A few months ago, I was at a cub scout meeting with my kids, sitting in the back of the room reading Emergence. The mother next to me, who had failed to bring entertainment of her own, asked me if I was reading the book “for work, or for fun?”
For a moment, I honestly couldn’t answer. And in that moment, I realized how very lucky I was. That it is so difficult for me to differentiate between things done “for work” and things done “for fun” is a pretty amazing gift.
It’s been more and more true lately. I’m beginning to feel a sense of being “in the groove” that I can’t remember having felt in a long time. The various threads of my interests, experience, knowledge, and professional responsibilities are converging into something that seems to really matter. I’m not sure if I have a name yet for that “something.” Some people are calling it “social software,” which comes pretty close.
Last night, I gave a talk to our IT student organization entitled “Social Software, XML, and the Semantic Web.” I talked about the relationship among those concepts, and the fact that we’re still really in “primordial ooze” mode with the tools. We’re in the middle of this bubbling sea of technology and communication, watching as things like weblogs and wikis and MMORPGs and emergent democracy emerge from the mix.
I looked at the room full of students I was talking to, and realized—they are the future. They are the toolmakers that we need to make the amorphous ideas real and solid. They know how to use the tools…my job isn’t to teach them to code, it’s to teach them why to code, to point them to the problems that need to be solved, to make sure they understand the social context in which they are working.
Over the past few days, I’ve been caught up in home and office responsibilities, and haven’t been blogging—or reading the blogs that I usually follow. And I realized today how much I miss it. Every day my ideas and thinking are informed and enriched by the things I read online. Reading blogs isn’t a luxury for me any more…it’s a necessity. It’s where these ideas are emerging, where they’re being shaped and discussed.
And if it also happens to be something that delights me…well, every now and then I guess the stars do align properly.
Update
Apparently the talk was a hit with at least one student…
Peter Merholz is back on the blogging scene, which I’m happy about…I like his writing. He returns with a bit of a lament about the “echo chamber,” “meme replication” effect in blogs.
I’ve got mixed feelings on that. If the replication and repetition is primarily in the form of what are beginning to be known as “link and comment” blogs, as opposed to thoughtful commentary and building upon ideas, I agree that it can be tiresome. But most of the blogs that I read regularly go well beyond link-and-comment. If they link to an “idea du jour,” the do so because they have something to add, a new direction to explore. As a result, it’s not so much an echo effect as it is an opportunity to watch an idea emerge, grow, diverge, expand, be refuted, etc.
This enjoyment of the triangulation of views is something I’ve talked about before. The interlinking of ideas and content on weblogs, particularly given the linear time-based nature of the form, provides a fascinating window into the evolution of an idea. Ideas have always evolved through discussion and debate. And while e-mail and mailing lists provide some of that context for speedy computer-mediated discussion and debate, they are less permeable, and more ephemeral, then weblogs.
Weblogs facilitate this process of evolving concepts in several ways. First, by making the process of linking to—and becoming aware of links from—other sites so seamless. (From trackback to technorati, some of the most interesting new technologies facilitate exactly this aspect of blogging.) Second, by opening up these cross-blog discussions to people you might not have thought to “invite” through comments, search engines, blogrolls, and the like. Third, by providing more permanent archives of content, allowing links and trackbacks to span over time in a way that mailing lists don’t do effectively. (Yes, I know many mailing lists have archives. But honestly, how many people do you think really read them regularly? And when have you ever seen somebody point back to an archived mailing list as part of a current discussion? Not often, I suspect.)
In my next post (I’ve been saving this stuff up for a couple of days, with no time to sit down and write), I’m going to link to a bunch of stuff that other people have been saying recently. But I suspect that the way in which I organize and comment on them will add value for some of my readers. It’s not just a “me, too” process.
As to the semantic noise becoming “deafening” as you read through multiple takes on a topic…I think that’s something that as a reader, I have a lot of control over. It’s a self-limiting process. When I’ve had enough, I stop reading. When I’ve processed that, I go back. There are times, even on the blogs I read the most, that I find myself skimming over content because I’m not convinced there’s much more that I need to add to my understanding. But that’s true in almost every information-gathering context, I think. I tell my grad students that learning to skim their readings is the most important skill for them to master. I tell my undergrads that they need to learn how to extract just what they need from a technical reference, rather than reading it cover to cover. I tune out in faculty meetings when I’m oversaturated on a given debate. I don’t see weblogs as all that different…
Discussions about social software seem to be taking wing right now in the blogging world. From Andy’s discussion of gaming and CSCW to Matt Jones’ Webb’s wonderful collection and summary of current ideas and posts on social software, things are buzzing.
Matt follows up today with “More Social Software Rambling,” in which he says:
I like it when people say “I’m a tool guy”. That means we (equals me. I’m a paradigm person myself) can take what they do, extract the attributes that made it successful, and reuse elsewhere. Some people can just create social software without thinking about it, like some people are great interior designers, or great orators, great at articulating themselves. Leaving these qualities in the hands of the people who were born with them isn’t enough: that’s why we teach people how to structure an argument, how to make use of rhetoric, why people go on courses for presentation skills (“What do I do with my hands?”).
This relates nicely to a conversation I had today with a colleague about my social software graduate program ideas. He asked me if I envisioned the program as one that would turn out “researchers,” or one that would turn out “practitioners.” A reasonable question, given that my background is in information science and communications research. But my answer was unequivocal—practitioners. I want to turn out toolmakers. Our students are so well positioned to be the “tool guys” (and gals, I might add) that Matt wants to work with. But to be toolmakers in the world of social software will require that they understand the people and the contexts for which the tools will be developed. Just as the “paradigm guys” need to understand enough about the technology to be able to help architect solutions, the “tool guys” need to understand enough about the architectural context to build the right solution.
Last week, the day I heard from NSF, my co-PI walked into my office, grabbed my shoulders, and said “Can you feel it?” “What?” “This is it. This is one of those moments where everything changes.” She was right. But I’m feeling it more and more these days…the networked world is changing, and it’s going to have an impact on all of us. We’re right at the tipping point. Heading towards escape velocity. Can you feel it?
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