Tag: Internet

Geek Code

I remember spending an afternoon studiously plonking out my GC [1]. I may have even included it in an email signature at the time. Man….blast from the past.

Brought to you by a light discussion at work of creating a unique identifier for every developer based on their positions in the various geek religious wars (vi or emacs, *nix or windows, Firefox or IE or Chrome or Opera or what-have-you, tabs or spaces, etc). Assign each facet a set of prime numbers. Add the primes and you get a unique integer. It shouldn’t take more than, what, 32 different facets?

[1] http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html

Lamentation

Editors do make a difference. The trade-off for getting all of our news instantly delivered to us by a peer-to-peer network is that we have to be our own editors.

Not everyone is aware of this or willing to take on that responsibility. I think we’re where we’re at as a society because of that.

Steampunk WWW

Overheard in re: a Metafilter conversation [1] about the original cross platform web browser; a line-mode application which is essentially a TTY [2] interface.

Imagine that… a typewriter that types by itself like some kind of terrible player piano. You read what it’s writing while it chatters away. And then once in a while it stops and you press a key that tells it what to type next. There’s fanfold of dead trees a thousand feet long under the desk, slowly being transferred into the trash bin behind it. And that’s you browsing the web.

Downright depressing, that.

[1] http://www.metafilter.com/132359/There-is-to-top-to-the-World-Wide-Web#5210791
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal

RSS as Memex

I know it’s a topic I come back to now and again, but only because it is one of the most useful “technologies” to come out of my WorldWideWeb experience. The ability to essentially bookmark something of interest and then have that thing tell you when something happens to it is a remarkable way to increase the number of things one can juggle. Layering audio and video files on top of the RSS framework gives us pod/vid casting. This has also reshaped the way I consume media to a huge extent.

Not having to search out content, but to let it tell you when there is something to consume frees up more time for consumption. I used to read blogs by clicking through all of my bookmarks, reading to remember where I last left off, and then reading onward until I’d consumed all the new postings. I could waste hours a day doing this and not really gain a whole lot of new information. I don’t think I’ve clicked on a blog bookmark in years now. I just follow links from my RSS reader.

Podcasting has made my life as a commuter so much more enjoyable. I currently timeshift about 15 radio shows from four continents on a variety of subjects. I no longer chafe under the constraints of what limited variety the local over-the-air radio provides. Podcasting also provides a platform for niche programming. You’d never get a weekly half-hour program featuring mashups that pull from classical, martial, and pop music on any corporate run radio station. I have two of these in my queue and when the mood strikes on a given drive, I can groove away.

Historically I’ve always subscribed to feeds for the long haul. A website I enjoy has a feed? Subscribe! I never did much pruning because I liked what they had to offer over time. There are some that changed in tone (or maybe I’ve changed a bit too) and I’ve deleted them. Some blogs are no longer active, much to my great disappointment. The subscribe/delete process tended to keep things at a pretty even level with my ability to keep up.

Lately, as in maybe the past six months or so, I’ve been using RSS a bit differently. Google provides a number of interesting ways to combine its search algorithms with the technology and it is easy enough to set up a feed and get news of a particular subject without having to go looking for it. For example, when Google comes across news matching the filter “Council Bluffs levee” I get a notice and link to the article. I’m following three general news stories this way. Google + RSS has become my own private clipping service.

Most online newspapers and discussion forums now allow you to subscribe to feeds on comment threads for news stories. This lets me track a discussion on the latest outrage to hit Metafilter, chuckle over the frothing masses huddled over the latest local crime sensation, keep up on discussions about the various ham radios I own, etc etc etc.

All of this flows through my email/RSS reader. The Web is clamoring at my doorstep, providing endless opportunities to wallow in a glut of signal (and noise) surrounding something that interests me. It is Vannevar Bush’s Memex realized. Using my reader’s indexing and searching functions, I can retrieve details and discussion history at levels that continually amaze.

