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Rhizomatic strategies: MSFT, Silverlight, the Link, the Fragment

Published April 3, 2008 by cgerrish

Gilles Deleuze

The giants, finding the limitations of growing to be the tallest tree, have started to look for other modes of expansion. Even the tallest tree can’t encompass the world.

Arborescent: growth by extension of mass and branching.

Rhizomatic: growth by linking and become part of the other.

From the definition on Wikipedia: “A rhizome works with horizontal and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.” For near monopolies like Microsoft, companies that seemed to have the whole thing within reach, a new model of dominance has emerged. Google set the pattern, search is in the middle of everything.

The myth of the totalizing whole has been exposed. Not only is it not possible, it’s not desirable. For Microsoft to operate in the new order of things, they must accept a mixed operating environment. Rather than swallowing Yahoo whole, they must link to it and put themselves inside Yahoo as a fragment. Silverlight is the path toward that future because it doesn’t need to play Microsoft’s traditional zero-sum game. It can link to, and become part of, the other. The goal is to be the dominant fragment, the most aggressive weed in the garden.

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The Precise Ambiguity of @megfowler ‘s definition of Twitter

Published March 31, 2008 by cgerrish

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Meg Fowler threw up her hands and finally said, “This is what I do.” She was trying to explain how Twitter goes to some new users. It’s a question that surfaces naturally with the uninitiated. They examine the “rules” and the capabilities, and then answer the question “What are you doing?” But somehow that doesn’t seem to adequately represent the buzz of talk surrounding Twitter.

The first thing new users observe, once they start following veteran users is that the question about what one is doing is only occasionally answered. What are the rules they ask, what are the rules about what to put in to those 140 characters, if you’re not answering the question?

This is where words begin to fail us. How to explain all that is not answering a question? How to explain who hears and who doesn’t? How to explain the river of talk that one follows? To explain one’s experience of Twitter, is to explain one’s self. Everyone’s experience is slightly different.

Meg Fowler’s description brought to mind Ludwig Wittgenstein’s discussion of how we learn and use language in his book Philosophical Investigations. Certainly we can talk about rules when we speak of language. But that’s not how we learn and eventually use language. Rather than learning a set of rules, it’s more a case of “this is what I do,” and you must do what you do.

Asking what one should fill the 140 characters with is like asking what words one should fill one’s voice with. Many social network sites attempt to provide context and set the rules of engagement. Following rules is what machines do, not what people do. I’ve often thought of human-computer interaction as the encounter between a world purged of ambiguity with a world filled with ambiguity. Twitter thrives on the ambiguity of its purpose, it’s a machine that leaves room for the human.

And Meg Fowler, why look to her as an authoritative voice? In a medium where most of use are finding our way and learning the landscape, Ms. Fowler has filled in those 140 characters more than 11,646 times.

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Pro & Amateur: 10,000 Hours of Blogging, 10,000 Hours of Tweets

Published March 18, 2008 by cgerrish

In the book “This is your Brain on Music,” Daniel J. Levitin talks about the “ten thousand hours theory.” Levitin is writing about the brain, music and, among other topics, how long it takes to become an expert musician. In study after study the number 10,000 keeps coming up, talent matters, but time matters just as much. If you practice (effectively) for 10,000 hours it’s highly likely you will achieve a “level of mastery associated with a world-class expert.” You can think of 10,000 hours as three hours a day, or 20 hours a week for 10 years.

Levitin thinks the 10,000 hour rule applies to any pursuit, and that brings to mind the new media. How many bloggers have logged 10,000 hours of blogging? How many have 10,000 hours of Twitter? With new mediums like Twitter is it even possible to have 10,000 hours of experience?

When we talk about the professional and the amateur, we usually operate within the context of “mainstream media” vs. blogs; or traditional revenue model vs. adsense vs. free. Perhaps rather than talking about money, we should think about what makes quality?

The primary skill for both blogging and tweets is writing. A person with 10,000 hours of writing experience will have achieved a master level. 10,000 hours of experience in a particular subject matter (coding, politics, humor, short essays on life, the future, the direction of technology, enterprise technology, philosophy, human behavior, social networks) results in a high level of mastery.

When thinking about the idea of quality and depth, one might ask: how many things do you have 10,000 hours of experience in? How does each inform the other in relation to your writing, or photography, humor, film making, music or ability to make friends?

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The 2-Way Web by Starting Small: 6 Word Bios, Twitter & @newsgang

Published March 17, 2008 by cgerrish

Bertolt Brecht

I’d seen it before, but I was reminded again today driving and listening to the radio. It was a show about the 6 word biographies collected by the folks over at Smith Magazine. The 6 word biography is based on a six word novel by Hemingway:

For sale, baby shoes, never used

The interesting thing about the limitation of six words is its liberating effect. Professional writers become addicted, and “everyday writers” are enabled to create great work. This brings to mind the two-way web and the ability of users to write, take photographs, make music, make movies, create complex hypertext documents. But what users have really embraced are things like the structured life narrations via social or interest groups, and short creative forms like Twitter.

With Twitter it’s the simplicity combined with the constraints that produces the outpouring of writing. It’s biography in 140 characters; it’s a novel in 140 characters; it’s a dialog among citizens of a democracy in 140 characters; it’s the conversation about what’s going on right now in 140 characters. Twitter is one of the most successful forms of the two-way web because it stays out of the way and lets the voices come through.

Sometimes it takes a long time for an idea to reach fruition. The names that come to mind are Vannevar Bush (As We May Think), Ted Nelson (Hypertext), and Doug Englebart (GUI HCI), among others. One that you might not think of is Bertolt Brecht. After listening to the Friday, March 14th NewsGang and Gang podcasts, I think Brecht would be smiling. Here’s something that he wrote in 1932:

…radio is one-sided when it should be two It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this principle the radio should step out of the supply business and organize its listeners as suppliers. Any attempt by the radio to give a truly public character to public occasions is a step in the right direction.

Radio has begun genuinely moving in two directions. We live in interesting times, and according to Brecht, we seem to be moving in the right direction.

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