
Britt is involved with Xpertweb, which looks quite interesting. [Kumquat's Musings]
The picture on the right comes from the Xpertweb site. Simplicity itself speaking. Although I'd have drawn the arrows in the opposite direction. It starts from you. You sense a need, you think about it, you articulate it, then you pretty much know what you need. But you don't know how to do it. You find a trusted expert who'll do it. The result comes back to you. Everyone is happy.
I think we need to develop tools both for figuring out needs and for finding experts. Such tools are likely to coevolve.
9:02:28 AM
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Collaborative hieroglyphics
Back again bemoaning the limitations of text.
Walk into any workplace that is bubbling with innovation and you will find walls strewn with whiteboards covered with collaborative hieroglyphics. The ability for collaborators to sketch diagrams as a way to create and communicate ideas has considerable advantages over collaborating using a discussion forum approach that relies predominantly on text. The key difference lies in the fact that a diagram is co-created and its meaning is developed through the interchange between the collabotators. The meaning of words, however, are generally predefined and significant effort is required to convey accurately what you mean.
Most of the collaboration software programs provide an online whiteboarding facility but in my experience this is rarely used because most computers are not equipped with the peripherals required to effectively collaborate online. The standard mouse, for example, is a deficient drawing device. To draw on an online whiteboard, collaborators need a tablet that mimics pen and paper. To co-create a diagram online collaborators also need to talk to one another and ideally see each other. Discussion can be facilitated with a teleconference but if you have the bandwidth, online video and voice is the ideal solution.
As I sit here using my voice recognition system I have my headset on, mouse and keyboard in front of me, tablet to one side, printer nearby and scanner behind me. I am surrounded by add-ons. I think the all-important personal computer is overdue for a massive redesign. My work environment shouldn't need to be so complicated.
[Shawn Callahan's Radio Weblog]
Good observations. Shawn writes that "The meaning of words, however, are generally predefined and significant effort is required to convey accurately what you mean". Actually, nothing prevents us from inventing new words and/or meanings. But text-only interaction does not let us convey tacit knowledge the way face-to-face whiteboard sessions allow it.
There are both a downside and an upside to this state of affairs. As Shawn observes, more effort is required to reach (and recognize) agreement. However, this effort carries its own rewards because it leaves better traces. The agreed-upon concepts are much more approachable by people who did not participate in the discussion, and they are easier to revisit. Think about it: is it easier to understand a text-only discussion thread or to decipher whiteboard hieroglyphics after the protagonists have left the scene?
I believe there's also a personal benefit. I have found that putting ideas into text instead of drawing vague diagrams and waving my hands helps make my thinking clearer and unravel my previously unspoken assumptions.
8:13:35 AM
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Sticky lizards
Gecko feet in-hair-ently sticky. Geckos have the ability to run straight up a polished glass wall with no more effort than they use when running straight up a rough tree trunk or upside down on a ceiling, and we finally know why: their feet bond on a molecular level to the surface using van der Waals forces, the weak electrostatic attraction between molecules. This hypothesis was first suggested in the 1960s, when a German researcher discovered that geckos stick better to surfaces with higher surface energy. When the electrons on an overall neutrally charged molecule move at random around the molecule, one end can be briefly more negative and the other more positive. In close proximity to other molecules, these charge fluctuations become synchronized and produce a steady electrostatic attraction between the molecules. [kuro5hin.org]
I find this is a stunningly well-written lead paragraph. The rest of the story is very good as well. If I were a chemistry teacher who needs to illustrate van der Waals forces, I'd try to show my students a video of geckos climbing up glass walls. I'm sure the image would stick.
Now that artificial setae tips have been successfully made and proven to stick as effectively as natural ones, the door is open for the development of a "gecko tape" that would have potential applications in nearly every industry, as well as in the home. [...]
A "gecko tape", like gecko feet, would be strongly adhesive yet easy to remove; would leave no residue; would be self-cleaning and reusable; and would stick to any surface (except teflon, which has such a low surface energy even van der Waals forces don't work on it), no matter how smooth or rough and under any conditions, including under water and in vacuum.
For some reason I find this incredibly cool.
7:43:53 AM
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This is how it begins...
