Search & Memes
La Meme
An algorithm will never understand you completely and every ‘product’ (if we are to believe our MBA textbooks) has a life cycle. At present it’s inconceivable that search will ever be usurped by any other medium as an entry point for the web. But while search is ultra efficient it sometimes lacks the personalisation and relevance of information passed from mouth to mouth.
Emerging services such as twitter, facebook, stumbleupon and digg provide much more personlised entry points into the web than search. Someone you respect sends and interesting link, someone else tells you about a breaking event, someone shares an idea with you.
Personalisation (something which search does not offer well) and group membership are really good at finding us things that we ‘might’ be interested in. This takes the web back to the television model of push publishing via channels, where we make one decision (which channel to watch) and relevant information is pushed at us. If the relevant information bores us, we just switch channel.
The notion of a channel on the Internet is ugly and cumbersome, it does not translate well. If we had to compare to the notion of a television channel, an internet channel is more of a wavelength that is bi-directional, more than that even, it’s now onmi directional and interferes with other channels. Television channels can’t interact with each other to spawn new channels for example, Internet channels can. The word channel, for me, is actually impotent in describing the interactive state the internet can bring.
I would say that we are heading towards meme culture, one where we access and are exposed to trains of thought via many access points, where we touch the information or the information touches us and we react or consume. Search plays a big part in this but is in no way the master of this realm.
A meme is a trend. The subversive web is a trend engine, where fads come and go, services are picked up and are dropped, daily topics are gobbled up and regurgitated and eventually filed in archive.org.
Search is a diverse activity and can resist to an extent the trending that goes on, but it’s not invincible. Search engines must have their eye on these new entry points as they begin to pick away at market share. The evolution of the web’s products or features in our lives rolls on regardless.
Could mass unemployment trigger post-consumerism?
What would you do with more leisure time? Do you know? Most people dream of having lots of time off, but when it happens, coupled with a decimation of income, it can be impossible to appreciate because of the social and economic pressures.
The hippies had a good idea, make love not war, have festivals, enjoy/live in harmony with nature. Admittedly long in the tooth and a bit derided, are these hippy ideals seeing a veiled resurgence, re-invented as post-consumerism? I know festival culture, boutique festivals such as ‘the big chill’ and ‘Beautiful Days’ nod towards that life ethic.
I have just listened to Kate Soper: http://is.gd/fI9O on alternative hedonism and she makes some very valid points about the next stage of our socio-economic evolution.
Maybe now a rethink of our addiction to consumerism is at hand, not a push towards “doing the right thing” which never satisfies the ego (vanity, pride, lust for power etc…) but a movement towards standards of enjoyment over standards of living.
Keeping up with the Jones’s (Jones’es? I really should know that one) could mean bragging about how much time you had off, or how much you enjoyed your latest party or dinner, how many friends you have (facebook, twitter…).
Unemployment en masse could have us all rethinking the value of things, which during the last epoch of progress, has been measured almost solely in currency, which affords financial “freedom”. So, the question begs – have we been buying back from capitalism what was always ours anyway, our freedom, and paying for it with our freedom?
Google Behavioural Ads, Coming To Get You!
“We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies.”
Might be a bit sensationalist, but I like to think of it like this; would you let Google (or anyone for that matter) sit a CCTV camera in your house? Well you kind of already do! Except the CCTV camera is not in your house, its in your head! They track what are, essentially, your thoughts (your searches).
There is no legislation for what they can do with that data, they can do whatever they like, more or less. Ok, so we can bear that because it offers us a service that is useful (search). But nonetheless, whether we are aware of it or not, we are compromising (giving away) our privacy by letting someone else track what we do.
This is a very bad idea, not for Google, but for us. This is the start of a longer term battle against privacy concerns on the web. The opt in/opt out nonsense is going to be (unfortunately) the major underpinning of many an argument over privacy, but it obscures the very real concern; what data is being collected?
“It’s ok”, the companies will say….. “we are”; (pick one)
- anonymising the data
- not collecting personal information
- not going to use the data for anything other than (insert reason here).
As with the Phorm fiasco and Tim Berners-Lee’s visit to the commons last week it highlights the problem at the rock face.
“We’ll track you personally, it’s OK cock, honest it is!, we’re a nice company guv’nah, we won’t lose your data, we wont abuse your trust (wink wink). Whistles and bells, whistles and bells…”
(Not an actual Phorm statement).
Opt out is like taking someones money without them really knowing, and saying “just ask for it back and i’ll give it to you, of course”. Except we are not dealing with money, we are dealing with a much more valuable commodity here, your privacy and freedom. We go to war over those issues don’t we?
The Marketeers Handbook (on you, specifically).
ALL marketeers want to know what we are thinking, so that they can sell us what we want. Not much of a problem really, we are mostly post modern, and used to it. But what about if you were a ruthless marketeer (do you know any?) and knew that a vulnerable group of people could be reached specifically and they would be very succeptable to targeted, psychological advertising? Would you exploit that chance? of course you would.
