Group Writing for Electronic Communities Spring 2008's best bookmarks

it is the plausibility of the impossible
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
"The network is the computer."
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
supercomputers in part to advance us in that direction. He now believes the
first real AI will emerge not in a stand-alone supercomputer like IBM's proposed
23-teraflop Blue Brain, but in the vast digital tangle of the global Machine.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-05-2008
- This scares me.
  posted by jschoen on 03-05-2008
At its heart was a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere else on the planet or in history.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
It's on.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
Amish Web sites?
posted by boomerspeak on 03-05-2008
- I used to think we could make fun of the Amish and they would never find out about it.
  posted by jschoen on 03-05-2008
The human brain has no department full of programming cells that configure the mind. Rather, brain cells program themselves simply by being used. Likewise, our questions program the Machine to answer questions. We think we are merely wasting time when we surf mindlessly or blog an item, but each time we click a link we strengthen a node somewhere in the Web OS, thereby programming the Machine by using it.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
IPO
posted by ksbanks on 03-05-2008
- What is an IPO? Just an appositive with the whole words for the acronym would be so helpful!
  posted by ksbanks on 03-05-2008
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
But that was just the beginning! Scribbling on index cards, he sketched out
complicated notions of transferring authorship back to creators and tracking
payments as readers hopped along networks of documents, what he called the
docuverse.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- Sounds like "Six Degrees of Separation," the technology version. I wonder if he's ever played the Kevin Bacon game?
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
Before the Netscape browser illuminated the Web, the Internet did not exist for
most people
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
The revolution launched by Netscape's IPO was only marginally about hypertext
and human knowledge. ^#6
At its heart was a
new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture
based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are
creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere
else on the planet or in history.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- This clarifies for me what Wenger and McCluhan say. The technological advances brought about in the last decade or so are changing the way our brains are wired, as well as our culture. Our children will not think the way we do.
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
He was certain that every document in the world should be a footnote to some
other document, and computers could make the links between them visible and
permanent.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
The memories of an early enthusiast like myself can be unreliable, so I recently
spent a few weeks reading stacks of old magazines and newspapers. Any promising
new invention will have its naysayers, and the bigger the promises, the louder
the nays. It's not hard to find smart people saying stupid things about the
Internet on the morning of its birth. In late 1994, Time magazine
explained why the Internet would never go mainstream: "It was not designed for
doing commerce, and it does not gracefully accommodate new arrivals."
Newsweek put the doubts more bluntly in a February 1995 headline:
"THE INTERNET? BAH!" The article was written by astrophysicist and Net maven
Cliff Stoll, who captured the prevailing skepticism of virtual communities and
online shopping with one word: "baloney."
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
Stephen Weiswasser, a senior VP, delivered the ultimate putdown: "The Internet
will be the CB radio of the '90s," he told me, a charge he later repeated to the
press. Weiswasser summed up ABC's argument for ignoring the new medium: "You
aren't going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the Internet."
posted by boomerspeak on 03-05-2008
- How funny. That is EXACTLY what has happened, as we forage for information, products, etc.
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- How underestimated the intelligence and capabilities and interests of the public are! Clearly, people in charge assume they will stay in charge because they can not imagine things not being their way. Those who truly stay in charge have the foresight and good sense to know that their is more to life than one very narrow way of thinking or doing things.
  posted by ksbanks on 03-05-2008
Go down to your basement, find your most technical computer guy, and have him
register abc.com immediately. Don't even think about it. It will be a
good thing to do."
posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
- For this reason, I love "computer people." They know things; they have a kind of electronic/technological intuition that I don't have. I find it rather easy to follow computer people blindly, the ones I trust, anyway.
  posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
It was hard to use
posted by klynch84 on 03-06-2008
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
exceeds 600 billi
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
The domain was still unregistered.
posted by klynch84 on 03-06-2008
This view is spookily godlike. You can switch your gaze of a spot in the
world from map to satellite to 3-D just by clicking. Recall the past? It's
there. Or listen to the daily complaints and travails of almost anyone who blogs
(and doesn't everyone?). I doubt angels have a better view of humanity.

