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Month: September 2008

Remembrance and Forgetting

Published September 12, 2008 by cgerrish

Prometheus bound

This morning MSNBC aired a minimally edited replay of their broadcast from the morning of September 11, 2001. I remember watching those images on that morning. I remember worrying about my colleagues who would be arriving at our New York office in the World Trade Center. I’d visited them a few months before, spending all day in the building– from early morning to early evening.

At the time, on that morning seven years ago, I viewed the images with disbelief, as in a dream. Now as I view them again, the emotions are still strong, but I see them with clear eyes. On the day of the actual event, I didn’t think we lived in a world where such a thing could happen; today I know such a thing has happened.

Prometheus, in eternal punishment, is chained to a rock, where his liver is eaten daily by a vulture, only to be regenerated, due to his immortality, by night.

But my topic is not the possibility of terrorist acts, but rather the replaying of memories and something Nietzsche called ressentiment, or the spirit of revenge. When we act out of the spirit of revenge, filled with the pain of the moment, we act out of weakness. In our digital age, if everything is recorded, can we ever forget the past? Will we be like Prometheus bound to a rock, our wounds forever raw? Will all human motivation be reduced to acting from the spirit of revenge, as no perceived slight or hurt ever fades from memory? The digital doesn’t fade, it’s on or off. The challenge to overcome the spirit of revenge grows larger as memory is displaced into our digital systems and networks. The digital is immortal and can be replayed endlessly at the click of a mouse.

I think perhaps we forget the meaning and power of forgetting. Manu Bazzano in his book “Buddha is Dead” discusses the modes of forgetting:

“There is forgetting and forgetting. We subconsciously remove from our memory unpleasant experiences, and we tend to ‘forget’ by sheer inertia. On a super-conscious level, however, we keep our consciousness fresh and vibrant by actively ‘forgetting.’ The noble person knows how to forget, not solely out of compassion (‘forgive and forget’), but also because there can be no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no present without forgetfulness. Life would drag on, forever unresolved, a life that ‘cannot have done with anything,’ a life of ressentiment, a sick life.”

In our digital age, with perfect replays, can we learn to digest and properly metabolize events and turn them into experience? When we act and create from experience, we’ve listened, reflected and responded. We’ve created something new to fill the present moment. To truly embrace change, we must not look back in anger, but walk purposefully into the future.

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A Vendor Squeaks at an Unconference

Published September 10, 2008 by cgerrish

Tom Waits sums it up nicely “What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.” Vendors like to say things like “we’re users too.” But when they speak as vendors first and users second, they aren’t engaging in the real conversation. No matter how cool the rhythm track and the doubled sax, the words tell the story.

Waits does a formidable impression, and remember, no salesmen will visit your home.

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The Party Line Revisited

Published September 9, 2008 by cgerrish

Rotary Telephone

The phrase “Time out of mind” refers to the distant past beyond memory. While we think of computer networks as laying the foundation of electronic social networks, it’s the telephone that first connected the country. And the user interface challenges and the viral qualities of that once new medium have slipped beyond the horizon of our living memory.

We assume that the user interface for the telephone is known and has always been known. But there was a time when people had to be taught to use the phone. What’s a dial tone? What’s a busy signal? Where do you find a number for a particular person or business? How do you dial a rotary phone? Why do you need to wait until the dial returns to its starting position before inputting the next number? What’s that ringing sound mean?

Why should anyone understand these interface elements? The film above was shown in movie theaters to help people with the change from operator assisted to direct dial calls.

We think of the party line as quaint artifact of the past, but like certain modern online services, it was used as a source of entertainment and gossip, as well as a means of quickly alerting entire neighbourhoods in case of emergencies such as fires.

In 20th century telephone systems, a party line (also multiparty line or Shared Service Line) is an arrangement in which two or more customers are connected directly to the same local loop. Prior to World War II in the United States, party lines were the primary way residential subscribers acquired local phone service.

Sometimes pundits like to make the argument that microblogging services like Twitter or Identi.ca are too difficult or obscure for “most ordinary people” to learn. Compare using Twitter to learning how to direct dial a telephone. If there’s value returned, people are will to invest the time and learn enough to profit.

There are other interesting comparisons between the phone network and the internet. The dystopian visions about The Phone Company match our current fears about the harvesting of our personal and attention data. Once we’ve internalized a user interface like the telephone’s, we begin to fear that it will be literally internalized into our bodies. The 1967 film The President’s Analyst envisioned the Cerebrum Communicator, a device that is located in, and power by, our brains. It also showed us a technology company secretly at the center of political power.

The telphone has become the mobile computer, and voice is now one of many data types transmitted through the Network. But the basic pattern of relating through an electronic network remains the same. The telephone still has a lot to teach us about the meaning of electronic social networks.

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Chrome: Mapping The Metaphor of Browsing

Published September 7, 2008 by cgerrish

The discussion around Chrome, Google’s new web browser, was kicked into a different dimension for me while listening to some comments by Marc Canter. Canter was excited about the idea of the browser serving as an orchestration point for a market of web services. And he was speaking of services consumed by regular users: a search engine, a mapping service, an rss reader, a social bookmarking service, etc. As a developer, Canter is interested in competing in an open marketplace for services supplied through and to the browser.

There’s an underlying shift in the role of the web browser, and a more telling shift at the level of naming and metaphor. Think about the common names for web browsers:

  • Navigator
  • Explorer
  • Safari
  • Camino

Metaphorically these names describe the process of traversing the terrain of the Network. It’s a world-wide web out there — you’ll need a compass and a map to find the place you’re looking for. Originally the Network of web sites had to be traversed on foot, link by link. Portal sites like Yahoo created maps in the form of a tables of contents, locations on the Network thought of as reference points in a big book. Librarians were employed to create a sensible taxonomy, a dewey decimal system for the Network. Effective web search effectively changed that playing field.

Think about the name “Chrome” and the way it relates to the web-based application container that Canter envisions. For those who don’t know, the word chrome is often used to describe the UI/presentation layer of an application. It’s the thing that surrounds the feature/function set making it pretty and usable — from an engineering perspective, it’s the shiny bits that are added around the edges. Does the name chrome extend the metaphor of navigation and exploration for the browser?

For most users, the internet is located in Google’s big database. Your only, or let’s say primary, access to the Network is through querying Google. (Micro-communities are changing this model as a primary source of links) The “browser” is now a frame around the services that Google, and other providers bring to you. No need to get off the couch, no need to don a pith helmet, no need to keep that passport up to date. The browsing you’ll be doing is flipping through the selections delivered to your door.

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