The issue is user created context

Jeff Jarvis discovers North America user created content

OK, his post-9/11 postings were the direct inspiration for my blogging, and I find his old journo crossover views on this medium fascinating. But occasionally Jeff Jarvis fluffs one, so I’m going to have to diss my blog-daddy. In this case, he happens upon the revelation that about 2/3 of AOL users’ time is spent with other users’ contributions, and riffs from there. Fine to speculate on the implications, but I’m here to tell you this is old news. Similar distributions of user time date well back into the proprietary days of AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy. Remember, I used to read usage time and income reports from the entrails of the CompuServe accounting system. This isn’t anything novel, nor does it have to do with the advent of blogs, social software, or anything else trendy. Same thing happened with crappy old ASCII forums, CB, and proprietary e-mail. It’s related to human nature, not the specific technology – so long as it’s two-way – and that in many ways is very good news.

We now return you to your previously scheduled new media speculation. [Due Diligence]

Glad to see someone out there who has been paying attention all along. You have to be very careful not to get caught up in the news business’s need to pretend there’s something new every day. Couple that with most people’s aversion to anything resembling a sense of history and you get breathless commentary on old news.

I once had the chance to hear the late Herb Simon give a speech on what constituted news. He walked the audience through a funny sketch of his gradual abandonment of the daily newspaper, the nightly news broadcast, the weekly newsmagazine, and monthly magazines as devoid of anything that resembled news. He finally settled on reading the annual update volume to the Encyclopedia Brittanica as being about the right frequency and perspective for his getting updated on what had happened that mattered during the year.

Staying in this context, I’m quite certain that Simon’s primary sources of information about stuff that mattered to him was his network of colleagues and friends, not “content providers” offering to keep him up to date.

What I think may be relevant today is that new tools (weblogs, wikis, etc) are pushing forward along the dimension of context management instead of content. Perhaps what we are building with weblogs, RSS, and the rest is the infrastructure for personalizing and managing context on a new scale.

Political Compass

Just took the political compass test.  I am right between the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.  Nice company. [John Robb's Weblog]

Looks like John and I are in the same general vicinity, as is Dave Winer. Certainly a more interesting way to think about things than a one-dimensional left-right analysis which always feels overly limiting.  For another look at a richer way of thinking about political orientations you might want to look at Jerry Pournelle's “All Ends fo the Spectrum.”

Social networking – the link is the thing…

DM Review – The Link is the Thing, Part 3
By Richard Hackathorn

A partial list of references mentioned in this three part series:

Valdis Krebs :: Post-Merger Integration, Scale-Free Networks, The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia, Small World Project – Columbia University, Norah Jones, Citations: Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications – Wasserman, Faust (ResearchIndex), DM Review – Farming Web Resources for the Data Warehouse , The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web – Page, Brin, Motwani, Winograd (ResearchIndex), Pagerank Explained Correctly with Examples, Pagerank Explained. Google’s PageRank and how to make the most of it., SIENA, Associative Link Analysis resource site.

…Part 1 of this article (August 2003 issue of DM Review) reviews the work in network analysis of complex systems, particularly the recent research into the small-world (SW) property, aristocratic-egalitarian (A-E) distinction and tipping points. Part 2 (September 2003 issue of DM Review) applies these concepts to the business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing (DW) fields with a new methodology called Associative Link Analysis (ALA) by discussing the translation of typical warehouse schema into an associative graph form. This article, Part 3, the final in the series, describes several metrics for analyzing graphs, strategies and tactics based on the SW property, and implementation issues…

Additional reading on a few of the concepts introduced in this three part series:

“Small World Property”: Locality, Hierarchy, and Bidirectionality in the Web (ResearchIndex),
“Small World Architectures”: Multiple Scales in Small-World Networks (ResearchIndex),
“Tipping Points”: Tipping Points,
“ER Schema”: A Formal Framework for ER Schema Transformation – McBrien, Poulovassilis (ResearchIndex).

[judith meskill’s knowledge notes…]

Great collection of substantive resources on network analysis. I wish that more of the designers of services like Ryze, LinkedIn, and the like had read and absorbed these lessons before launching into software development. I see little evidence that they have and with the lemming like rush of VC money into this space, I’m betting on a mini-bubble popping in the not too distant future.

Lunch with Rick Klau

Lunch with Jim McGee.

Just returned to the office from a thoroughly engagaing lunch with Jim McGee. Jim is every bit as smart and engaging as his weblog would have you think he is.

