Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education

Using Twitter to get informed, XKCD

In response to XKCD, Twitter is also great for learning about the things people panic about:


That's Chris Millet, Laura Blankenship, Sarah Robbins, Maria Anderson in a little more than one hour.

Pursued by Napoleonic tweets

Best Twitter email I've ever received:

Sending coded messages via Google SearchWiki

You can send coded messages through Google's new SearchWiki.  Much potential for game designers, ARGists, hackers, storytellers.

Recently released, the SearchWiki lets users add text comments to search results.  Users can share those publicly, which then appear on the results page of other users.  There are worries about this being abused by spammers.

But what if I leave bits of messages spread across different searches?  They might not be comprehensible on a case by case basis:

Without knowing the exact search query used to "aggregate" the comment set in any specific case, outside parties who might stumble across individual message fragments (as comments on arbitrary URLs) would be extremely unlikely to recognize them as parts of a coherent message, and would have no simple technique to locate the other parts of the message in any case. This is a key attribute of the described technique -- a message that is dispersed in this manner is unlikely to even be recognized as a message worthy of attention or log-based analysis.

The creator offers a proof of concept, which is also one storytelling intro:

Only one word in each of the ten comment sentences for this basic example is part of the actual secret message. Your mission is to derive the complete secret message, which is currently dispersed across the space of Google's search database.

(via Slashdot)

Self-linking versus the Web

This good post argues that self-linking is on the rise.  It starts from a brief comment arguing that external linking is dying: "the link economy is broken."

Ingram argues that self-linking, rather than external linking (i.e., what most people think of as linking), is another move in the ancient rhetorical game of building one's rep:

the desire on the part of sites like CNET to prove how authoritative they are by making it look as though the only stories worth linking to are their own...

In a sense we're seeing another response to the so-called problem of deep linking.  It's a strategy of shaping the user's experience, controlling it, trapping the reader like an insect caught in webbing.

There are many good reasons for self-linking, such as introducing first-time readers to some of your content.  But a closed loop of internal links is as bad as a scholarly paper which cites only its author.

A blog triumph

Today I left the local public library, two fine works of spy fiction under my arm.  Let me pause to reflect on just how good one blogging experience was.

Last week I had a sudden hankering for good spy stories, after watching some episodes of the astonishing British spy series, Sandbaggers.  But I didn't have a lot of luck checking Google and Amazon for the kinds of fiction I had in mind.  Amazon lists didn't pan out, and Google results were too broad.

So I blogged about my desire, listing a few titles I was thinking of, trying to narrow down what I had in mind.  A bunch of people posted suggestions in the comments.  More people contacted me directly, via IM, and in several conversations within the fine Brainstorms community.

Next, I assembled a list, then blogged it.  When that appeared, still more people offered suggestions, and commented on each other's.  So I revised the list, revised it again, and am delighted with the results.  It looks like a lot of fun reading.  And it will probably grow as i read, and as more suggestions flow in.

What a win for online collaboration.  Open expression of interest, hyperlinks, comments, responses, and aggregation.  Between this blog and Brainstorms, I now have a rich syllabus (Kim is a treat so far, btw).  The results are out on the Web, for anyone with an interest in this subject.  And this process is visible (on the blog side), and now commented upon.

Many thanks to all!

Last living founder of secret math society dies: generations

One of the founders of Bourbaki died this month.  Henri Cartan was, amazingly, 104.  His father was a math genius, too.

If you don't know Bourbaki, it's one of the most awesome semi-secrets in academia.  "Nicolas Bourbaki" was a pseudonym, actually composed of a group of radical French mathematicians.  One part hoax, one part intellectual reform.

I like this one glimpse into B's working:

Their discussions appeared to be “a gathering of madmen,” Dieudonné remarked. When Armand Borel first visited the group in 1949, he described “two or three monologues shouted at top voice, seemingly independently of one another.”  The group refused to appoint a leader and insisted on unanimous decision-making. Drafts were revised time and time again, often even simply thrown out. “Why such a cumbersome process did converge was somewhat of a mystery even to the founding members,” Borel said.

One wonders (innocently) what other academic secret identities there are.  Or could be.

(via Slashdot)

Social nodalities: Engestrom on social objects, peripheral vision, and the mobile

Jyri Engestrom speaks to social objects and social nodalities: David Weinberger's account.  It's a fascinating set of notes, with some typically great points:

• Verbs for social objects: we need to think about the verbs that people perform on objects. E.g., Flickr’s aggregation of what people have done with your photos. We should be surfacing the available actions.
• World of Warcraft's information methods for everyday life: “Imagine a physical world where we have as much peripheral information at our disposal as in WoW.” Not just “boring update feeds.” Innovate, especially on mobiles. We will see this stuff in the next 24 months. Some examples: Maps: Where my friends are. Phonebook: what are people up to. Email: prioritized. Photos: Face recognition.
• A new take on social search: Detecting nodal points: “What should I be aware of that’s happening around me? Was what just happened significant to someone on the network.” And then deliver it to people at just the right time, perhaps via push. “Discovery is becoming social.” “It is the end of the era of search,” i.e., of querying for stuff. From browser to search to share (citing former ceo of paypal). From pagerank to “facerank” where what counts is friends in common, physical proximity, shared taste, shared objects.

And yes, did you catch the bit about upcoming Googleosity, "We will see this stuff in the next 24 months"?  From Jyri's site: "Tonight we demonstrated Jaiku running on Google App Engine..."

Has anyone posted a fuller report?

Wordle, for tag clouds

Sample use of Wordle, building a tag cloud out of my del.icio.us account:

Some nice, easy to do designs there.

Our community blog launches

Our town of Ripton launched a blog last month.  I'm very proud of this.  For one, it's great to learn more about my community than I already knew.  For another, it's another case of Web 2.0 tools used for connection and community awareness.

Please do check it out.

Expanding and thinning virtual worlds

Google Spreadsheets are a kind of virtual world: so argues Tony Walsh in a provocative post.  Users experience a persistent, modifiable world, presence indicators of other users, and so on.  As commentators argue, this is really true of decently functioning groupware.  Heck, book-based fictional worlds are virtual worlds in this light, especially when fan communities are involved.

It's a useful probe, in Macluhan's sense, an idea to provoke.  It might remind us of the long history of text-based virtual worlds, forgotten far too often today.

One commentator chez Walsh picks up on something I've been arguing for a while.  There are many ways for Google Earth to combine with other tools to form virtual worlds.  And that could be huge, when it starts happening.