Describe the connections you see between Weinberger's ideas thus far and the "What is Web 2.0" and "Web Squared" articles from weeks1&2.
Weinberger has laid down some pretty interesting ideas so far, with a lot of evidence backing up many of his claims. If I was to take anything away from the book right now it would be his focus on...
The three orders of order (Physicality, order through meta data, and the digital order)
Organization in the past is generally arbitrary, a way for people to hold power
Lumping and splitting and all its reasons and outcomes
The inventive new ways people are organizing in the digital order
Obviously these ideas all revolve around the way we are organizing data online and how it is affecting the way we perceive data in our daily lives. Weinberger is looking at the how the internet is allowing people world wide to now organize whatever they do online in a more natural and human way than before. No longer are we restricted in the physical world. The ideas brought up like filtering information when being picked up versus gathered, depending on the masses to organize rather than yourself, and the usefulness of tagging tie into the articles we read in weeks 1 and 2 on the future of the web.
One of the more powerful connections between Weinberger and these articles is the article's idea of harnessing collective intelligence. O'Reilly in "What is Web 2.0" states that "Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era". This is a general idea brought up in "Everything is Miscellaneous". New ways of organizing data would not have been discovered had the users of the net not contributed to these ways, such as the delicious example brought up in chapter 5. It is up to the users of the web to discover these new natural ways of organizing.
Another similarity was O'Reilly's focus on tagging photos or maps and how that job has been taken over by gadgets we use on a daily basis (i.e. phones and cameras). It is interesting how Weinberger spends so much explaining how tagging is an important step forward for our methods of organizing, yet with O'Reilly it seems like we have already harnessed ways for machines to do the work for us.
If sensors are already tagging things for us and we no longer have to input the data for them, what other ways are we going to organize what we do digitally? Will building off of this tagging method of organization produce something wholly different? I am excited to see what comes next.
It is very interesting how you compared the readings. I like that you showed both the similarities, as well as some conflicting ideas. I like the questions you have asked. I think that a key to reading was that computers and collective intelligence have to always work together in order to ensure the order. While we may tag and help the Internet organize certain metadata now, we cannot be sure what that same metadata will be categorized in the future. Computers are smart, but I think the key is that with out people to help define, or rather, give tags, the computer would be unable to wholly evolve on its own. Although it is a good question to ask, since technology has changed in ways never imagined...
ReplyDeleteI actually appreciate the fact that you asked questions. I believe that stating "tagging" as the final step would be closed minded, so I should think that there will be a next step; as to what it is, however, I cannot foresee. Therefore, I, too, am excited to see what we come up with next or what the computers will come up with next.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really nice post David. I like the way you summarize the key points and then draw connections between them through the use of evidence. Kudos. I also really like your questions: "If sensors are already tagging things for us and we no longer have to input the data for them, what other ways are we going to organize what we do digitally? Will building off of this tagging method of organization produce something wholly different?"
ReplyDeleteGood questions indeed. I think we've only just begun to see what can happen w/ mobile sensory data. Should be interesting.
I agree with all the similarities that you point out, but I don't know if I agree with O'Reilly and his idea that the machine is beginning to harness ways to tag without us telling it too. I still think believe that we have to tell the machine what to do and without us it cannot function properly. The machine cannot think nor feel YET!
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