gestures
So, Im back from RSS Alley and OPML Camp today.
I did not blog from the conference simply because the conversations were so rich and thought provoking that I didn’t want to only give them partial attention.
Attention itself was in fact a big topic and there is some big news coming our way on that topic. Other topics included namespaces, the spec, RDF and tags. Oh and Second Life seemed to permeate the breaks. I even talked a little on SSE, and I think we might see some progess on SSE used with OPML soon.
Special thanks must go to Adam Green, who did a great job organizing and Berkman for hosting, and Halley Suitt and the Top Ten Sources folks for hosting the party.
And if Dave Winer is listening, we all thanked you for RSS and OPML in general. Great work.
The whole weekend was truly inspirational.
But speaking of conversations and attention, this one is nearly over for me.
Perhaps a couple transitional posts and I’ll be moving on.
A couple things are for sure. OPML and Reading Lists (Glists if you ask me, Beeds if you ask James Corbett) have a huge future. Attention and gestures have a huge future. Grazr has a huge future and Second Life-like environments have a huge future. I’d like to be in the middle of it all.
Or I could just hang out on the podcast.com platform(search for podcast in second life) and listen to streaming music.
Either way.
If GestureBank frees us from data lock-in, I tend to think that the “black box” of a closed-source attention filtering algorithm will be the next thing that needs to be transparent.
Steve Gillmor tells me that market forces will take care of that. We can compare the various services and choose the one we think is right.
Fair enough, because we won’t be locked in to one data vendor, but subtle differences that have an effect over time may not be obvious in the short term.
Furthermore, when the time comes for the gestures we aggregate to apply a filter to a new intention we have, how easy will it be to shop around the different filters.
I’m not yet fully convinced.
Speaking of Gestures, I can’t say I totally have Steve Gillmor’s point absorbed. I’m not going to link anyway.
But my take is this.
Using links as a basis for extracting economics from citation is corruptible. Using gestures is not.
Put another way, you can’t fake attention. Furthermore, links are only one cog in the wheel of attention-share. Link data is meaningful only in relation to surrounding data, including and perhaps most importantly gestures and intention.
More talk from Jeff Jarvis about an Open Ad Marketplace. You know I’m for it. But let me try to distill a similar idea that has been floating around here lately.
Closed-source algorithms for Attention filtering are the greatest danger facing information consumption over the coming years. They are nearly tantamount to the closed distribution system afforded by printing press ownership.
I will also mention to my OPML friends: Open systems built upon similar concepts as the Dave Winer SYO are the first step toward freeing the public from a future where “Attention control” can spread.
One last note: If Dave Winer is right and the RSS feed is the advertisement, then we make no distinction between commercial and non-commercial content. In such a case, Steve Gillmor’s Gesture Bank data along with an open-source filtering algorithm(s), should do the job.
GestureBank, as many of you have probably heard is an interesting new project being evangelized by Steve Gillmor.
I’m contributing my clickstream as of moments ago. Still not sure how the recorder can contribute to Root.net as well. I’ll have to take a second look at that.
Where all of this will take us, we shall see.
My guess: The way GTalk’s jabber based open architecture will slowly melt down the IM silos, projects like GestureBank will melt down the silos of marketing data.
I don’t even think Steve fully realizes what potential that holds for individuals of the world.
This will spawn unforseen applications and networks,. I even have a few in mind already. ; )
For the last few weeks I’ve had an exchange set up on Root.net with Seth Goldstein.
It’s really interesting, if nothing else, to compare online behavior.
I won’t reveal any of his attention data here, except one fact.
He hasn’t visited this blog.
I hadn’t visited his either until I linked to it in this post. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we didn’t read each other’s because consumption through a newsreader is not recorded.
I wonder what he finds interesting in my attention data.
1 mail.google.com 528 visits 25.1%
2 everybuddy.org 387 visits 18.4%
3 www.register.com 85 visits 4.0%
4 www.google.com 82 visits 3.9%
5 192.168.2.20 80 visits 3.8%
I use Gmail. I blog through the Wordpress web interface. I use register.com as my domain registrar and I have development server on my local network.
Pretty boring stuff.
What he (or a marketer) would find interesting is the visit to the Food Network.
Considering my Italian roots, it’s a decent bet I’m celebrating Easter this weekend. Those, plus the fact that a recipe I looked at several times on different days includes Amaretto liqueur, a marketer might think I’d be in the market for a new bottle.
The bottle I have right now is just about kicked, but in fact I won’t be buying another. A dinner guest will be bringing one, along with some fresh italian pastries.
But you get the idea. GestureBank on the way via Steve Gillmor. Lotsa fun ahead.
In the Steve Gillmor GestureBank Q n A post,
Are people really asking you how GestureBank is going?
No, is the answer he gives but links to this:
http://www.lenovo-tapes.com/kent.html
Hmmm. Can someone help me here? Is it unbelievable? I’m just not smart enough to keep up with stuff. Mike Arrington’s advice to explain this stuff more simply may be having the opposite effect.
“It’s not a metaphor,” says Steve. Okay.
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