Kuro5hin: An alternative to fighting music piracy. Three days ago, someone has reported to Slashdot that Bon Jovi Tries New Approach To Fight Piracy by selling CD's which allow to register to the Bon Jovi's website in order to receive such exclusives as prioritized concert ticket purchases and unreleased music. I think the german band Einstürzende Neubauten...has a better approach:
"You don't have to buy CD's. You just have to go to the band's official website and make a one-time donation of US$35 in order to get things..." [LoveBlog]
I don't know about you, but I'd much rather drop $10 in a PayPal tip jar for a band I like, knowing that most of it is going directly to the artists, than visit a store, pay $20, and know that less than a buck will end up in the artists' hands and the rest of it will go to support a system full of people who mostly hate their job.
7:25:55 AM
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Online communities: remembering things past
Teal Sunglasses: Weblog Communities viewed from the perspective of a long-time USENET user who is fascinated by community building.
"I think bloggers ought to realize there's nothing really new under the sun -- and some of what they're inventing has existed in very similar forms for 70 years. Which isn't bad -- but I think it gives the community an opportunity to understand those predecessors and perhaps avoid some of the mistakes or problems."
I always feel it's important to think about the parallels between what we're doing now and what people did then. Much of it boils down to the same thing, if you look beneath the surface. The basic needs we're trying to satisfy are the same. Come to think of it, community building probably dates back to the invention of language.
12:43:18 AM
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Thursday, October 17, 2002
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Simplicity versus power?
An Apology For Simple Software. There is a trend among armchair commentators to criticize software for perceived oversimplicity or lack of features. I would like to propose an analogy with carpentry which I hope will foster greater understanding of the merits of simple software. [kuro5hin.org]
The best pieces of software I have used provided an easy interface for beginners. However, as I got more experience and dug a little, I progressively uncovered more complicated and powerful interfaces. Good games are just like that. Simple enough at first that you are drawn in; then, as you get addicted, more features come in.
I guess my point is that simplicity doesn't preclude power, so long as the issue of user learning is well understood. However it's probably easier to design separate pieces of software, each for a specific range of uses.
7:39:10 AM
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What he said.... Sainteros has written a fabulous sentence, at the end of an inspiring entry:
Those who treat self-knowledge as though it were self-indulgence not only walk in darkness, they spread their own darkness against the light.
I wish I'd written that, but since I don't have the presence of mind for it, I'm very glad he did. [both2and: beyond binary]
7:23:37 AM
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A special interest group on knowledge management research
[This is a follow-up of KM Summer School]
Hard work and a lot of e-mails of last two weeks had paid off: Special Interest Group on KM Research - Quaerere was created at Knowledge Board.
From Quaerere: goals and objectives
«Quaerere - Research and Action on the Learning Society - constructing meaning and knowledge through interaction»
"Quaerere" - from Latin (pronounced Kuerere), means to inquire, to search, to investigate and also to want.
Motto: "Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion" (Originally from Francis Bacon, Novum Organum)
Purpose: to promote the building blocks of the Learning Society
Goal: Theory building and practice improvement on knowledge management and organisational learning through reflexive interaction
Objectives:
- To work on-line and to meet regularly face-to-face
- To develop peer support and personal commitment to research goals
- To report on the process while we go through our work and interaction
- To work in an interdisciplinary way
- To invite other researchers in Knowledge Management related areas
[Mathemagenic]
6:42:25 AM
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Moby Launches Book Club
"Moby has started a book club as part of his current World tour.
He wants fans to bring along second-hand books to swap....
He told The Sun: 'When someone finishes a book they put it in a little box and when someone else wants a new book they look into the box and find one.'
'Ozzy Osbourne used to snort ants. Led Zeppelin had sex with hookers on private planes. And I start a book club. Because one can only snort so many ants and have so much sex before one starts to long for the comfort and companionship of a book.' " [Ananova, via LISNews.com, via The Shifted Librarian]
In case you're interested, the musician also keeps an online diary.
6:38:23 AM
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More on post-9/11 censorship....The removal of sensitive information from web sites is undermining scientific research in many fields. Quoting Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' project on government secrecy: web censorship "either creates unnecessary labor to identify and track down a copy of the missing document or it yields an inferior or incomplete product." [FOS News]
6:32:49 AM
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Wednesday, October 16, 2002
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Facets coming soon to a blog near you
A Different Way Of Looking At Blogs. On the SIGIA-L mailing list, Peter Van Dijck pointed to something very cool.
"Tanya Pixelcharmer's weblog as viewed through Facetmap: http://facetmap.com/demo/browse.jsp?map=pixelcharmer. Tanya exported her metadata as XFML (http://xfml.org) using a template in Moveabletype, and imported it in facetmap."
I'm still wrapping my mind around this one, but it's an interesting alternative view of a blog. Kind of a cross between liveTopics and Yahoo with more format options.
