ASH-10 Notebook

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  Pete Ashton 1:24 pm on August 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: community (2), Hyperlocal (2), newspapers (2)

  A quote taken out of context from here:

  Many people still read home-delivered print (more than you might think). Print readership isn’t directly measurable, but there are plenty of research tools that all report a decline in frequency — and along with it, engagement with civic life.

  This bugs me. I’m not doubting that engagement with “civic life” drops when you remove the source of information about it. I’m just wondering what it gets replaced with. I feel more engaged with civic life in my city than I ever did when I actively bought print media. I’d like to think I’m not unusual in that regard.

   

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  Pete Ashton 7:26 pm on August 7, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  

  Someone said the other day there’s nothing new about this stuff. I think the stuff was related to social media tools but let’s assume it was because it’s true. With a few exceptions all these things are nothing new.

  So why are they interesting? Two things:

  1) Accessibility. All these tools are either absurdly cheap or free (with restrictions or hidden time costs). This is the Printing Press or Photocopier argument. 

  2) Mass adoption. As Lord Shirky says, bigger or more us radically different. When you move from 1000 to 1000000 people doing a thing the nature of that thing changes. 

  So it’s all about access. That’s all that’s new really.

   
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  Pete Ashton 8:08 pm on August 2, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: aggregation, Hyperlocal (2), talkaboutlocal

  Been thinking about what you might call “hyperlocal aggregators” of late. It’s not a novel idea by any stretch but possibly a natural next step. Say you’ve got a load of blogs, forums, etc about a local area. How do you deal with all that stuff? Group blogs like Jon Bounds’ Brumblr network are a possible solution but they do tend to follow the 80/20 rule of participation and still act as a bottleneck. The Hyperlocal Newswire is another possible solution but it’s more search based than perhaps I’m thinking.

  I keep returning to I Can Has Cheezbuger for some reason, not so much for the system they use but for the notion of letting stuff bubble up through activity. Or maybe Flickr Interestingness is the thing. Popular isn’t the thing here. I don’t care if lots of people have looked at a thing but I do care if a few people found it really compelling. How do you measure that?

  And, ultimately, how can this be connected to a specific geographic place?

   
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  Pete Ashton 12:23 am on August 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: curation, data, process

  Post the Collective Memory stuff I’ve been thinking, what are these for anyway? Once you get over a certain number of links it’s incredibly doubtful that the casual reader is going to follow more than a few, even moreso when there aren’t any descriptions next to the links.

  Probably best to think of them as part of a process, the creation of a pool of raw data to be used in some way.

  Actually, here’s a nice example. I dumped all 1200 of my TTV photos from Supersonic in a movie because I haven’t had time to select and process the 100 or so that will stand alone. Someone has taken section with Jarboe, slowed it right down and soundtracked it with some of her music.

  Nice bit of remix culture going on there.

   
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  Pete Ashton 4:11 pm on July 29, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: comments, conversation (3), registration, spam, trolls

  Had a couple of run-ins with blogs requiring registration to leave comments. Sites have every right to do this and may well have good reasons (for example, their content might attract a lot of trolls / spammers) but in most cases it’s counter productive. You’re saying “we welcome your contribution but first please fill out this form”. Since most comments, like conversations in general, are off the cuff and immediate this requires the writer to spend more time applying than they would spend writing.

  I’d advocate new blogs open up comments as wide as possible and apply restrictions as they become necessary. As a new site you need all the help you can get in building an audience. Think about a new shop opening on the high street. Firstly they’ll have their doors wide open )not just unlocked – wide open) so absolutely anyone can walk in. Then they’ll have a member of staff whose job it is to greet customers and help them find what they need – this is the equivalent of you asking for comments and joining in the discussion. And then, finally, they actually have what you need or offer to order it for you – the listening part.

  Now, once the shop is established with a reliable customer base they can afford to change their strategy. Maybe they move the popular stuff to the back of the store so people have to walk past other products to get to it and increase opportunistic sales (this is why the milk is at the back of the supermarket). Maybe they move the greeter onto the tills to speed up sales. Maybe they de-emphaise their loss-leading special orders service and push the high-margin best sellers.

