Seb's Open Research
|
Friday, November 15, 2002
|
|
| |
What's up with group-forming?
The discussions in our nascent group-forming community are moving along at a nice pace. New Civilization Network founder Flemming Funch and Open Space specialist Chris Corrigan have joined us and are bringing very interesting perspectives.
It's nice to see how often practical concerns and more philosophical issues intersect. It would seem that self-knowledge and awareness of expectations are personal keys to defining and finding groups that suit one's needs. See for instance this by Flemming, commenting on my post on what I call personal activation levels. There's a discussion of group purposes here, where we're trying to find a distinction between "interest groups" and "purposeful groups" or teams.
Eric is taking a stab at theorizing group-forming systems and propose to define group-space as the set of potential groups in a group-forming system. He distinguishes between finite, or predetermined, group-space (such as implemented by meetup.com) and infinite group-space systems. The latter type of system has more potential for allowing self-organization.
Here are some of the ongoing discussions:
 11:34:09 AM
|
|
Citing woes. This is a very rough piece on the "how to cite others in your Weblog post" issue that is coming up every now and then. I had no time to review and edit but wanted to put it out quickly before the recent interest here and there fades away ;-) Comments and feedback wanted... [Seblogging News]
I hope to find time to assimilate what Seb said in this piece. But as he said it's a little rough. Perhaps I'll wait for a better polished version.
11:05:50 AM
|
|
Involving parents in education: an experiment
Parents Book Club Web Log.
Eleven (maybe 12) parents, three teachers, one book. So let's see what happens with this. At some point I'm going to have to take a week out of my excruciatingly busy life to really look at what the heck my students and I are getting from all of these "experiments". Not going to happen any time soon, however. And besides, that's the heavy lifting part. This part is FUN! [Will Richardson]
Sounds like Will managed to attract enough parents for his little collaboration experiment... Congratulations! [Seblogging News]
10:54:46 AM
|
|
Web news sources: a PageRank analysis
Evan analyzes the PageRanking of news sites. "Most of the time when a site had disproportionally fewer links I could see why it still had a high pagerank. The Economist, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post are all considered important establishment news sources. What surprised me the most was how poorly both the BBC and the UK Guardian were PageRanked."
10:48:45 AM
|
|
SIAA lobbies to shut down other free access resources
More Sites Targeted For Shutdown. Having successfully shut down PubScience, a site that offered free access to scientific and technical articles, commercial publishers are now looking to attack other sources of free information. The lobbying campaign is led by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), a trade association of commercial electronic publishers. According to the SIAA, "it is fairer to charge researchers for the articles they use than to charge taxpayers for the cost of running a Web site that makes them available for free." As Peter Suber comments, "Let's get this breathtaking assertion straight. When the research is funded by the government and the articles donated by authors, then taxpaying readers should have to pay a second levy to read them, and pay it to a third party with no role in the research?" Suber calls the SIAA action "piracy." It's hard to disagree. By William Matthews, Federal Computer Week, November 13, 2002 [OLDaily]
9:57:09 AM
|
|
Copyright Contradictions in Scholarly Publishing
This paper by John Willinsky "examines contradictions in how copyright works with the publishing of scholarly journals."
This paragraph from the conclusion explains what I think is perhaps the most important point (emphasis mine):
Scholars do not share the same copyright interests as commercial academic publishers. The financial incentive for the scholars lies in the cash value of recognition and reputation, which translates into salary increases, promotions, merit bonuses, paid speaking engagements, consulting contracts, more lucrative job offers, and counter-offer retention packages. The financial value of this recognition is also realized through the research grants and awards which provide their own form of financial independence for scholars. The principal copyright (and financial) interest of researchers is to ensure that their work is properly credited when reproduced or cited, and that it is reproduced and cited as often as possible for as wide a readership as possible. Copyright protects this critical element of recognition for the author against plagiarism and other false claims to authorship.
The economic interests of faculty are not furthered by preventing illegal copies of their publication. Just the opposite.
One of my dreams would be to extend that "gift economy" system to all culture makers. I happen to think it's possible.
9:44:28 AM
|
|
Medieval Mickey Mouse Discovered. An image bearing a striking resemblance with Disney's copyrighted Mickey Mouse character was discovered on a wall in the Austrian town of Malta yesterday. The image can be seen in the Wikipedia article about Mickey Mouse. It was likely painted in c. 1300 AD. I wonder whether this means that it is now possible to use Mickey-like characters, since the image clearly is in the public domain? Of course, Disney will continue to use its trademarks to pursue all mouse thieves. [infoAnarchy]
9:28:55 AM
|
|
Examining culture at the personal level
 Brian Eno often has something interesting to say. This interview given at Edge is no exception:
Humans actually codify most of their knowledge not in terms of mathematical tables, sets of statistics and scientific laws, but in terms of metaphors. Most of the things we normally have to deal with understanding are complex, fuzzy, messy, changing, and in fact poorly delineated. We don't actually know where the boundaries of them are, let alone being able to make clear questions about them. We spend a lot of our time as ordinary humans navigating through complicated situations with one another, that require constant negotiation, and constant new attempts to understand.
