Tag Archives: ponderings

General

Marketplace of ideas

2006/01/21 – 22:54

The idea of the Internet (or any other cloud of technology you might choose) as a “marketplace of ideas” is an evocative one. But it occurs to me that the idea brings along one of the flaws of marketplace thinking that could be even more damaging in the realm of ideas than in the realm of products-and-services.

Just a moment ago, on a blog that I follow, I read an article that made me a bit sick to my stomach. It wasn’t that the author was totally off his rocker, just that I couldn’t agree with his premises and found his conclusions to be way off the mark. This being the worst of three or four times that I’ve had that reaction to articles on the blog, I removed it from my feed list.

That’s the flaw I’m talking about. “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it” is the rule by which I make many decisions in the “real world”, and also in the “world of ideas”. That’s also an argument I hear advanced against someone who complains about a product, service, company or idea. But that’s a pretty weak sort of choice, “yes or no!”. What about some “yes, and…”, “no, but…”, “here’s another choice…”, etc.

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General

The success trap

2006/01/10 – 02:01

I’ve seen lots of articles or books or whatever with that title, or similar. However, I haven’t really seen many that talk about this particular trap. The trap I’m talking about is believing that your definition of success fits everyone else.

It isn’t a good idea, says I, to think that other people would have to have the exact same circumstances in their lives as you have in yours for them to feel happy.

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General

Wikipedia, media, academics, etc.

2006/01/04 – 03:22

This article gives a fairly reasonable-sounding overview of Wikipedia’s latest appearaces in the newspaper headlines:

JOHO – December 29, 2005: Why the media can’t get Wikipedia right

This got me to thinking about the fact that, despite its shortcomings, the academic model of knowledge transfer has one clearly good effect: it forces researchers to learn to write (usually).

One of the problems of the journalistic model (highlighted in the Wikipedia thing) is that, except for the fields that are popular enough to have dedicated news staff (politics, weather, sports…), journalists are people who know how to write but don’t necessarily know much about what they’re writing about. If there wasn’t a specialization between the knowers and the writers, news outlets would have a lot fewer incidences of distortion.

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General

Don’t let the door hit you…

2006/01/01 – 07:25

… wait, there isn’t a door. I think it’s pretty cool that the Web doesn’t really have much need for ‘exits’ because you’re never really stuck ‘inside’ somewhere. So if someone doesn’t like what they find on a site, it’s not even a matter of ‘you know where the door is’, it’s more like… well, a better analogy fails to strike me at the moment.

There are those who don’t like the fact that the Web isn’t sticky, and they have devised some methods that can psychologically or technologically limit users’ ability to surf along, but overall, it seems people are enjoying the freedom and will tend to preserve it.

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General

I’m not sure I want [blank]

2005/12/10 – 03:45

I’m not sure I want [blank]. ‘cuz then I’d have to find a place to put it, get a box to hold it, lock it up when I’m gone, justify my keeping it even when I’m not using it, watch that it doesn’t get burned in a fire, buy insurance against it, pay taxes on it, make sure it doesn’t get stolen, clean it, decide each day whether I might want to trade it for something else, check to see whether some part of it has decayed and replace that, remember where I put it, remember not to sit on it, push it aside when the couch wants to go there and push it aside to the first place when the couch moves again, count it when I’m counting my things, give it to my girlfriend when she needs it and make sure she gives it back, watch the new ads to see if there’s a new coating to put on it, assess its value from time to time, categorize it, catalog it, wait for it to appreciate, wonder if it will ever stop depreciating, compare it to my neighbor’s, water it, test to see if it’s where that smell is coming from, remember the specs so I can tell others about it or decide when I need to upgrade it, know how to operate it, forget it when I actually need it, tell people not to buy it for me because I already have one, search around for the label that says where it was made and chastise myself because it’s not the right place, move it with me to the next apartment, hide it when my mom comes over, keep it warm, keep it dry…

On the other hand, it is pretty fuckin’ cool.

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General

Egos, search engines

2005/11/06 – 11:53

Hmmm, since I posted this, I tried the ‘lurgid’ search again. My blog is ‘no longer’ ‘number 1’ for that search. That, of course, is not a big deal. However, I wonder why it was the first time I tried it.

I have a feeling that the concept of ‘number 1 for that search’ is no longer always a meaningful one. At least Google (and probably other engines) has talked about using inferred (or directly known) data about the searcher to augment the search terms themselves to make for better searches. Given my gmail account, they know my name. So they could very well rerank my blog posts in my searches, which of course wouldn’t affect other people’s searches. Unless, of course, they were inferred to be my friends, or people who read my blog, or something.

So, I suppose the shocking number of number 1’s I mentioned may well be a simple artifact of the fact that I’m me, and that search engines know ‘too much’ about me. Hmmm.

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