The problem, and there’s always a problem, is that my reader/email client is becoming unwieldy. There are so many feeds I’ve subscribed to in the past half year that no longer bear fruit and should be pruned. The size on my filesystem of this vast amount of text and audio is starting to strain my ability to capture and properly manage backups for. I dread migration my primary platform so much that I have a hard time envisioning not using my current laptop for the rest of my life.

Still, there’s no way I’m going back. You can pry my collection of feeds from my cold, dead fingers. Something so simple as a standardized, machine-readable, XML format has enabled us to unleash the scouring power of software agents on the monstrosity that is the WorldWideWeb. This is the kind of thing that gave me shivers when playing with the building blocks in grad school. It’s almost AI, but it’s most like Memex…and we’re really only beginning here.

Looking forward, RSS-like applications are being bundled into the next generation of browsers. Visit a web site with a feed and the browser can remember the state of the site when you visit. Come back and it will jump to the place where you last were, or maybe even filter out the old and only show you the new, or maybe just highlight new content. Or maybe do all three and allow you the option to pick how you want it to behave. The money-making future of the Web is in aggregation + digestion + presentation + personalization + connecting similar datasets/profiles/people. Do this seamlessly and people will pay–either those who want this level of service or those who want to harvest the audiences these silos present.

Hate the Hypocrisy, Love the Hypocrit

So you want to get your message out to the masses. You want a soap box from which you can teach the world a thing or two about the world. You want to make a difference, foster change, foment revolution. You’ve got two birds in each hand having scoured the bushes and you’re ready to share a really fish and loaf miracle.

Well, son, that’s completely admirable. Question is, are you aware you are already standing on the kind of soap box your ancestors, both literal and figurative, could only dream of? Do you realize that this here Internet can reach nearly every nation; every culture; every single person who is not more immediately concerned with scratching an existence from some hard-scrabble desert floor? It is here, waiting for you seize the opportunity to shower us with your wisdom.

Oh, wait, you did realize this? So what is the problem then? Why are you standing here, bitching?

A-ha. You don’t have an audience. Well, that there Constitution—or at least the tattered remains thereof—doesn’t guarantee you an audience. Nope. An audience must be earned. You have to grow an audience like you would a bonsai tree. This isn’t your standard refrigerator science experiment kind of growing. You have to sit with your audience, keep them involved, play to their vanity. If they want to be entertained, you have to entertain them. If they want to feel intelligent you have to package your message with a certain distain for the common.

So you’re okay with that level of commitment? Are you sure? Because, from the looks of things, you’re not really doing a good job of that so far. But, okay, your word is gold. From here on out you are the man and the flock is just around the corner…waiting to consume your message.

You do have a message, don’t you? After all, your obsession with a soap box is grounded in preaching this message, right? So, then, start with an audience of one. What is your message?

…

Hey. You. Stop already. You lost me at about your third sentence there. That is, if what was coming out of your mouth could be considered as something remotely resembling the rules of grammar. You are familiar with grammar, no?

Well, see, here’s the deal. Your message? Yeah. It needs to be short enough to remember. They say the human brain can hold up to seven chunks of information at any given time. Seven. It would behoove you to distill that thing down into seven words, preferable fewer.

Sure, go ahead and write a manifesto, a treatise, a five volume disquisition on what ever it is that keeps that bug up your ass. Set it all down in writing with annotation, explication, appendices, and proper citation. Just don’t spew that at every opportunity. You have seven words. Use them judiciously.

So, again, what is it you are after? Why do you continue to bother us? What possible reason do you have for inserting yourself into our daily routines? Because, honestly, we don’t care. We all want our own soap box too.

You’re not the only one who has figured it all out. In fact, after hearing your spiel you obviously don’t have your shit together in the least. You’re going to have to compete with the rest of us trying to everyone to listen. Your precious Internet, the thing that provides you your global soapbox? Yeah, that. You ever wonder why you are gifted with such an opportunity? Well, it certainly isn’t because you are a unique, special snowflake. You get your shake at the Internet because we all do. You get it because the barrier to entry is so incredible low, especially here in the first world.

So, yeah, go ahead sucker. Have at it. Just keep in mind that it isn’t guaranteed, it isn’t easy, and you sure as hell aren’t the best one out there.