Mark Whiting
This document is primarily oriented to comment on the value of readings and experiences undertaken throughout this semester. To do this, it will inspect a reading list from which topically related documents have been extracted. As there are many such documents reflections and comments will be provided for the most important documents only. The reading list is based on a collection of blogs and periodical data sources so an introduction to each source will be provided and the work will be sectioned according to source. Within a section, elements will be grouped according to chronology. URLs are provided with the titles and the complete document feed is provided here.
A blog started to help people learn about interesting new software for downloading. Now that most of the interesting new software is web centric their name is just a legacy but they still provide information on new packages and systems on a regular basis.
www.downloadsquad.com/2007/10/19/need-money-get-your-friends-to-chipin
A simple tool allowing you to make a needs claim and allowing friends to submit to it directly. The user is given options like how much is to be raised and how soon it should be raised. A widget is then generated which can be embedded and any person with the appropriate means can contribute. Not exactly a tool for distributing work but a tool for distributing wealth though network of friend relationships. The success of a system like this gives reason to the potential trust of friend-oriented networks and subsequently supports the notion of service-based friendship which has been used in my work as a method of approach to social network dynamics.
www.downloadsquad.com/2007/09/26/making-p2p-pay-grooveshark-review
This post introduces an interesting take on the new media and music market in light of file sharing. The basic concept relies on you sharing everything you have and splitting a monetary benefit with the artist and the distribution channel when people show interest in a specific item. A development upon this, which existed within an earlier version of the framework of Pathways was to cost interaction within a system, but not to cost content itself. Similar to trade taxes, systems like this benefit when points of common interaction occur and thereby reduce the problems of monetizing something relatively amorphous. If systems like this became a popular reality there may be a clear solution to many of the current copyright problems, not only without rewriting copyright but also without generalising it to work with new media and music. This sort of treatment of content and value is something which is yet to be fully represented in the current version of Pathways but something that a intellectual property trade system will need.
www.downloadsquad.com/2007/09/24/is-google-testing-a-second-life-style-virtual-world
This post concerns activity by Google which causes suspicions about Google generating a virtual world toolkit. The interesting thing here is not that Google wants to have a hand in the huge social network pie but that their design requirements seem to be to out open other branded networks, specifically Facebook. It seems that in the current situation value to the end user and open architecture go hand in hand, thus it seems Google is working on a architecture only product, that is to say a framework with no discreet structure. Not truly a surprise or a unique attempt - however, it is likely to be the first such attempt that will work. Similarly it will popularise the notion of net frameworks as systems for interaction, a notion that things like Pathways will rely heavily on.
The fact that Google community is said to involve 3D content is also interesting as it indicates some specific low latency 3D data transforms are becoming readily available, and open. There are a few such data systems but none are as open as this Google one may be. The potential of the development of these various tools is quite interesting.
One of the largest gadget blogs providing many insights into the development of commercial markets. Responsible for losing Apple $4 billion in market cap earlier this year when some false rumours were posted.
www.engadget.com/2007/08/31/crowdspirit-gadget-development-project-goes-into-beta
CrowdSpirit is a simple system for harnessing the power of distributed decision making in the form of a social network for collaborating on development tasks. Its specific goal is to provide electrical product ideas and development services however its framework is useful for work on many other kinds of information. Though at the time it was found, it was not a great development for the Pathways project, it did offer some new input and proof of concept information.
A unofficial blog detailing the activities of Google and all their brands.
www.blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-10-01-n82.html
This post is about a project to harness the relationship between modern net users and robot-driven content generation. The project involved making a system that would generate polygons and place them in a random horizontally symmetrical pattern. Users were then asked to determine how much each result looked like a face. From each decision, some new hinted random images were generated to, ideally, create some face like images at the end of the process.
The reason this work can be found interesting and relevant to the Pathways project is because it highlights the strengths of localised computation in relation to remote decision making. A large data set and a genetic algorithm are used to do the actual computation, while a quick glance from a human is used to make the important decisions. This is an extremely advantageous way to look at the process of refinement and design by numbers. There are many users who can make human-only decisions while computers, using relatively unrefined technology can make the decisions that waste human time. In short methods like this are very useful for the back end of something like the structuring in File Tree. Many decisions are needed and they can be informed by few decisions form humans to save human time.
www.blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-10-06-n10
This post links to an interview with Lawrence Lessig by a German show host. The matters discussed in the video are Lessig's recent move to developments in the greater world of corruption, from his previous interest of copyright. He speaks of various forms of corruption and mentions some solutions involving making knowledge more available and using visibility as a trait and a value to good information. This style of thinking has been applied in the concept of the "open company" in Pathways and, although generally, open information is a value of many systems, such as democracy, the implementations spoken of by Lessig and found in something like Pathways or Twitter seem to lead to a new level of clarity about human kind.