  The point is they’re only able to do this once enough customers think it’s worth their while to shop there. If you want to force people to register to comment in order to build up a database of users to exploit you’re going to have to make it worth their while. The Guardian can do this because they’re the Guardian. Are you? Probably not.

  The same, by the way, goes for CAPTCHAs – the fuzzy word-recognition thing implemented to prevent spam programs. It also prevents people with every so slightly fuzzy eyesight or the mildest of dyslexia (I have great trouble with these) let alone those with serious impairment. Spam-filtering software for blogs is fairly advanced now, especially on Wordpress, so you don’t really need to worry about it when you start out. It’s only when you hit higher Google rankings that you come on the spammers radar. For the first few months you’ll be fine.

  Same applies to trolls. Unless you are blogging about contentious subjects or are bringing antagonism in from offline you’re unlikely to have to moderate comments to begin with, at least not across the whole site. The odd post of two might need attention but most of them aren’t going to be that active.

  So open it all up. Welcome everyone. Greet them and talk with them and make them happy. Build a large pool of readers who actively want to contribute something. Then decide with them how you’re going to manage the conversation. But that’s another subject alltogether.

   
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  Pete Ashton 2:39 pm on July 29, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backlash (3), social media, utopia

  Re: Charlie Beckett’s post The myth of digital democracy?

  I don’t think I’ve ever been a Digital Utopian. I might have come across as one and I’m sure I’ve said things that are a bit utopian but I’d hope it’s always been about the potential of this stuff.

  Let’s use anti-depressants as a metaphor because it amuses me to do so. Society is kinda sick and needs fixing. (This is not news. Society has probably been sick since 10 or so people decided to come together. I mean, have you not read Asterix?)

  The modern Anti-D’s, the SSRIs not you parents’ Valium, don’t pretend to make you happy. They give you the opportunity to make yourself happy by acting as a crutch. If you’re in the dark pit of despair they’ll switch the light on and provide a ladder, but you need to climb up the ladder.

  And that’s what social media (or whatever you want to call it) provides. It’s the potential to connect people in new ways, to share information in new ways and to learn about the world and each other in new ways. But you have to work with these tools and develop these opportunities.

  Google etc have all the answers but not always on the front page. You need to learn how to use Google.

  Crowdsourced popularity rankings (Digg, Twitter trends, etc) suck because of the crowd, not because of the system.

  And so on.

  This is going to take a while to sort out. People have been crushed by monolithic media control systems for generations. I reckon we’re looking at 50 years before we can shake that off. And even then this new networked utopia will only be as good as the people in it.

  Am I a nihilist utopian? Maybe.

  Further aside, I wonder if the social media backlash ties into the Kübler-Ross “five stages of grief” model: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. We’ve been through Denial and I think we’re into Anger. Better get the SSRIs out for the next part…

   
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  Pete Ashton 7:29 pm on July 28, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: creativebrum

  I’ve been thinking recently about blogs covering the creative and arts scenes in Birmingham. I have something in mind. It’s not in any form to be shared yet but if it comes to fruition it should be good. I hope.

  For now I’m making lists of the main blogs in this area. So far I’ve got:

  http://www.createdinbirmingham.com/

  http://morecanalsthanvenice.wordpress.com/

  http://cultofcreativity.com/

  http://www.creativeboom.co.uk/

  I’m sure there are more. Links in the comments please!

   
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  Pete Ashton 10:38 pm on July 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collectives, DIY

  The Supersonic festival has got me thinking about many things, most of them music related, obviously, but some relevant to this blog. I’ve been thinking about ripples, echoes, etc that come from endeavors with an embracing DIY attitude. Join in, feed off what’s here and build your own stuff.

   
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  Pete Ashton 1:03 pm on July 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Blogging, todo

  Think I might write a comprehensive guide to blogging, back to basics style.

   
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  Pete Ashton 12:38 pm on July 24, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: davewiner, journalism (2), power

  Sifting Dave Winer for the good quotes. Sometimes he gets it spot on. (Not always though!)

  What worked for HBO won’t work for news

  I love The Wire. It’s the best TV series ever. I’ve paid for it twice, once on HBO and once on DVD. So I not only believe in paying for content I love, I practice it. Redundantly!