Now, currently, marketeers have very limited knowledge compared to what they _could_ have..
Google gives away a lot already via adsense, you could argue. But currently this does not follow you round the web. It does not track you personally, you opt in to giving away your details by using Google. But now, you opt in to google by using ANY site that google has a partnership with, which is a lot of sites.
Google puts another page in this marketeers handbook on you, specifically. Meaning, ultimately a marketeer that ‘wants’ you can just come and ‘get’ you. This isn’t that hard to do right now, so where does it end? Behavioural tracking on the internet in my book is akin to spying on someone in their home, it should be treated with the same seriousness, at least audited.
An example of the problem
Lets say Joe, 34 is having marital problems, he starts to search online for marital advice and looks for marital advice websites. What’s to stop Google serving dating ads at him continuously? With ads like “Marital problems?, we can help. Find someone now in your area.” it could be displayed completely counter to the advice that is being searched for or offered from the websites he is visiting. Let’s say he takes the bait and out of curiosity clicks on the ad, fills out his details in a form, that website now knows, from tracking, pretty much everything they need to know about him to exploit him further.
An example of ‘covert’ selling, as opposed to a doorstep salesman (overt), who, i’m sure if he asked about your “current emotional state”, whether you were having any “marital problems” and would you like to buy a dating subscription, would be told in no uncertain terms where to go. Why would we trust Google and not him?
Google have no control over this, its too granular a problem, to specific. This is only one case in point but there are thousands of other similar cases that could be drawn, from vulnerable, elderly, young, non web savvy people.
The sliding scale of facility
I see this as a sliding scale problem, on one end you have privacy, security and freedom of choice, the other end you have fraud, abuse of data and ease of use. Ease of use? well, anything that is easy to use is usually insecure. E.g. the Google search box, you just use it, but by using it you are ‘opting in’ with all your other data (i.p., cookie info, etc…) automatically. Imagine the Google homepage that had a checkbox for each bit of data that you could hide, it would seriously affect the use of the interface and the quality of result that Google could provide. A sliding scale widget that altered the number of pieces of information you sent to Google is an example of what I mean (but not what I am suggesting).
I hope that more people pick up on this fairly obvious point, servers that collect data should be audited in the same way as HMRC audit companies books. This is yet another case where the government should be hot to trot and step in. A privacy tax should be raised against all online and offline services that attract more than a million users a week, their servers should be audited for use of the information collected. Does this happen anywhere?
Hasn’t a lack of enforcement of regulation got us into trouble somewhere before? recently? financially? The signs for this are definately there.
Guardian Open Platform
Guardian Open Platform
Just realeased! Just what i have been looking for for investor.co.uk, it looks like the perfect match. I have just signed up for an API key. The three things I am looking for (which I hope will get simply);
- Free content for growth
- Simple API that is reliable
- no restrictions
So fingers crossed, I will post updates on how it goes. Here’s the link:
Hyperland
Image from the documentary "Hyperland"
Thanks to @kidehen for this, this is wonderful wonderful BBC2 piece of history. Douglas Adams really was a genius.
Hyperland
How do you version the web?
Web 2.0 Joke
It’s true that all changes, or shifts in consciousness bring about fashion or trend, which for the masses to understand (or get a window into) have to, have a name.
But who versioned this internet as a movement? Who commissioned it? We never had music 2.0 or writing 2.0, of course we had musical periods “Rock and Roll”, “Classical”, and artistic ones “Cubism” etc… but those were terms created to pigeon-hole and describe parts of the movement, not the movement as a whole.
Versioning, is it just marketing candy? Shorthand for a shift in our understanding of the capabilities of the new connectedness? Or does it actually betray more about us as a species than we realise at first glance.
It’s interesting to see people already talking about web 3.0, as if there is a natural progression. But I was unaware of web 1.0 so how did we arrive at web 3.0 and where is web 2.4? or 1.9 for that matter. For a lot of people, it’s quite annoying to see terms bundled into the vernacular of business (and life) like “blue sky thinking” or “thinking out of the box” or now “Web 2.0″. To see perfectly reasonable concepts plastered over cracked walls which hold little understanding of the deeper concepts, makes those who do understand, baulk and twitch with annoyance and irritation.
But as with all great (or not so great) soundbytes/tags/sayings there is an element of truth behind them, or at least an element of revealing fiction.
“…an interpretation of a matter from a particular viewpoint..”
This was taken from a dictionary definition of the word ‘version’, which actually lets on more about the web versioning that is happening. Who’s viewpoint? who decides? who interprets? Some people used (and still use) the phrase “web 2.0″ without understanding who or what it represents. Sure, if quizzed many answers representative of change may spring from the lips of the marketeers: “social networking”, “a network of networks” , “remix culture” etc… “How droll”, I hear “the geeks” cry. But if you were to really press, I mean really nail down what they mean when they say web x.x, they don’t actually single out a specific feature set in particular. It’s a clumped together phrase, embodying many other perfectly valid trends and some not so valid or fictitious maybe?