The face of Google's public policy often writing about things such as censorship and mergers
googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/10/intermediary-liability-and-future-of
The issue discussed here is that of responsibility for Internet related crime in India. There are decisions being made in this regard that support service providers being responsible for the transition of illegal or illicit material which makes it very difficult for the rest of users to have freedoms in context. This is a rather interesting issue which in many cases is not the concern of any normal human being. For a framework like a distributed design method it is, however, incredibly important to ensure value and intention of work. Methods to use the openness and speed of information on the Internet to break closed party structures, such as many corporations, is one of the many great potentials of the Internet. However, at the same time, it is a weakness that may critically affect a system like Pathways. The fundamental issue is not one of having or not having potential to be evil, but where and how to place responsibility when millions of people can see content per second and where it is impossible to stop worthy breaches of security. In the case of copyright issues and 'evil doers' on the inter web there are very complex methods to find who is truly responsible for a given issue. For the sake of Pathways and other web services, this is a very important issue and global laws on such issues should be put in place.
The feed of "Tech Talks" or lectures on the various Google campuses. There are on average 4 per week and each is about one hour long. Their topics range enormously and work something like a continuous conference.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8717497583686568676
In this video, Al Roth looks at some of the dynamics in markets and their effects on actors in the market. His work has specifically involved designing systems for the distribution of resources in crowded markets and talks in this presentation about a few instances of his work. One in particular is the market for exchange of kidneys which is now being used to open up many more kidneys for implantation in sick humans. His approach to market problems is of great value as it looks beyond localised surplus and demand, and shows implementation of various complex theoretical settings to greatly enhance market efficiency. Namely, his work talks of ways of making thick or abundant markets when there is seemingly no abundance, purely by rephrasing the context of trade.
The reason there is so much value in this work for Pathways and other Internet start ups is because it helps people think about ways to engage customers or rigour within their communities, perhaps not directly as a designed market but by the relocation of 'repugnance' or fundamental dislike of a context. Roth talks about a few particular methods for doing this and helps create a framework for generalisation of good market design.
The blog of Guy Kawasaki a former Apple evangelist and current venture capitalist. The subject of the blog varies quite a lot but generally has something to do with new and modern business in the web context
blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/09/ten-questions-w
This post represents an interview between Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan an expert in community systems. The main subject of the interview is the use and practices with Twitter (a microblogging or lifestream tool). However, their discussion is quite useful if emergent network practices and social diagramming are of concern. Essentially speaking, the argument is simply that the more frequent and more direct information the better however there is talk of using information of this sort to great advantage in a business context or harvesting this data in other ways. They are talking about the meta-data of our lives and just like meta-data is typically used as indicators for real data, to sort and to optimise, this data, Twitter data, can be used to understand people and happenings better. One other thing mentioned here is the bridges between forms of data which are so easy to create with mash up engines and plug-in architectures.
The blog of Lawrence Lessig a innovator in Copyright thinking.
lessig.org/blog/2007/10/corruption_lecture_alpha_versi
For many years Lawrence Lessig has worked on and talked about Copyright systems and how they are problemed however recently he has shifted his work to studying Corruption. This lecture is in some ways his foray into this field. The fact of his topic is not that important to this semester's work however his method or approach is a great representation of lateral thinking for the benefit of design and understanding. His lecture covers a number of abstract areas form distribution of guilt to understanding fault and at the same time, right. This work has not been used as a reference but as a point of development of thought and in doing so has provided a context to think of community driven decision making. Lessig's argument is that there is a unspoken relationship or norm which needs to be set for things within a community to become significant, which is not unique, however he goes on to infer that when these norms are unclear, but still present, nothing nearly as useful will be achieved, as if there is some distinct clarity and method of measure.
A popular blog on methods and tools to optimise workflow in the modern world.
lifehacker.com/software/how-to/avoid-craigslist-and-ebay-scams-309598
This post links to the Wired Wiki where there is discussion form the founder of Craigslist, Craig Neumark, on how to avoid issues of fraud on web trade services like Craigslist and eBay. A number of methods are mentioned but the real value lay in looking at the design problem which allowed the issue to need a method of solution in the first place. Though Pathways is not developed at the moment, in regards to its security model there seem to be certain issues of interaction that can offer a lot of opportunity to people willing to usurp it. Control market dynamics seems to be the most pressing of such issues and perhaps a rather serious matter in the running of service based systems. One of the key issues being that if a market does not have real standards people can easily be mislead by nefarious offers. Reflections of this kind of design do exist in the mentioned websites although there is obviously more that can be done to clean up the marketplace of illegitimate users.
