It’s weird. I was thinking last night if there was a way I could organize content without utilizing tags at all and it dawned on me that using a threaded approach would be one such way. Therefore if I looked at my blog journal, I would not only see my entire journal stream of content but also any threads on a particular stream of thought. Even more so I could filter those visible threads by a time frame so that I only see the more current ones, since older threads may not interest me anymore.
Even more so I wondered how could you show these thought streams, especially from the viewpoint of them intersecting and crisscrossing one another. Then it dawned on me that Flickr actually does this very well already. Your Flickr Sets and Groups are streams of photos that have been organized by topic. And best of all, you can actually see a small portion of each of these streams, as they crisscross each other, on the right sidebar area of Flickr. If this was duplicated in a journal blog, imagine being on a journal post and seeing the streams that these post belongs to on the side bar with the “previous” and “next” thoughts in the stream being showed for each stream. This is similar to what you see when you are browsing through a journal blog up near the top where it shows the previous and next posts relating to the post you are viewing, as well as a “Main” link, but you’d also add the previous and next posts for each thought stream (or topic) that this post relates to as well. Of course even if you could organize these thoughts streams by threading them, it would still be a good idea to create a title for the thought stream itself.
Something interesting to note though with this approach (that is similar to Flickr) is that all of your content does not need to be organized into these different streams but they can be just left in the global stream of thoughts if you want. Only if you notice a pattern in certain thoughts would you “grab” them and place them within their own thought stream (similar to how you can organize photos in Flickr in sets or groups). From a blog viewpoint, it would be not worrying about classifying and grouping every single minute thing but only the things that you notice having relationships or form patterns with one other.
Last night, just before I went to bed, something dawned on me. If I want to find and maintain truly meaningful relationships with people, I have to unfortunately be very selective. Why? Because when you start creating too many relationships, there is just no way you can maintain a meaningful aspect to each one of those relationships because you are just spread way too thin and can’t commit as much time to each one of those relationships as you’d like. Therefore, my upcoming goal is to spend less time running around the Web (as well as reading feeds) and trying to spend more time connecting with those who I truly want to maintain these meaningful relationships with.
While I don’t have a problem with the myriad of services coming out that allow people to do things with the Web (i.e. Flickr, del.icio.us, etc), I do have a problem with them creating a fractured user experience when people come to my site wanting to look at this information that I’ve stored in these different services. If Web 2.0 is supposed to be about information everywhere, well then please give me an easy way for me to display all of my information on my site (not just the latest items added) but still host them in these services.
This is just a short post to point out a great web design firm in Vancouver called Fleming Design which has a specialized design team within them by the name of Switch Interactive. Why I’m mentioning them is because of a great lady named Catherine Winckler who is head of the Switch Interactive design team. I’ve spoken to Catherine on and off over the years and I’ve always been impressed with her honesty and openness in our discussions and even more impressed with their internal company culture. If you or anyone else you know is looking for a site, especially one that is related to the movie or entertainment industry, then definitely give them a shout. You will not be disappointed in the slightest, as Catherine and her Switch Interactive team are an amazing group of talented people.
As I mentioned in a previous post, hopefully by the end of next week I’ll be announcing my new employer (once the paperwork is all done). I just want to say that this couldn’t have come at a better time because I’ve been unemployed. While I have been doing some web work in the past here and there, as well as some part-time work, that side work ended a few months ago. More than anything I’ve been vigilant in continuing my research on my weblog (hehe, when it’s been online) in the hopes of attracting a possible employer through my ideas and sure enough it finally has happened (even though I was getting frustrated over the past couple of weeks).
Why this is an even more opportune time is that my wife is a teacher and, as anyone knows in BC, she’s been on strike for the past couple of weeks. Therefore, I’ve finally got the opportunity to start contributing financially again to our relationship. It is definitely a good feeling.
I was watching this anime music video as well as another one and for some reason the music and tone sparked something inside of me. Something’s missing from my online experience. What I’m not exactly sure. For some reason I think it has to do with the different spaces and environments that we have within the real world but that you don’t often see online, especially now with the proliferation of blogs. What am I talking about? Privacy, intimacy, and solitude.
On our blogs we broadcast to the entire world. There is nothing wrong with this but we can’t be “jacked in” 24/7. We need to “unplug” so we can focus on the meaningful people and relationships around us, and even seek solitude from everyone on occasion to reflect on our own thoughts. That’s what I feel like is missing. I don’t have these different spaces online to do this.