[The Shifted Librarian]
» Radio users (with liveTopics) get to play too:
http://facetmap.com/demo/browse.jsp?map=curiouserandcuriouser
is a recent copy of my Radio weblog exported to XFML. At the moment liveTopics aren't hierarchical so they all appear as a big glob, but I'm working on this.
At the moment I define two facets that you can browse in. The first, liveTopics, is all the topics I have manually added to my posts. The second, Date of Publication, is automatically generated by the exporter. I'll be adding other facets as I go (suggestions welcomed).
[Curiouser and curiouser!]
Tanya's facets are Date, Topic, Process, and Format. Date and Format are easy to understand; the other two seem more arbitrary. The coming challenge will be either to find a magical way of making sense of other people's facets, or progressively establishing agreement on standards (presumably through competition).
10:27:33 PM
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What is real, and how do we tell?
This remarkable site uses The Matrix and Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" as jumping boards for asking many questions about the nature of reality, society, and culture. Very thought-provoking, provided you take the time to savour it.
6:58:31 AM
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I just came across an informative page by quantum computing pioneer Charles Bennett entitled "A range of toilets, from low-tech to high-tech, in various parts of the world, including unusual facilities in two academic institutions". Just thought I'd share the find.
6:45:00 AM
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Tuesday, October 15, 2002
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Should you trust your collaborators?
NY Times: On Scientific Fakery and the Systems to Catch It (via Universal Rule)
In some ways, the pivotal figure in the research misconduct case at Bell Labs was not Dr. J. Hendrik Schön, the scientist fired last month for fabricating and manipulating data, but Dr. Bertram Batlogg, the man who hired him in 1998.
An investigatory panel cleared Dr. Batlogg, and all other co-authors, of knowledge of the deception. But without Dr. Batlogg's imprimatur, the remarkable findings in superconductivity and organic electronics, now discredited, would have been scrutinized more skeptically sooner.
[...] There is also a nagging worry that many other cases of scientific dishonesty are not caught and that someone less ambitious in scope Dr. Schön's claims were groundbreaking, and, if true, Nobel Prize-worthy may achieve a quietly successful career. One in four respondents to a poll in 1991 by the journal Science said they had personally encountered fabrication, falsification or theft of research in the prior 10 years.
I don't know about you, but I find this one in four number astonishing. This is science, not Las Vegas! Here are one scientist's thoughts on trusting collaborators:
"You have to trust your collaborators or you're not a collaborator. On the other hand, collaborations occur when you sit and argue over the data. Every collaborator has a responsibility that they're comfortable with what's said in the papers."
See also my earlier post, Publish and perish.
4:40:05 PM
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Why do we love puzzles?
Here are a few quotes from a recent review of "The Puzzle Instinct" by Marcel Danesi.
Danesi's most repeated theme song along these lines draws on the observation of British mystery writer P.D. James that all mystery stories and puzzles ultimately serve our desire for the "restoration of order." We love solving puzzles, he suggests, because unlike the big questions of life, they're solvable.
Puzzles, Danesi maintains, provide "comic relief" from "the angst earned by the unanswerable larger questions... . Since there are no definitive answers to the large-scale questions, we are strangely reassured by the answers built into the small-scale ones."
Certainty has a definite power of attraction. But there's also a thrill (I'd even venture to say joy) in finding yourself in a questioning state of mind when you're thinking about the problem. Induced curiosity is why we also enjoy watching stories unfold, regardless of whether they end with a definite answer or a question mark. (By the way, here's a gratuitous link to an interesting page about movies of the question mark type.)
[...]
Might puzzles distract people from real-world problems, providing, like spectator sports, an easy escape from life's important matters? Might they encourage intellectual solipsism, ingenuity for the sake of ingenuity, emotional distance from other people, an excessive desire to control? Those issues never come under discussion.
That's an interesting question, but one that can be asked about any hobby, and many intellectual endeavors as well. The puzzles I like most have a more or less direct relationship to real-world problems. But purely artificial puzzles, it seems to me, are useful as well because they make you develop strategies and ways of thinking that can sometimes come in handy in "life's important matters".
Of course, if you spent your entire life solving artificial puzzles, you wouldn't get a chance to put any of this wisdom to practical use. Still, if you published your solutions, the ideas might eventually be applied to real-world problems by someone else. Just look at what mathematics has done for us lately. It seems very hard to demonstrate that a given idea will never find any use in the real world.