lifehacker.com/software/collaboration-tools/share-notes-files-and-photos-with-stixy-308001
This post speaks of a new online collaboration system which offers a desktop like interface with widgets and sticky notes that can annotate objects such as photos and texts. Though in practice Stixy (the website discussed) is not that unique in the market, it is quite a good representation of what is common. There are many obvious shortcomings of systems like this and in comparison to a much more scaled tool like what Pathways is intended to be it seems almost of no importance. However, there are some very strict and important strengths, for instance, the flexibility and agnostic positioning of the tool make it great for a very nondescript workflow. Though this is not really a huge winning over some of the alternatives it is a point of value which needs not to be forgotten in the design of more complex and more method driven design solutions.
lifehacker.com/software/information-diet/tim-ferriss-on-doing-more-with-less-308154
This post links to a great and very short talk about optimisation of information and time use. The most issues brought to discussion in this talk are all about removing unneeded interaction via displacement of responsibility and use of logical arguments. The value of this work to something like Pathways is that is shows the value of a well defined methodology and principal of accountability. With these things understood by the system, many optimisations can be made.
A blog on medical devices and techniques and their development though modern technology
http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2007/10/the_it_pediatrician.html
This video interview involves Robert Scoble and Dr. Chistopher Longhurst an evangelist of IT in the medical industry. The interview brings up a number of interesting points such as the fact that there are many things within a doctors work that do not benefit from digitization. One in particular is prescription. The consideration would be that doctor handwriting is rather hard to read and by making it something that was discreetly entered into a computer and then sent to the pharmacy some issues of interpretation would be avoided however, Longhurst points out that it is rare for the before mentioned error to actually occur. Instead digitizing prescriptions brings a new error which is that though context doctors are less familiar with describing dosages though a digital interface and are likely to make mistakes such as a misplaced decimal point. He goes on to say that one of the major values of digital systems is the ability to move and re-contextualise data quickly and accurately. There is also some discussion of the famed spark lines and how richer data representations are much more easy when digital information is at the back end.
Longhurst's work seems rather significant to decisions that would be needed in the developments of systems like Pathways. Especially the consideration of what data is best treated digitally and what data is best left analogue is relevant to the design and development context of Pathways.
A further discussion in the interview on suitability of different interfaces within specific contexts gave rise to some of the outcomes used in the Pathways model, particularly, the used of a open framework for application plug-ins which may include hardware interfaces for local analog to digital, and vice verse, instances of conversion.
The blog of Bruce Nussbaum, the innovation writer for Business Week. The blog's topic is the modern views of design and design thinking and their implications on global stakeholders.
This brief post brings up some of the many powers and issues of social networks. Its main suggestion is that the power of instantaneously distributed information making and processing should be much more valued by society and more specifically schools. Nussbaum finishes by referring to the extraordinarily high latency in voting and how people are much less connected than they could be. This is not really anything new but just another great example of the ways information technology is not used even close to its potential.
The blog of the P2PFoundation website, the brainchild of Michel Bauwens. The content of this blog is mostly on policy and potentials for p2p development schemes. The author and commenter's have a rather liberal approach to matters in general.
blog.p2pfoundation.net/whats-next-for-the-open-source-appropriate-technology-movement/2007/10/19
This is a really interesting article because it outlines a system which is quite similar in a number of ways to the one I have been working on. In particular they see the need for a modular architecture and a robust storage back end. It is quite exciting to read work supporting common concepts. However, they do put quite a shift to my approach as they are convinced open source and P2P are the only way to go. Here I disagree - I think that the application of a good economic model, such as Attention Economy, is good for everyone involved, not just advertisers even if all the advertisement is internal, i.e. directed to service providers within the network. Creating context driven advertisement still seems fundamentally helpfully to the involved parties. In any case however, they do offer some interesting developments on the fundamental idea and show that a Pathways like system is going to come along sooner or later.
Outside of the system in Pathways, the toolkit Michel talks about is designed to solve the issue of fundamentally distributed decision making and technology development. Interestingly however he adds a clause for creating good context for good development and putting reason behind localised design methods. At the same time however I think the methods of storage he is considering are not as robust or as useful as a tool like File Tree, though he has noticed and discussed the commonality of ubiquitous visioning within net driven frameworks.
Through my interest in this matter I went on to comment on the post and have now started a conversation with Michel and some of his colleagues on some aspects of their system.