Who’s viewpoint then? It’s their/our viewpoint stupid! All of us internetters, together in a homogeneous lump of optimism and marketing drool. Well, at least all of us who subscribe to the understanding that “Web 2.0″ actually exists (which I personally don’t).
The scary version
The programmatical link is obvious, but are we already talking about generations, in an ordered sense, of something that is so young (in media terms), so packed full of potential and so chaotic? What happens when we get to Web 32.0? do we, like Rocky fall around the ring trying to reinvent old glory?
Many would argue that versioning itself is already outdated, practices such as scrum and agile development are opening doors to a less structured approach to creating things, where versions are in the eye of the beholder. Updates become releases and features become new products in themselves.
But what about the question: why? Why did we call it web 2.0? In a sense versioning gives you the impression that you are in control of its development, that there is a grand plan. Why do we seek overall control over this chaotic set of connected possibilities? The answer could be simple; give our fears a cutesy name, it gives us power over what is essentially a very scary and risky environment for the human. We are barely hairless apes (some less so than others) and sharing across tribes is not in our ‘human’ nature, unless we can see a benefit that overcomes our fear.
The handy illusion of control
The web is a spector, a ghost, a friendly helpful ghost, that turns the pages of the phonebook and opens up the encyclopedia to the correct page for us. But, aren’t we scared of ghosts?
As a massive fast growing, penetrative ether, has the power to stupefy, marvel and freak us out. The more it knows about us, the more we ‘could’ fear it, the more we would ‘need’ to censor and control it. I mean could you accept a friendly ghost in your house? You could if you gave it a friendly name maybe?
This point of fear and control, for me, is the point at which mankind can allow itself to break from tradition and relinquish fear as a driving principle for major change. But, versioning betrays our need to comfort ourselves by the use of cutesy terms and shiny phrases, i.e. naming the friendly ghost.
It serves only to stop us facing our fears head on. The fear of loss of privacy, betrayal of trust and most scary of all, the control of our thinking. The more we give to the web the more it can exploit us, now that is scary.
Is calling it “web 2.0″ about fear and control? or are we just naming our opportunity? or maybe both? I cannot be absolutely sure on either count, but that is my point in practice; we cannot be sure what chaotic creativity will spring from the technology as a whole and versioning in my view only limits the mental potential that we can offer each other, creating a tic or a loop for development to get stuck in. After all, as a medium, the web is so new that we are only just beginning to pluck the strings.
Brings me to the question, “how do you version the web?”. The answer, you don’t. No version, no time line, no plan. There is an effort under way to version the web of course, its happening in VC clinics, boardrooms, council chambers and politicians heads.
A mistake would be a ’softly softly’ approach to this new discipline, there is a desperate need to face the challenges it brings head on with bravery and insight, in order to see real growth, not just lip service and javascript. We non-evangelists, armed with the understanding of how powerful and subversive the web can be, have a responsibility to open the door and go into the closet, to face the reality of what we have built without trying to tame it. Before we lose it completely to the evangelists who give us a “web 3.0″.
Wolfram Alpha, an answer engine.
Glad to see that someone is taking up the challenge of a serious competitor to Google’s search/find system. Wolfram Alpha, has the chance.
As I understand it, this is a dimple divergence from ask/find to ask/compute. Whats the difference? Well thinking on a very reductionist level, Google is a pretty dumb system – it follows some rules that are pre-determined by humans and then spits out a result based on those fixed rules (although they change over time manually, they are still fixed at the point of query). Wolfram takes a different approach, you set the rules at the point of query, or create the computation in real time, based on data that WA holds.
Take for example, if you wanted to know how much stock had fallen and risen over the last 2 years in the UK FTSE market. You could visit google finance, take a look at the graph and that would tell you. Simple, you say, so whats the advantage? Well there is none until, lets say you wanted to know how much farming stock in particular over a given area of the UK had fallen and risen over that last 2 years, then that would rely on someone manually processing that, publishing a page, Google visiting that page and Google crawling that answer, storing it, giving it relevancy etc etc…. All that, when all you need is the answer to a data problem, not a relevancy one. WA however uses the ‘data’ available to compute the result, thus skipping every other step that Google (or search engines in general) might take.
An Answer Engine.
The benefit (which is what’s important here) is that we can create new data from old data, we can generate exponentially answers based on answers. In a world of jumbled data, human error, we can redistribute, recompute and ultimately collectively discover more than any single entity can in the same period.
Time
This is the critical factor (there are many other critical factors, but time the most important of the lot), as it’s saving the time taken to compute the same things, over and over again, making each of the trillions and trillions of data units the internet holds, n times more efficient.
As a basis for a knowledge system, it really is inspiring.
