Curiouser and Curiouser! on ideas

Seeds & notes

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:38:04 +0000

Summary: In this entry I argue that a different position in a process of research/inquiry (thought development?) probably requires a different treatment in the weblogging, klogging process. I discuss a simple model of the thinking process and how each piece of the model might be treated differently by the weblogger. Bottom line is that Radio can be used to support such differentiation. See below for details. [Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog]

» An enjoyable piece from Spike about the development and communication of ideas and how it relates to weblogs. I like the concept of seeds & notes and how they relate to socialized and unsocialized thoughts.
This is of particular interest to me now because I am trying to think of places where weblogging fits naturally into a business. It's been suggested that research (companies or departments) is a natural fit since people are already conditioned to write (seemingly a barrier to adoption so far). It also helps that people working with ideas are likely to abound with undeveloped micro-content. Weblogs are a great way to record, develop and ultimately communicate that.
Anyone working in research want to try help design and run a pilot knowledge-logging program?

Calling all conservatives

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 20:35:40 +0000

Common Collective Sense. Britt Blaser suggests , "If you're as sick and tired of being sick and tired as I am, we should ... [istori/log]

Okay I call myself a liberal which I hold to mean:

Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Here are some of my views:

I believe very firmly in the freedom and privacy of individuals - especially under the threat of terrorism.
I am concerned about Saddam Hussein yet still believe that a UK/US war on Iraq is a bad idea (especially if it's all about oil).
I am in favour of European integration and the UK adopting the Euro.
I am worried about rising crime but do not think filling jails with young men is the answer.
I am worried about my health and how to pay for all the medical treatment I am bound to require (if I live long enough).
I wonder if we are on the edge of an ecological disaster and we keep building roads.

Are there any people out there who do not see themselves as a liberal who can find themselves in agreement with one or two of these points and would care to discuss some of the others? Or suggest some of their own?

klog as sounding board

Mon, 30 Dec 2002 19:46:14 +0000

Multiplier effects in klognets.

The Weblogging Multiplier Effect. Some thoughts about the significance of weblogging for instruction and scholarship. [EduResources]

[...] The booster or multiplier that occurs when a person writes about what she or he thinks, observes, and reads, and then receives comments from others within a few hours or days makes an incalculable difference--the difference between private and public writing. This difference multiplies what can be learned and also multiplies the responsibility for thinking through what is said. If a writer's greatest tool is a large wastebasket (as, I believe, Hemingway remarked); the next greatest tool is a real audience.

Again, very good stuff from Joseph Hart. A must-read. In a similar vein, see the article by Verna Allee containing the famous quote Knowledge = power, so share and it multiplies.

[Seb's Open Research]

I've always been happiest when I have a sounding board for my ideas which are often half-formed or just plain out of phase. The power of the weblog as sounding board is that those ideas can kick around some, be rediscovered when the time is right or just act as big flags to warn you "danger Will Robinson!"

A different kind of reader

Tue, 04 Mar 2003 15:03:34 +0000

RSS Shell Integration.

RSS Shell Integration

Chris has some neat ideas on RSS integration right into the Windows shell:

Imagine this: a "News" submenu sitting at the top of your Start Menu, right above the Programs submenu. It cascades out into an organized list of feeds (each feed has its own folder). [_Go_]

Definitely interesting. My only concern would be performance. I have a quite large Start menu without this and its already slow. I can just imagine would it would be like with feeds streaming in all the time. Microsoft's whole shortcut based shell concept is cool and all but its damn slow.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

I haven't read Chris' post so maybe I've missed some nuance but, as described, I think it sounds like an awful idea for a serious reader - maybe it would work for someone with only a couple of feeds.

As Scott says I really don't want my Start menu to slow down any more. I think having 100's (I have 103 and counting) of feeds folders, containing lots of items will do that. It will also clutter it further. When I'm trying to start a program I don't want the shell to halt while it processes 2000 posts because I accidentally ran the mouse over the wrong sub-menu.

Also I think it's the wrong interface. Reading news isn't like starting a program or opening a document (at least, to me it isn't). I would rather have it contained in an application which gives. Also putting feeds in folders (the one advantage this route offers) is hardly a new idea.

What I am looking for is an application designed to handle at least 250 busy feeds. I want an engaging user interface and an approach that acknowledges interests and values as being central to my reading experience.

Turning costs into profits

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 09:47:26 +0000

I'm scouting Ecademy and LinkedIn and just came across Larry who works for a company that sounds very interesting:

Whilst most companies who take away redundant computer equipment charge you for it, Larry's company actually gives you a percentage of the profit they make on the sale. They turn a cost into a profit. That sounds like a brilliant idea to me. I wonder if it works as well as it sounds.

Seeking opinions: IdeaFisher & Project Kickstart

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 21:01:12 +0000

Has anyone out there used IdeaFisher? I'm doing a lot of marketing and idea-centric work at the moment. I saw a quick demo of it in action today and i'm pretty tempted. However i've been here before, so I'm keen to see if anyone else has a read on it.

Also Project Kickstart looks like a pretty cool tool for someone like me who needs project discipline but finds that MS Project frightens me more than it assists me. Anyone have any views?

Teenage Taxonomies

Sat, 01 May 2004 10:40:23 +0100

I've been thinking about how topics are organized in K-Collector. As of my writing the largest K-Collector site is W4 which currently has 726 topics defined in 3 classifications.