In this post Michel speaks of the work of Ed Felten on the matters of the application of Moore's Law on storage in concern to music. The argument he poses is to put value to various options on dealing with Copyright in modern and future contexts. The solutions he suggests are not directly useful to Pathways but do offer some interesting insight into ways which Copyright can be used when scarcity of information is not really existent. This is of importance because there are many potential developments in the decentralised work environment, most of which include, on some level, methods of dealing with information flow. In the long run it seems markets will need to offer what is important to people and not the other way around.
blog.p2pfoundation.net/process-network-building-theory-p2p-foundation/2007/09/26
This is a really great demystification of information structuring and its relation to good content in systems like wikis. Rose speaks of methods of valuing ontology or workflow and using this as a connected system to then define structure of information for output. This methodology is quite new to me and supports some of the concepts behind File Tee and its use as not just a storage mechanism but also a workflow interface. The input of definition on this level seems to have become much more valued as the development of wiki oriented communities has become more common in recent years. Inspection of the extended references has not yet occurred but in further development of Pathways a better understanding of the power of building information on structure as opposed to content value would be exceedingly helpful.
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/peer-to-peer-scenario-building/2007/09/20
This post is an introduction to an method of looking at situations to achieve better scenario understanding of them as well as discussing methods for representing and working with scenarios usefully. In general what is discussed here is quite similar to a system like Compendium for representing many issues in a context without seeing specifics of realistic contextual relationships. Relationships and tags and contexts are created as part of the representation and then used to understand value and opportunity withing the scenario. This kind of thought mechanism is applicable in Pathways as it allows the generalisation of problem solving methods. It is potentially the case that by using an abstraction of this method a very good collaborative ontology tool could be made.
A blog commenting on most of the new Internet start-ups and providing a major conference, TechCrunch 40, in this sector.
www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/16/ezmo-another-online-music-application-nibbling-at-itunes
Ezmo is a simple online tool that emulates a local (offline) music player. Thought there are now a number of these and an increasing number of crossover applications, joining local music listening habits to online music tracking and trend watching, this and its competitors are supporting the de-localisation of data and the spread of "indicative data" or data that is not really of value without the context of use, generally indicating relationships between things. This may seem like much to do about nothing but it is the same form of information model that the outcome of use of something like File Tree would represent. Information that is streamed or local or not but indicators about access and use of information which are universally available. Anther members of this cohort, as mentioned, last.fm, is another pusher in the connection of indication over content. The significance of meta-data is shown to be something that is very important to people. Features like this give reason for innovation in the storage of design and development data.
www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/05/stixy-free-form-collaboration-and-file-sharing-spaces
This brief article is an in depth look at stixy and discussions of the intricacies of value in this sector. Various things are discussed such as interface, interaction, feature representation, integration with web-tools and workflow. As these are all important issues in online collaboration scenarios and as stixy takes a slightly less structured approach than others it is quite refreshing to take note of its advantages. The flexibility and simplicity of a structureless workplace is well demonstrated and has influenced the development of Pathways.
www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/myquire-wants-your-collaborative-workplace-business
This post briefly discusses a new online collaboration systems, MyQuire. In general MyQuire is not that interesting in comparison to the rest of the market however it does offer a few insights. Its approach to people seems quite interesting and the company seems to sell its self on this ground. The system is designed to "let people work how they want to work" and by creating a common framework. Sadly they have not gone to the further step of creating a plug-in framework with which to approach the greater context of how people want to work.
www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/24/planhq-still-tiny-but-getting-a-list-attention
This post introduces a New Zealand based tool for managing companies and business plans. Though the company in its on right is rather interesting and creates a product which has greatly influenced Pathways this post talks about how the company has remained quite mall while making a very high throughput use and some good finding from VCs. A big part of their approach is that they do not want the world to flock to them for the sake of their brilliance but that they want to convert particular and powerful users, VCs in this case, who will help them recruit the grater masses, or at least the businesses the VCs come to fund. This is a nice implementation of a logical approach. Of course Pathways would also use PlanHQ in the context of development and running.
This is a rather well known blog which writes about current affairs and pints of interest. It has a strong tendency to support modern net oriented beliefs and the popular mind.
A recent offshoot from Boing Boing concerned with interesting gadgets. It is important to note that Boing Boing's impression of "interesting" is quite different from other similar blogs which is why it has been included here.
A well known Design blog representing the western world as the lesser of two evils and often writing about social issues and their implications in design.
The aggregation of items "Dugg" by my self on the social bookmarking website Digg.com. These are items that have been determined as movers and shakers within the Digg database and then selected by me as content specific.
Official Google SketchUp Blog - sketchupdate.blogspot.com
The face of the Google SketchUp product team.
Smashing Magazine - www.smashingmagazine.com
A magazine of web related tools and information aimed at web related development and companies.
The blog of a workshop title Still/Open I took part in during the semester. The topic of the workshop and the blog is open tools and there application in greater collaborative networks