One of the central parts of my research was (is) interpersonal interactions. Given that interaction is now often more likely to mean ‘interacting with a computer’, I qualify interactions by pointing to the interpersonal nature of interactions between people. Later in my thesis, I attempt to define the distinctions between interactions between people and interaction with an artefact (ie a computer). I’m not sure that I have a clear picture of those differences, nor a good set of terminology that distinguishes them. However, there are distinct differences between the various forms of interaction. Hence the discussion of interpersonal interactions. Read more of Interpersonal Interactions
Posts Tagged ‘ideas’
Talking to myself
I’ve started a number of posts over the last few days, but not gotten around to finishing them. It’s kind of testing the ideas on paper (or the screen or whatever metaphor you want to use). I think I’m talking to myself. It’s partly the idea that this here bloggy thing is all about what I find interesting, or at least workable. Obviously, not every thing I start writing is workable. I have some ideas that when I put down, I realise that they don’t quite work. There’s some basic premise that’s missing. So I leave them there. In drafts. Perhaps I’ll get back to them.
I have gone back over them occasionally and worked out that some would just never come together and I delete them, one or two have been worthwhile pushing through but there is still a whole heap of them that haven’t been rejected or moved forward yet. I suppose that’s part of my internal conversation with myself and the blog is part of the external conversation.
I want to keep working on the idea that a blog is more about collaborating with yourself, even while it’s also opening up to others. There’s a kind of reflexivity that comes with writing and I know I don’t do enough. I guess the idea of writing is now so bound up in what I do for a living, that the fun has gone out of it. How do I get that back?
Perhaps I should just push some of my less fully formed ideas out and let them float. I don’t know.
I have way too many interests to maintain a coherent framework in this forum. Which perhaps suggests I need an incoherent framework.
To quote myself: “flooble”!
What price our culture?
I’ve been reading up (again) on Project Xanadu again for MWT[1]. This forms part of the history of hypertext. But I always feel a dis-ease at some of the concepts embodied in that ‘proposal’. According to the page at Wikipedia, one of the 17 Rules of Xanadu[2] is that each individual is uniquely identified. Each document is uniquely (and securely) identified[3]. Each use (transclusion) includes a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed[4]. So that idea I just copied from Wikipedia? Transcluded. It would require a royalty payment and an automatic link backwards and forwards and indelibly.
So what would happen if I dumped this blog? Erased this post? Maybe I couldn’t because of the transclusion. But that’s not really my point.
The thing I really like about Wikipedia is directly (and inversely) related to what I am uncomfortable with about Xanadu, about the idea of putting a price on our culture. Wikipedia allows us free and unfettered access to culturally relelvant ideas. Yes, there are issues about what is included or excluded from Wikipedia, but generally, if you want an overview of a topic, Wikipedia has it. And it’s free.
This is also the problem I have with the Recording (music) and Movie industries. They seem to want to create our culture[5], but they also want us to pay and pay and pay. When we hear a piece of music that speaks to us, that we share with our friends, that helps bind us as a group, that music becomes part of our culture, our identity. That’s why musicians make music[6], they want to connect with us and allow us to connect to each other. I really get annoyed at the notion that we have to pay for each and every version of a song that speaks to us, that we appropriate for our own purpose, our own identity.
Transclusion, Xanadu, comes with this same level of cost for our culture. We will never own ideas. We may never learn new things because each idea is already transcluded (or completely excluded) from our grasp. I read recently about a newfangled piece of equipment that would allow the identification of people thinking ‘terroristic’ thoughts[7] as they passed through an airport. How far will this technology go before they can identify that we are thinking a song and are thus liable for royalties? When does a song, an idea, become our own?
Our culture seems to be up for ransom. Every single use, every idea, every development is already owned[8]. We all stand to lose if we cannot appropriate ideas for our own use. We lose if we cannot find information on Wikipedia and simply link to it. I don’t have to know everything about Project Xanadu, I don’t need to link and transclude the ideas, because I can remix them, I can shift them, I can change them. That’s what makes the web as we know it so interesting!
- Mobile Workforce Technologies [↩]
- Number 3 to be exact [↩]
- Rule 10 [↩]
- Rule 9 [↩]
- or at least some versions of it [↩]
- or so I’m led to believe [↩]
- If I do a search for “identifying terrorist thought patterns” will I be flagged as a potential Person of Interest? Or will I find over 200000 hits? And how could I include this idea without the 200000 hits of the people already talking about it? And which is the original? [↩]
- or should that be pwned!!! [↩]
Rants
I just had a long rant on my old blog (the Griffith ‘official’ one). I’m not sure why, but that interface really irks me. I seem to continually get annoyed every time I sit down to write something there.
It got me thinking though about the whole web2.0 thing. Web2.0 is supposed to be about use-generated content, about community and involvement, and yet, there seems to be a need for control as well as other issues that are really starting to surface. I noted this morning (via my sister) that the whole web2.0 sharing thing is problematic. It seems (according to the New York Times) that web2.0 site Bebo.com has been sold for a whopping $850 million. That strikes me (and Billy too) as being quite amazing particularly as the whole of the site is based around user-generated content. Apparently, the owner of Bebo wanted to make sure that it was good for artists to put their music on the site, that there wasn’t an implied licence to use stuff perpetually (which a lot of licences state), but how then does he justify making so much of the back of these artists? How does he get to sell something for so much that has little value without the user-generated content? When will we see a licence that states that if (when?) the site is sold for a whopping amount some of that will be returned to some of the artists who busted their guts to get stuff out and some recognition? Why isn’t some of that being returned to the creative people?
It seems to me that we’re setting up a similar system to the old ‘labels’, where they make the money and the artist just gets recognition. Recognition won’t pay the bills, sadly.
There seems to be two kinds of social network system being set up. There is the open resources variety (kind of like Wikipedia and WikiEducator) where the objective is to get more content out there for the benefit of millions, and the other sort, which is supposedly open, but which results in someone making millions while the bunnies trying to make it work in some way to make a living make nothing except an increased reputation. I can easily participate in the former (I do have a job that keeps me going, although for how long given my latest rant), and I have very little to offer in the the latter (yes, I can sing, but it’s just not very pleasurable for anyone else). So how do we get these two different models doing what they do best? Getting things to people who want or need them?
At one level, I suppose that’s one of the differences. People need educational resources, but we want music, we want the cultural value of those other resources, we want to belong even just through the knowing of something that speaks to us. Many of us are willing to pay for that, provided we don’t feel ripped off (think of the time wasted watching all those ‘piracy is bad’ messages at the beginning of movies – we just paid for the frelling thing, but if we rip it, if we break some laws in some places we don’t have to put up with being accused of that which we just did in order to avoid being called pirates).
I just mispelt accused as acussed. I think there was a message in that.
Wow – Computerworld story about the BOOK!
Computerworld – Book looks at IT’s chic appeal to attract girl power
I’ve been meaning to blog about this, but with the launch on the weekend, and semester starting last week, I haven’t done it yet. I’m so proud of Jenine’s effort in this, and the attention it’s getting.
See my Flickr for images of the prelaunch fun and games. And the book has it’s own Flickr too.
Tags: book, gender, ideas, tech girls are chic!