As has become the norm in first-time meetings with fellow bloggers, all of the ordinary “getting to know you” stuff is gone. We already know each other, we already have an idea of what interests each other, and we jump right into a completely thought-provoking discussion. It was true when I met Chris & Joy, Ernie, Buzz, Matt, Denise, Jonas, Ross and many others.

John Robb wrote about this last year too. With “social software” getting so much attention lately, I think we would be wise to recognize that weblogs have become one of the best ways to get to know people you should know. You decide which people to associate with in part based on what they know — and blogs help establish that.

I’ve been fortunate enough to meet several of my friends face to face, but the most surprising thing is that after meeting them face to face it only reaffirmed what I already knew: they’re interesting, thoughtful people who I’m lucky to know.

By Rick Klau. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

Rick skips over the importance of two to an excellent conversation. After almost two years of reading each other's blogs, several phone conversations, and multiple last-minute lunch cancellations, Rick and I finally managed to break bread together.

We did indeed dive right into several conversations that were both challenging and entertaining. Something that would not be possible, by the way, simply as a side effect of several of the various networking websites such as Ryze or LinkedIn. While these sites may have a role to play, the picture you can build of someone on the basis of following their blog on a sustained basis (preferably in your aggregator) is not something that can be replaced by the dry recitation of resume tidbits and interests that make up the relatively static content of these networking sites.

Looking forward to future lunches with Rick.

Congratulations Full Professor AKMA

Rest of the Day.

After mass, I went to lunch with the adult education coordinator of the parish (St. Elizabeth’s, Glencoe — which always makes me think of Scotland’s infamous massacre) that’s invited me out to talk about The DaVinci Code. She and I traded ideas about the panel discussion, which includes Prof. Barbara Newman of Northwestern University and Brian Hastings of Church of Our Savior, over an Indian buffet. She’s rather more sympathetic to Gnosticism than I am, but we held a lively and wide-ranging converstion. It sounds as though the church will be packed; she’s estimating three to four hundred people will attend, overflowing the sanctuary and spilling into an adjacent parish room. If you’re coming, come early, I guess.

When I got back to my office, the Dean rang me up; the Board of Trustees had voted to promote me to full Professor. It sounded as though he said “effective immediately,” but I got lost in a jumble of subsequent topics. To be on the safe side, you may kneel and call me “Full Professor Adam” when you address me. [emphasis added]

Then, alas! I had to drop Margaret off on the train. Pip did her Halloween bit, Si is off at a (church) all-night lock-in, and I’m exhausted. I didn’t sleep well last night; tonight, I’m about to crumple altogether.

[AKMA’s Random Thoughts]

So typical of AKMA to try to bury the news about himself in this post. Even Boards of Trustees do eventually get things right sometimes.  Congratulations on your promotion!

My subscriptions network

I rave about the value of my aggregator all the time. It's way past time I make that list of sources available. I've added a link over to the right of all the subscriptions I follow in “Radio”. It's a much more dynamic list than my blogroll, which I'm coming to think of as a passing and obsolete concept. I've set it up so that changes to the subscription list will flow here once a day.

These are the bright minds that contribute to my evolving view of this world we live and work in.

happy belated blogiversary…a haiku gift from Judith Meskill

jim mcgee's musings
fine fodder for fomenting
knowledge work wisdom…

haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill

in celebration of jim's two year blogiversary and his generous 'virtual' accessibility…

What a lovely gift. First time I've ever been the subject of a haiku. Thank you Judith.

BTW, if you aren't following Judith's weblog (RSS feed) you're missing important insights into the world of knowledge work.

Welcome misbehaving.net

we're misbehavin'. I’m delighted to announce the debut of a new weblog on the topic of gender and technology: misbehaving.net We’ve got a really amazing group of women participating on this site: danah boyd Caterina Fake Meg Hourihan me (Liz Lawley) Dorothea Salo Halley Suitt Gina Trapani Jill Walker We all believe it’s important to begin changing the public perception of women in the context of technology, and that one of the best ways to do that is to make women’s accomplishments, writings, and contributions more public and visible. I hope you’ll add the new site to your blogroll and/or aggregator list!… [mamamusings]

From the site's description:

misbehaving.net is a weblog about women and technology. It's a celebration of women's contributions to computing; a place to spotlight women's contributions as well point out new opportunities and challenges for women in the computing field.

Since I already have about half the group posting here in my subscription list, I suspect this will be worth the attention. The RSS feed (RSS 1.0 format) is truncated, which wouldn't be my first choice, but better than no feed at all.