  [Redundant practice is an interesting concept. Buying a CD because you want to reward the band even though you already downloaded the mp3s is a redundant act.]

  I just don’t think the reporter model is working. All it does is inflate the self-importance of these people, turn them into gatekeepers, and often bullies. People who behave like the power brokers they’re supposedly covering.

  [I've been thinking for a long time journalism is too tied up in power. The Murdoch factor trickles down to the front line. Just as we need to remind politicians they are servants to the people who elect them, so we also need to imbue that sense of public service into journalism, at least if it wants to be supported as an essential service.]

  I also think there’s a need for aggregation, but it’s a practice people like Simon often mock. In fact reporters base their work on generous people who contribute their knowledge for free — sources.

  Seeing the social web as your rolodex on steroids with ESP is a no brainer.

   
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  Pete Ashton 9:01 pm on July 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: community (2), Internet, network, social, structure

  A theme I keep returning to is how the physical makeup of the Internet, a networked system of autonomous nodes sharing information with no central point, informs the social discourse that takes place on it. I really must develop this further. Thus us a note to lodge that on my mind. And if anyone has thoughts or references along these lines I’d be grateful.

   
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  Pete Ashton 8:51 pm on July 22, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: easy, Engagement

  I wonder if we need to easeback on emphasising how “easy” this all is. Sure, setting up a blog or whathaveyou is simple as are the basic methodologies (linking, tagging, etc) but the actual maintaining and developing of a social Internet presence is not automatically easy. It takes time and thought to get right (“right” being relative, of course).

  Certainly good enough is good enough and I’m a strong believer in the democratic power of lo-fi, but…

   
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  Pete Ashton 10:55 am on July 21, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backlash (3), socialmedia

  18 months ago there were no “social media consultants”. The term didn’t exist. But for at least a decade before the term people were doing stuff with the internet in a social way and there was a need for a name. Unfortunately with names come definitions (“what is social media anyway”) and definitions, while useful, do tend to limit things. They also make the target bigger for those that might want to dismiss the thing, for good or bad reasons.

  I’ve been trying to move away from the term social media since the spring but it’s very hard to explain what it is I do without it. It’s a bit of a millstone.

  I think the social media industry will start fading away in the next year or so as the snake-oil salesmen get revealed (some of them might not realise they’re selling snake oil – I occasionally wonder about myself) and those who really know and understand this stuff stop talking and start doing, taking the theory and blurring it in with the rest of societal activity.

  There’s nothing fundamentally special about social media. It’s just people talking and sharing. What makes it special is that it’s new.

  What’s really weird is how something intrinsically connected to 30 years of Usenet, 10 years of blogging, 5 years of Web 2.0, etc can still be considered new, but there you go.

  (see also, kinda: The Bruno Brookes syndrome)

   
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  Pete Ashton 12:41 pm on July 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: causality, quotes, robertantonwilson, serendipity (3)

  

  The use of atomic weapons was widely blamed on a primate named Albert Einstein. Even Einstein himself had agreed with this opinion. He was a pacifist and had suffered abominable pangs of conscience over what had been done with his scientific discoveries….

  Actually the discovery of atomic energy was the result of the work of every scientist, craftsman, engineer, technician, philosopher, and gadgeteer who had ever lived on Terra. The use of atomic energy as a weapon was the result of all the political decisions ever made, from the time the vertebrates first started competing for territory.

  Most Terran primates did not understand the multiplex nature of causality. They tended to think everything had a single cause. This simple philosophic error was so widespread on that planet that the primates were all in the habit of giving themselves, and other primates, more credit than was deserved when things went well. This made them all inordinately conceited.

  They also gave themselves, and one another, more blame than was deserved when things went badly. This gave them all jumbo-sized guilt complexes.

  It is usually that way on primitive planets, before quantum causality is understood.

  Robert Anton Wilson, Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy, p7

   
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  Pete Ashton 3:28 pm on July 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: backlash (3)

  There’s a backlash coming. I don’t know exactly what form it’ll take but I’m starting to see signs. Just wanted to note it.