4:03:45 PM
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Nonaka and technology. Last week, I ended a blog entry with the question, "Do current collaboration tools effectively facilitate Nonaka's four patterns of knowledge creation?" I then came across A. D. Marwick's article, "Knowledge management technology", which goes into considerable depth in answering my question.
Marwick covers several technologies and does well to explain that each technology is only a component of a knowledge management solution:
The individual technologies are not in themselves knowledge management solutions. Instead, when brought to market they are typically embedded in a smaller number of solutions packages, each of which is designed to be adaptable to solve a range of business problems. Examples are portals, collaboration software, and distance learning software. Each of these can and does include several different technologies.
[Kumquat's Musings]
The article looks pretty good and seems to have a quite broad perspective. I'll try to find time to read it.
10:39:09 AM
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Peerfear.org features a blog on reputation systems. [Smart Mobs]
Very interesting. I like to make my own mind about people, but selecting who to look at in the first place can benefit from outside help. So many people out there... so reputation systems can come in handy. But it would be a mistake to put too much faith in them. Ultimately, you have to trust yourself. Never forget that.
10:33:44 AM
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At last...
Is There a God?. This article presents a philosophical framework for discussing the nature and existence of God. [...] The attached poll will decide, once and for all, the nature and existence of God. Join the ultimate debate now! [kuro5hin.org]
10:26:49 AM
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Comparing weblog software. I have just come across a very handy weblog comparison site. It works like this: you pick up to five different packages to compare, and it builds you a table of features, showing which package does what. Very, very handy.... [Column Two via thomas n. burg | randgänge]
10:25:26 AM
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Thinking more efficiently
Thinking about thinking. That's the difference between outliner users and everyone else. They think about thinking. They're aware of their own process. Only people who think about thinking get to a place where they can invest in being more efficient in their thinking. Maybe "only" is too strong a word. Some people say they don't think in outlines. Yeah yeah. But hanging information on a hierarchy makes it easy to forget it and focus on new ideas and relationships. It's a good way to relax intellectually. ";->" [Scripting News]
Now I haven't yet been able to find a clear account of what outlining really boils down to, but this post draws a few connections to my mind about important ideas that got popular in programming contexts but are really more about thinking than about programming.
- Encapsulation, where you combine separate elements into a whole, often greatly simplifies thinking by relieving you from the burden of thinking about the details. Thinking about complex things, like human collectivities, is virtually impossible without encapsulation. Of course in encapsulating you must be careful not to hide important stuff inside the capsule.
- Inheritance is a way of compressing knowledge. If I tell you "a weblog is a kind of website" and you already know what websites are, then I've given you a lot of knowledge in very few words, because you've just learned that everything you know about websites also applies to weblogs.
Dave's comments on relaxing intellectually really ring true to me. I often strive to make myself comfortable in my thinking, to simplify my view of things as much as possible, until thinking becomes almost frictionless. Sometimes I forget to do that, though, and the going gets tough (unless I'm performing some kind of mental routine, in which case I'm not really thinking at all).
10:10:08 AM
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Knowledge flow: the water metaphor
Knowledge Flow describes how knowledge behaves in a company. The best analogy is that of water. Like water, knowledge is not static. It flows about a company from person to person, carrying thoughts and ideas to new places. It seeks out cracks and flows through into new territory. Sometimes a flow gets trapped and goes nowhere resulting in stagnation and other times it creates a standing wave and ideas build into something never before seen.
During a Knowledge Game session I saw a powerful example of this. The group of seven participants formed their chairs into a small circle no more than 2 metres across and began a dialogue on the nature of knowledge. As an observer and using the analogy of water I saw a small but deep pool into which ideas were pouring and then sloshing around. Ideas were tangible as they flowed across from person to person, or rippled around the edges until somebody latched onto one and gave it the energy needed to become a wave, at which point it could cross the container by itself.
For me, I now have a powerful image with which to understand flow. More reading on knowledge flow can be found in a previous posting on The Experience of the Soul.
[thought?horizon]
I'm particularly fond of the standing wave idea. When the groove comes among a group of people, you can practically see them "tune into the same frequency" and act much more intensely, both as individuals and as a group. It's an exciting moment whenever it happens.