Yes I can totally unplug, get away from the computer, be with my wife and pets, or even go for a walk to reflect on my own thoughts. Yet when I’m online, I can’t jump from those different spaces and environments because on a blog it is like having your front door open with anyone able to walk into your house. Well, what if I want a “back room” just for friends only? Even more so, what if I want a “small room” where I can just be alone with my thoughts and reflect on them.
Another reason I want these spaces is so not only can I remove the “mask” from my face but I also can give others that I invite into these private and intimate spaces the opportunity to remove their “mask” as well. What am I talking about when I say a “mask”? Keith said it best in his post When I Make Something. Later in the comments I asked him the question, “Don’t you wish you could just be yourself on your blog without having to think about all of this stuff?” “Yes”, he replied.
I think its time to start working on these spaces, so that I can have intimate and personal spaces of my own where I can just let go, drift, and be myself.
Well I’ve decided to take the job offer that was offered to me because it sounded way too good of a working arrangement to pass up! Hopefully by the end of next week, I’ll be able to announce my cool new employer (after all the paperwork is done and so forth).
I’m a little bit confused as to why Nicholas Carr sounds so fearful and afraid of the future of the Web in his article entitled The Amorality of Web 2.0. I mean a lot of what he speaks about I totally agree with but I’m not sure why he’s making it sound like these changes are bad. Let me explain what I mean.
The Internet is changing the economics of creative work – or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture – and it’s doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices.
Hooray, someone finally agrees with me and says the ‘C’ word! Culture is what the Internet and the Web are changing here, right now, at this very moment. The more that people are online and immersed in these environments, the more they will be influenced by its culture and expect the offline world to have this same culture.
Expand our choices? You mean you want more than 50 different types of shampoos to choose from? That not enough for you? Or more than god knows how many different job search sites are out there right now? Uh, no thank you. We don’t need more choices, we need simpler technologies that enable everyone to connect and collaborate directly in new and innovative ways so that these myriad of “choices”, as he calls them, disappear to be replaced by us communicating with each other on our own blogs, so that I can find the job that’s right for me on someone else’s site with just a simple decentralized search instead of having to navigate through a confusing maze of centralized sites. And in doing so, in losing these “choices” of job search engines to go to, I can finally break free and connect with everyone instead of just a select group of people who may be on that centralized site or service. Now given the choice, which route would you rather take?
Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it’s created by amateurs rather than professionals, it’s free. And free trumps quality all the time. So what happens to those poor saps who write encyclopedias for a living? They wither and die. The same thing happens when blogs and other free on-line content go up against old-fashioned newspapers and magazines. Of course the mainstream media sees the blogosphere as a competitor. It is a competitor. And, given the economics of the competition, it may well turn out to be a superior competitor. The layoffs we’ve recently seen at major newspapers may just be the beginning, and those layoffs should be cause not for self-satisfied snickering but for despair. Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can’t imagine anything more frightening.
Um, boohoo. Who was crying for all of these communities that couldn’t support themselves and eventually died while the corporate sites thrived during the dot com craze period. No one cared for these communities who were trying to survive, most especially the corporate companies themselves who these communities continually supported by drawing attention to their products or services. If these communities had received funding for their support equaling what these companies paid other businesses for a cost per click ad campaign they could have survived no problem. Did the companies decide to help support these communities in any way in gratitude for their ongoing selfless support? No, of course not. Why give money to someone when they are already giving you support for free? Why? It’s easy. It’s called sustainability. If you benefit from others, give back to the community around you so that you can continue to benefit from their support. I mentioned this years ago but most corporate executives just laughed when hearing this. “What? Support them? Whatever for? We don’t really need their support anyways. Its just a pittance anyway!” Ya, laugh it up monkey boy! Stop looking at each little site as a pittance and instead look at the collective communities of sites as a network supporting you. Your time will come for your petty arrogance and sure enough the Reaper is here.
In “We Are the Web,” Kelly writes that “because of the ease of creation and dissemination, online culture is the culture.” I hope he’s wrong, but I fear he’s right – or will come to be right.
When do you normally feel fear? Do you feel it when you are comfy and safe? Or do you feel it when you are doing something radically different than everyone else and taking a risk that no one else wants to take? Yes, we fear the unknown but we also crave it as well. What lies beyond the horizon? There be dragons that way!