What - 410 topics
Who - 227 topics
Where - 89 topics

This is beginning to present some challenges. For example current interfaces in K-Collector clients for selecting topics highlite suggested topics but also display all available topics (under their classifications) for you to choose from. The problem is that, with this number of topics, it's all rather unwieldy.

I already think that it would be advantageous to allow a further subdivision of the classifications to form a 3-level hierarchy. For example What could subdivide into things like products, protoocols, principles, patterns and so on (sort of modelled after Denham Grays Information Gathering Template). But this is not a complete answer.

First I do not want to grow arbitrarily nested taxonomies. If you think about your own experience with menu bars, how often do you look more than 3 levels deep? And how irritating is it to have to poke around like that? Also the deeper the taxonomy the more effort has to be put into designing it and this is the domain of experts and to be avoided

Second faceted classifications only work when they narrow things. As you descend the hierarchy you become more precise about the term you are talking about (Anything => any person => a member of a group => an individual). But for example, when I am writing a post about politics and economics I am really only interested in topics related to those subjects, i.e. I have cross-cutting concerns (like Aspects w.r.t. OOP)

I've been thinking a little bit about Peter Van Dijck's suggestion for nested facets. As Travis Wilson described it in a post to the facetedclassification list:

For example, Peter's article poses a "Product Type" facet where "Cameras" 
is a heading down in the taxonomy somewhere. Cameras have certain 
properties like "Resolution" and "Lens Type" that just aren't relevant to, 
say, hubcaps. So "Resolution" and "Lens Type" are facets with a scope of 
"Product Type = Camera". A faceted navigation interface would expose them 
whenever a search was already restricted to "Camera". Otherwise, they're 
structured like every other facet you've ever seen.

to see whether there is a role for nested facets. I'm still thinking about that.

It's also possible that we could also use the many relations (thousands and thousands of them) that K-Collector builds up to create dynamic cross-cutting hierarchies. The idea here would be to take one or two dominant topics and then order all other topics according to how relevant they were. This should, in theory, put more relevant topics closer to your attention.

No solutions yet, just questions & ideas.

Turbulence

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 10:37:45 +0100

In the language of “chaos” theory, America – if not all of Western civilization – is in a state of turbulence of such intensity that efforts to restore order by recourse to traditional systems and policies will be to no avail. On the contrary, it is our insistence upon established practices that has led us to our plight; and only a fundamental, creative change in our thinking and behavior can extricate us from the destructive consequences of our prior assumptions. -- Via Butler Shafer

I started getting interested in complex systems by listening to David Snowden describe his work. The first time was almost 3 years ago to the day. I heard him again almost a year later and it reinforced his ideas and concepts.

Dave introduced me to the idea that some spaces are complex and in such spaces cause & effect is a retrospective coincidence so that the tools and techniques that used to yield results may cause unpredictable future effects. The challenge of complex spaces is that, when you're in them, they don't necessarily look any different to the knowable spaces we are comfortable with. (Dave also introduced me to the exploits of the incomparable Mulla Nasrudin for which I am very grateful).

From that point onwards I got very interested in sense-making and, given my background and my fascination for blogging, I became very interested in topics and topic maps as a tool for understanding and representing things of interest. In a sense my topic map defines my world, or at least the subset of my world I choose to make public. What has always tripped me up is how poor are the tools we have to work with. My own efforts in addressing this situation, small as they were, have stumbled and failed.

Originally my interest in these things was purely theoretical but over the last 3 years my interest in politics and the nature of the world around me has blossomed and my interests in complexity, systems, sense-making, and reasoning have seemed more practical. I have gone from being an unthinking socialist to a thinking... for want of a better word libertarian. I hesitate when I use the term because I still understand so little of the philosophical underpinnings that define it.

What I do know is that many people who hear me talk about politics and life these days appear to think I am, at best, misguided and, at worst, delusional. I'm treating that as a good sign. For people who believe they are in an ordered space where the old answers remain true then anyone who acts like they believe they are in a complex space may appear to be out-of-step or irrational. Of course I cannot utterly dismiss the possibility that I am misguided or delusional but I see no way to address that other than to keep asking questions.

Recently (although not so recently as I would like) I started studying psychology. I found it to be a fascinating subject both from the perspective of personal discovery but also as a source of tools for thinking about human problems. Social psychology has many interesting things to teach us. From a political perspective one need only consider GroupThink and then look around.

Lately I have been thinking about my future and what I would like to do, if finances and personal situation permit. I am a generalist and aspire to be a PolyMath. I believe that much of interest lies at the interstices of the sciences and arts. I have expressed an interest in doing research and am looking for the right opportunity.

In the meantime I continue to self-educate as best I can. Right now I am honing up my logical argument skills and beginning to read about the very interesting area of Systems Theory. Systems Theory seems to be the ultimate polymath science that seeks always to unify, it's exciting.

The goal of all this effort, like most of my goal, is not yet directed to any specific purpose (not even a political one) but to providing myself, and hopefully others, with better tools to master life. In Gregory Benfords fantastic novels about human future (e.g. Great Sky River) he describes how humans have an enhanced sensorium and access to the aspects of the wisdom of their dead.

I see the shearing forces that act on our society, like the evolution of technology outstripping the pace of social change, and the increasing uncertainty and turbulence we face and cannot but believe that we need new and better tools if we are to survive. Right now I believe that my lifes work is in researching, developing, and using such tools.

Phew... This post went somwhere other than I where I was expecting and, despite being something of a ramble, wanted to be written. I think that reflects my growing uncertainties about my present and my future: my own personal turbulence.