9:31:57 AM
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Bias in the Blogosphere
Robert Corr has written a pretty interesting essay, Bias in the Blogosphere, for his class on Media and Politics. The essay's chock full of links, and does a good job of pulling together debated issues in blogging and ideas about blogging. His references are a treat: he'll link the groovyest words in a citation to the source (most are online, some are from books and for them he links to the amazon book page), and he's put the correctly formatted academic reference in the title tag for each link, so you see it if you hover your mouse over the link. There are a lot of good links, and it's elegantly and bloggishly done. I'd have liked an old-fashioned bibliography as well. And I don't agree with his conclusions, but hey, that's OK. [Jill/txt]
I don't agree either. For me the point in blogging is not to maximize your immediate readership, but rather to engage in conversation with thinking people who you can learn from. Of course there are mainstream themes and ideas which are given more space by the mass of bloggers. But what matters is that it doesn't prevent anyone from creating smaller, quiet and cozy spaces to discuss non-mainstream topics. Topics like the evolution of knowledge sharing.
After reading this piece, I feel even less compelled to spend time visiting the politically-oriented corner of blogspace. I have a sense that people are talking past one another more often than not. But perhaps I'm prejudiced.
9:21:24 AM
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Monday, October 14, 2002
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Sharing accelerates discovery
Sir John Sulston, one the co-winners of this year's Nobel Prize for medicine, attributes his scientific success to a spirit of open sharing of knowledge and information. Quoting Sir John: The nematode worms on which he experimented "worked so well because the community held an ethos of sharing --just as the public genome projects have-- from the beginning. We gave all our results to others as soon as we had them. From sharing, discovery is accelerated in the community. Research is hastened when people share results freely." (Thanks to James Meek in The Guardian.) [FOS News]
To a certain extent this is obvious. The big issue is how to cultivate the spirit of open sharing.
10:24:14 PM
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Sunday, October 13, 2002
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Lessig Explains, Taiwan Listens. Larry Lessig has posted his own analysis of the Eldred v. Ashcroft case in his blog (and no, I'm not going to say "bl**g", blog is bad enough already). He is happy that the court understood the problems of copyright term extension, and hopeful that it will recognize it as unconstitutional. [infoAnarchy]
10:30:16 PM
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Information Glut and Knowledge Creation in Biotechnology
 I've just read Richard Gayle's document on knowledge management in biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Lots of interesting stuff in there some of it specific to biotech, some more general in applicability. In particular, I'd never seen the diagram reproduced on the right, which I find really thought-provoking.
Here's a quote from the introduction:
[...] I realized that few people outside individual projects really follow the progress of other research projects. As companies grow and as the amount of information generated increases, fewer people have time to read the literature or are able to personally interact with those outside their particular program. This results in isolated projects, the inability to stay current, and the repetition of effort. Information flow stagnates, knowledge is only fitfully created and poor decisions get made due to lack of knowledge.
The following report looks at research describing how knowledge is created from information. A unifying principle in much of the work is that people must interact to create knowledge. Simply examining a database can not do it. Information must be dispersed in order for knowledge to be created. A company has some hope, then, if it can create an environment that fosters personal interaction. This is easy in small companies but becomes much harder as they increase in size. Luckily, technology may help attack this problem, providing a way for people to interact much more efficiently, allowing much larger groups of people to come together to create knowledge.
10:24:31 PM
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MIT Symposium: reputation mechanisms in online communities
Next April there will be a conference on reputation in online communities in Cambridge, Massachussetts. The call for papers makes it look very interesting. It starts thusly:
The production of trust is an important requirement for forming and growing open online communities. Online reputation reporting systems, such as eBay's well-known feedback mechanism, have emerged as an important trust building mechanism in such settings. The rising practical importance of online reputation systems invites rigorous research in this largely virgin territory. Do these systems truly promote efficient market outcomes? To what extent can they be manipulated by strategic buyers and sellers? What is the best way to design them? How should buyers (and sellers) use the information provided by such mechanisms in their decision-making process? This is just a small subset of unanswered questions, which invite exciting and valuable research.
In order to answer those questions, collaboration is needed between several traditionally distinct disciplines, such as economics, computer science, marketing, law, sociology and psychology. In each of those communities, researchers are actively working on aspects of reputation systems and their work has been well received within their own disciplines. Some researchers have described part of the design space of on-line reputation mechanisms. Others have employed game-theoretic analysis of the conditions under which reputation mechanisms should work, despite strategic behavior on the part of participants. There have been many empirical studies of whether reputation affects price and probability of sale at eBay.
By the way, there's a community of research on reputation mechanisms (that's how I got the info).
The opportunity it gives to build a reputation is probably the #1 reason why a skilled professional would want to start a weblog - see my earlier post on blogging for reputation.
10:11:35 PM
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Copyleft
2006
Sebastien Paquet.
Last update:
4/22/2006; 12:07:08 PM.
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