As for culture, yes he’s right but it’s “worse” than he thinks. You see culture is the answer. This new culture, or this change of thinking, is what we need to embrace, albeit fearfully as with all new things, to go into the future and bring it into the present. This new culture is the DNA formula or idea virus that we need to start using now, and injecting within all of us, especially if we want to change the world.
Like it or not, Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It’s a set of technologies – a machine, not a Machine – that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn’t care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn’t care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn’t care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn’t care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. So let’s can the millenialist rhetoric and see the thing for what it is, not what we wish it would be.
Why does he make it sound like being amoral is a bad thing? Nature is amoral. It cares not if it is moral or immoral. Instead it just focuses on surviving. Yet what does nature see that so many of us do not. Again, the importance of sustainability, of not only itself but for those around it. You don’t see lions going off on a rampage and slaughtering every bit of prey they can find and consuming it all in a gorgefest all at once. They know, without even having to think about it, that their survival depends upon living as an integral element within an ecosystem. Because if they don’t ensure the survivability of their prey within the ecosystem, they themselves will have a much lower chance of survival. Therefore sustainability for everything in the ecosystem is essential for everything within it to survive. I mean do you honestly think nature is run by some big centralized hidden factory underground or something? No, instead it is run by a collective effort of all things upon the earth that are interdependent upon one another for the survival and ongoing sustainability of the entire ecosystem.
But the most important reason of all why the Web being amoral is not a bad thing is because it allows us to choose our own morality within it. We are the missing ingredient, the catalyst of this DNA formula or virus. Technology is not our salvation, we are our own salvation. We ourselves can “cultivate” this technology and make it work similar to our own new culture which is already in turn influencing us. If you’re an avid reader of news online, you have already probably heard these cultural values being spoken. Just look for words like “open”, “honest”, trusting”, and “transparent”. I don’t know about you but I’m seeing them used more and more every day.
In closing, I just want to repeat what I believe this new cultural DNA formula or virus looks like (from a future company’s standpoint), as I’ve already mentioned it before in my post entitled I Work For The Web. I’m not sure if I’ve got all of the right component elements perfectly but, as for right now, it just seems like a good fit for me.
I work for a daring, imaginative, adventurous, sharing, caring, diverse, open, trusting, honest, flexible, responsible, and connected company.
Whoa, my heads still spinning! I just got a job offer from out of an unexpected, but pleasantly surprising, direction (which means, yes, nothing to do with the jobs I applied for). I’ll hopefully have more details on this later tomorrow, as to where I decide to go with this. As of right now though, it is looking pretty good and it feels pretty good.
I said before that the future is about a change of thinking and I want to elaborate on this a bit. Imagine you were a pygmy warrior in the jungles of Africa and you had never seen an airplane before in your life. Let’s say I was an explorer who was camping nearby and I had been talking to you about an airplane that would be coming soon to drop off supplies for me. How do you think I could describe what an airplane is to you and do you think you could understand what I was talking about? Even more so, do you think you could even understand what you were seeing when the airplane, a float plane, did show up and landed on the river next to you?
Now let’s take this a step further. Let’s say one day you start hearing strange garbled voices in your head. You start getting worried because you think you might be going insane. However, eventually you start figuring out what the voices are saying and you realize it is someone repeatedly letting you know that they will be arriving on a certain date from the future. They are just letting you know ahead of time so that you don’t freak out when they show up. So on the date they mentioned, boom they materialize out of thin air in front of you. Now with everything I just described here, could you even begin to comprehend how these future travellers did this? No, probably not. Even if they sat down and started telling you about their technology, you would probably still be confused.
“A fracklersphere? What’s the hell is a frackersphere?” “It is just a simple device that warps space time on a perpendicular but rotational axis with the inverse of large gravitational bodies. “Huh?”
You see where I’m going with this? We probably wouldn’t have a clue as to what someone from the future is talking about because we haven’t started thinking differently like they have and are aware of the new possibilities that lay before us. Therefore, if you want to start comprehending the future and changing the present you have to start thinking differently. That’s why I keep saying the future and Web 2.0 aren’t so much about a change of technology as a change of thinking. And I’m not just talking about a mild change of thinking, I’m talking about a radical one. Imagine how you live and work today, totally transformed. Think of a massive paradigm shift and you’re headed in the right direction.
Or maybe think like George Costanza and ask yourself what am I going to do the exact opposite today?
“My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.”