[...] The work of a lot of modern culture is to say to people: you're making value. When Marcel Duchamp exhibited a lavatory, in what he called an act of deliberate aesthetic indifference, what he was saying was, "look, I can put anything in an art gallery, and I can get you to engage with that thing in a way which makes it valuable." He was quite clearly saying that it's the transaction between you and it, and this context, which creates the value.
Looking at the world of art, of culture, from the point of view of the transaction changes a lot of things. Between transactions, an individual is on a constant and predictable path. Only when he interacts and conciously process external information does he modify this path. I like to think of culture, on a personal level, as the imprint left by the successive transactions. ] frontierless [
9:17:57 AM
|
|
|
|
|
Thursday, November 14, 2002
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
|
|
|
|
Monday, November 11, 2002
|
|
| |
Biology, culture and diversity
Philippe Beaudoin: "It appears that the evolution of life was strongly dependent on diversity. I think that, since the advent of civilization, cultural diversity is playing an equally important role."
11:08:25 PM
|
|
Les mots me manquent
pour décrire ma réaction au splendide essai de la Grande Rousse sur les stades d'évolution du cybernarcissisme, cette épée de Damoclès guettant chaque carnetier. Je me demande même si je ne vais pas lui offrir de le traduire vers l'anglais.
C'est la première fois que je m'exprime dans la langue de Molière sur ce carnet, mais la circonstance l'imposait. J'espère que mes lecteurs non francophones voudront bien me pardonner cet écart de langage.
(Apologies to non-francophone readers, I had to blog this in French)
11:03:31 PM
|
|
The Google 100
Cory Doctorow: "Feeding the query string 'http' to Google causes it to barf up all the pages in its database in order of their PageRank value." [Scripting News]
This is fascinating. I was surprised to find that Google itself didn't hold the #1 spot.
10:25:48 PM
|
|
The quest for commonality
genes, neurons, internet: organizing principles of networks. How do 30,000 genes in our DNA work together to form a large part of who we are? How do one hundred billion neurons operate in our brain? The huge number of factors involved makes such complex networks hard to crack. Now, a study uncovers a strategy for finding the organizing principles of virtually any network – from neural networks to ecological food webs or the Internet.... more in [context weblog]
The linked article seems a bit thin, but this is a topic close to my heart - finding and cataloguing unifying concepts, common abstractions of wide applicability. A kind of knowledge compression, as Philippe once characterized my ideas.
I'm consistently blasted away by context weblog's aesthetic appeal. Sample just these three pages and you'll know what I mean: november, october, july. Feasts for the eyes - and the brain.
9:11:58 AM
|
|
|
|
|
Sunday, November 10, 2002
|
|
| |
Wireless communities of practice - a report from the field
Smart Mobbin w/ Hiptop Nation. "This paper examines the successful evolution of a specific smart mob into a wireless community of practice. It begins with an examination of a popular wireless blogging website "Hiptop Nation" (http://hiptop.bedope.com). "Hiptop Nation" acts as a central blogging site for owners of the "Sidekick" device, a portable handheld data communications device recently introduced by Danger (http://danger.com). The Sidekick supports wireless AOL Instant Messaging, email, SMS text messages, and web access. Users of the Sidekick can post wireless public blogs on Hiptop Nation via their Sidekick device, as well as upload photographs from the Sidekick's digital camera.
On Halloween, October 31 2002, Hiptop Nation sponsored a photo-scavenger hunt competition across the US. Participants were users of the Hiptop Nation blog site who were placed into competing teams, and participants coordinated their actions as well as acquired and uploaded photographs across the US exclusively via their Sidekick wireless devices. The hunt lasted for 24 hours.
The author of this paper participated as a member of one of the teams (Team Raven), and witnessed firsthand the evolution of an unorganized and homogeneous wirelessly-connected group of people (smart mob) into a highly motivated and organized group of team members with very common goals and flexible roles (wireless community of practice)." [Smart Mobs]
Note: the paper hasn't been written yet, as far as I can tell.
4:33:12 PM
|
|
How do latent groups become self-aware groups?
Over at group-forming, Lyn has posted an interesting short piece where he discusses labor organization to derive ideas on group-forming. Here's my reply.
[Lyn,] I would call what you're describing a "latent group". It is a set of people who have a common interest and would need to coordinate their actions in order to further that interest, as isolated actions are unlikely to succeed. The reason why they don't do it is that they are not organized. (which somehow this reminds me of that famous Mrs. Tweedy line from the movie "Chicken Run": "They're chickens ... the most stupid creatures on this planet. They don't plot, they don't scheme, and they are _not_organized !!")
In order to get organized, an essential ingredient is that members of the latent group start communicating. But that in itself is not enough, because they can't just chat about the weather - they need to to discuss and recognize their common interest. (And then make plans. And then act, but I don't want to go into that just yet.)
You're right to point out that there's no need for a powerful "common enemy" in the definition of a latent group. Our very group is a case in point, and I'll try to look at it in terms of what we've just said.
Before it came into being last month, our group was a latent group. We were all somehow interested in the area of group-forming but were not organized. However, we were all weakly connected by a communication system of email, weblogs, mailing lists and the like.