Why aren't we more amazed by this fullness? Kings of old would have gone to
war to win such abilities. Only small children would have dreamed such a magic
window could be real. I have reviewed the expectations of waking adults and wise
experts, and I can affirm that this comprehensive wealth of material, available
on demand and free of charge, was not in anyone's scenario. Ten years ago,
anyone silly enough to trumpet the above list as a vision of the near future
would have been confronted by the evidence: There wasn't enough money in all the
investment firms in the entire world to fund such a cornucopia. The success of
the Web at this scale was impossible.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- Sometimes when things are so unbelievable, so hard to fathom, I think we under-react to them. We know it is too hard with our dinky human brains to really understand something so incredible that we put blinders on so the magic doesn't become too much to take in. Religion (how interesting that he refers to this as godlike) is like this, too. What is we really "got" it? I don't think humans are capable.
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
every two seconds
posted by jschoen on 03-05-2008
- I didn't know Bill had that much pull.
  posted by jschoen on 03-05-2008
When a company opens its databases to users, as Amazon, Google, and eBay have
done with their Web services, it is encouraging participation at new levels. The
corporation's data becomes part of the commons and an invitation to participate.
People who take advantage of these capabilities are no longer customers; they're
the company's developers, vendors, skunk works, and fan base.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- Perhaps we should all be paid for this!
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
What we all failed to see was how much of this new world would be manufactured
by users, not corporate interests.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
online culture is the culture
posted by khaggerty on 03-06-2008
posted by khaggerty on 03-06-2008
- The same can be said in business--you can collaborate for months without meeting your colleagues in person, but can we ever expect to replace the relationships that stem from physical interaction with online communication?
  posted by khaggerty on 03-06-2008
What could be a better mark of irreversible acceptance than adoption by the
Amish?
posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
- Good question. My answer: My father's adoption of the Internet. He is still unable (and proud!) to use a simple word processing program, still writes on paper and has my mother send e-mails from his notes. Yes, my father does have an e-mail account, but not one that he can use. My father, and many people his age (65), still believe that the world would be better off without computers. But I feel sad that such an intelligent, curious, global thinker like my father is missing out on all of the information that is right here in this little "box." Maybe if we get him out of his box... Does this mean that my father is less pliable than the Amish?
  posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
posted by boomerspeak on 03-05-2008
- So what kind of a world are we creating where everyone will be talking and no one will be listening?
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- Hmm...
  posted by jschoen on 03-05-2008
What happens when the data flow is asymmetrical - but in favor of creators?
What happens when everyone is uploading far more than they download? If everyone
is busy making, altering, mixing, and mashing, who will have time to sit back
and veg out? Who will be a consumer?
posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
- So what kind of world are we creating where everyone will be talking but no one will be listening?
  posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
What happens
when the data flow is asymmetrical - but in favor of creators?

What happens
when everyone is uploading far more than they download? If everyone

is busy
making, altering, mixing, and mashing, who will have time to sit back

and veg out?
Who will be a consumer?
posted by boomerspeak on 03-02-2008
Another was affirmed by one-third: "By 2014, use of the Internet will increase
the size of people's social networks far beyond what has traditionally been the
case."
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
gift economy
posted by ksbanks on 03-06-2008
- What a fascinating term "gift economy"! The idea that the sharing of information, creations, ideas, etc. is a type of economy. OK. So our minds are thinking in new ways and maybe Wenger and Fleck are beginning to make sense. And the idea of community takes on new dimensions.
  posted by ksbanks on 03-06-2008
The open source software movement is another example
posted by klynch84 on 03-06-2008
- "Open source" software has been crucial in the telecom industry as a lot of times open source code becomes the basis for other code that will have proprietary strings attached. It can sometimes make intellectual property protection complicated.
  posted by klynch84 on 03-06-2008
What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on what the Machine
knows - about us and about what we want to know. We already find it easier to
Google something a second or third time rather than remember it ourselves. The
more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our
knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In 2015
many people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if
they'd had a lobotomy.
posted by boomerspeak on 03-03-2008
In
2015

many
people, when divorced from the Machine, won't feel like themselves - as
if

they'd
had a lobotomy.
posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
- I already feel nervous when I don't have computer access. In fact, I recently upgraded my cellphone and service to enable web access as well as ease of web usability on my phone (you know, bigger screen, more buttons). I am not necessarily the techie type, but the extent to which I rely on technology in my everyday life is astounding!
  posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
marvel
posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
- I do!
  posted by mbrinkmann on 03-06-2008
What matters is the network of social creation, the community of collaborative
interaction that futurist Alvin Toffler called prosumption. As with blogging and
BitTorrent, prosumers produce and consume at once. The producers are the
audience, the act of making is the act of watching, and every link is both a
point of departure and a destination.
posted by ksbanks on 03-06-2008
- What would Veblen (conspicuous consumption) think of Toffler's prosumption? Producers are the audience. Producers are the consumers. This is fascinating.
  posted by ksbanks on 03-06-2008
Our Machine is born
posted by klynch84 on 03-06-2008
- This machine may be born, but it will be interesting to see what it turns into as it grows up.
  posted by klynch84 on 03-06-2008

klynch84

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A N I M O T O

Expand
YouTube - paper prototype usability test

Expand
AT&T Labs Text-to-Speech: Demo

Expand
YouTube - Genuity: Black Rocket

Expand
iMedia Connection: The Agency of the Future: Consumers - Home Depot

Expand
AdvertisementAve.com - Bathroom Trial Run

Expand
AdvertisementAve.com - Olympic Curling

Expand
Don Barthelme Was Way Ahead of His Time

Expand
A Wandering Rock, A Wandering Island

Expand
January 6, 1998: Some Thoughts on Writing Hypertext Fiction

Expand
Magical Realism—Audio of the Photo Shoot

Expand
Discourse of the Unknown, Part 1

Expand
A Letter to Kendra From the 34th Floor of the Amoco Building

Expand
Wired 13.08: We Are the Web

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http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle_vv.html

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4.01: Who Am We?