A month ago I posted something about blog-based group-forming on my weblog, triggering a few comments by other webloggers and unknowingly stepping squarely into an area of intense interest on the part of Eric, who happened to follow my weblog. Eric thought it would be a good idea to start a mailing list, so we did. We announced the list in a few places where we thought there could be folks with an interest in group-forming. Then people started subscribing and the group was born.
One thing that I think is important to notice in this is that organization was spontaneous and indeed could not itself be planned with any degree of confidence in the outcome. But it didn't happen entirely by itself either - it wouldn't have happened, at least not in this way, were it not for the fact that Eric was following my weblog, that I made this group-forming idea public, that Eric proposed to start a group, that I agreed to try it out, that other interested folks were present in the places where we announced it, etc...
All of those conditions can be seen in retrospect but couldn't be set up in advance. I suspect that this unpredictability is a fundamental element of group-forming processes. At least those that we are primarily interested in.
11:45:53 AM
|
|
Group-forming: a new beginning
As I had hinted at previously, the group-forming mailing list has been reborn over at aquameta into a running instance of the Drupal blog-centric collaboration software, and so far I'm rather pleased with the new dynamics. My email inbox is finally breathing a sigh of relief. I'm slightly worried that some people were more at ease with the mailing list and might reduce their participation as a result of the move, though. Here's the link to the new incarnation of our group-forming community. Here is the RSS feed aggregating the user blogs.
Here are a few of the new members who have recently joined us (see also this profile of the first wave of members):
- Evan Henshaw-Plath describes himself as "a programmer / tech activist who created and helps run the activist
calendar site protest.net.", and has been "very active in building out the network of indymedia centers and websites." Indymedia needs to find ways of enabling groups to form and establish their credibility as sources of news; read his intro to learn more about this very interesting issue. Evan is also involved in a project consisting in recycling old machines, loading them with free software and shipping them off to Ecuador - read "Building the underground computer railroad" over at Salon.
- Ian Glendinning, who edits the Psybertron weblog, is interested in "in how a common "language" turns a
disorganised collection of people into a group with a shared web of knowledge".
- Rainer Volz is "a consultant specializing in virtual teams, distributed projects and organizations."
- Spike Hall has "spent [his] professional life working to help teachers work to accelerate the learning of learners of all ages and motivation." He's "very interested in the group's capacity, through its stream of interactions, to accelerate knowledge-making on the part of all members."
- weitzman is one of the lead developers of Drupal. He's going to help us customize the system to our needs.
11:34:27 AM
|
|
Pushing better feeds
Sebastian Fiedler is obviously unhappy with the way a few of us handle formatting in our weblog, and rightly so.
I really enjoy reading Spike Hall, Sebastien Paquet, and Lilia Efimova... but the way they render their posts has some serious draw back for anybody who wants to cite their stuff. Their posts hit my news aggregator literally flooded with font and color tags. This is awfully bad Web publishing practice in my point of view. I thought CSS has finally brought back the idea of keeping your content separate from your style. So, why would anybody want to hard code a freaking link color in his Weblog post? I don't get it...
I can't speak for the others, but I know close to nothing about CSS and am afraid I don't have time to dig into it, so I take the dumb route and format my posts as I want to read them using the limited controls available to me in the Radio interface. I guess it wouldn't be a big deal for us three culprits to fix this, if someone would care to show us how.
Sebastian, I copied and pasted your post into my Radio entry box, and was careful not to do any fiddling with the format this time. But I'm afraid your own "freaking link colors" are themselves going to show up when this post makes it to your aggregator. I apologize in advance...
7:37:23 AM
|
|
The Next Frontier: "Intellectual Property" and Intellectual Freedom
Marjorie Heins spoke recently to people from the Colorado Association of Libraries about "a new battleground in the culture wars -- copyright". She identifies four major free-expression safety valves that counterbalance the push for control and allow creators to build on others' work:
- The first of these is the so-called idea/expression dichotomy, which allows facts and ideas to be copied as long as the author's particular language, details of plot or character, or specific imagery isn't used.
- The second free-expression safety valve is the fair use doctrine. It allows anyone to copy or quote from copyrighted works for purposes of commentary, criticism, study, or even (perhaps especially) mockery.
- The third free-expression safety valve -- and an especially important one for libraries -- is the first sale doctrine. Copyright owners control the first sale of their works, but after that, purchasers can give them away, sell them, lend them to friends, or donate them to secondhand stores, libraries, schools, or flea markets.
- The fourth free-expression safety valve is the public domain, which makes works available for republishing, translating, selling, copying, or performing as soon as the "limited time" of copyright expires.
She points out that the challenge in coming up with appropriate copyright legislation is to avoid undermining these safety valves, which would happen if we were to tightly lock everything up. Overall, a nice primer on a hot topic, without too much legal mumbo-jumbo.
[via Synapshots via the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog]
7:17:21 AM
|
|
|
|
Copyleft
2006
Sebastien Paquet.
Last update:
4/22/2006; 12:07:12 PM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves
(blue) Manila theme. |
|
|
