With so many people able to access a page, and stumble upon it with little less than a search which tangentially connects to that page, the possibility or likelihood of receiving a huge amount of unfiltered nonsense, from many alienated people around the world is very high.
This is the “democracy of the web” at work, and it is not democratic and neither is it useful. It is not democratic as a democratic process involves some level of responsibility and accountablitiy. With the comparative anonymity and the huge numbers of people who can be involved this is difficult if not impossible
This suggests that closed systems are attractive to those who would like to participate in discussion and debate without having to run through a lot of nonsense to do so. A small filter, by way of free registration - which gives access to an number of spaces segregated from the web in general makes sense. (Filtering also comes in the shape of minority interest sites, and moderation.)
Polls on site might be quite useful. The process of gathering the opinions of the passing traffic, which while not scientifically accurate might generate an interesting statistical flow itself. The user expreince is good - seeign my jprefernce in relation to my peers; and providing attractive visual stuff on the page. And it might be useful in terms of some (probably) interesting data snapshots of users interests and preferences.
Polss types: (to be added to) film reviews, positions on debates, factual info about self (do you smack your child, do you have a flat screen telly etc)
None of this is new . . it all happens now . .just some small attempts to get my head around how these actualites work, can be used . .other than just to increase "stickiness"
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
People and the tendency to bad organisation
If a car was made of living parts, and the engine started failing, some other part might decide it were time to build another engine - or find a workaround - and in time you might have 2 engines, each getting strange interference from the existence of the other but not understanding why.
I think that is what organisations are like, unless there is a conscious structure of communication, internal collaborative as well as hierarchical command . . . and even then . . .
Most companies have replication etc because of peoples desire to make things work better - for themselves and for the common purpose. Some are less socially interested, just self interested - but know they cannot succeed without achieving the collaborative goal. Others are more collaboration motivated, but sometimes will stand in the way of those more self interested in order to allow (they believe) the machine to run better - and slow the thing down as the self interested person was leading, apparently despite but actually because of their self interest.
Complexity and malleability: we are very similiar to each other, but the subtle differences in goals, and private internal dialogue and variety of ways of hearing and understanding the same message make for complexity . . but we are very malleable, and constatly adapt ourselves to the subtle variations
That is why it is possible for awful organisation or lack of any can survive for years . . as the organism that is the company of people finds its way through.
A car that is a car, ie dumb - - will stop working if something goes serioulsy wrong. it won’t attnet to mend itself. and because there is a trail within the physical transmission path, the problem can be located and fixed.
I think human organisation must be more difficult to unpick because it is not dumb .. . . and tries to find a different way.
The program The trap, whatever happened to our dreams of freedom was interesting in its look at past attempts by the state to make models, theories of human behavior - and in the that process successively machinising people. It also showed how this funneling of human potential into situations where we are confronted by each other via the market always works nett against social interest . . as people will alway try and look after themslelves - to the social expense if the are set an unachievable set of goals.
I think that is what organisations are like, unless there is a conscious structure of communication, internal collaborative as well as hierarchical command . . . and even then . . .
Most companies have replication etc because of peoples desire to make things work better - for themselves and for the common purpose. Some are less socially interested, just self interested - but know they cannot succeed without achieving the collaborative goal. Others are more collaboration motivated, but sometimes will stand in the way of those more self interested in order to allow (they believe) the machine to run better - and slow the thing down as the self interested person was leading, apparently despite but actually because of their self interest.
Complexity and malleability: we are very similiar to each other, but the subtle differences in goals, and private internal dialogue and variety of ways of hearing and understanding the same message make for complexity . . but we are very malleable, and constatly adapt ourselves to the subtle variations
That is why it is possible for awful organisation or lack of any can survive for years . . as the organism that is the company of people finds its way through.
A car that is a car, ie dumb - - will stop working if something goes serioulsy wrong. it won’t attnet to mend itself. and because there is a trail within the physical transmission path, the problem can be located and fixed.
I think human organisation must be more difficult to unpick because it is not dumb .. . . and tries to find a different way.
The program The trap, whatever happened to our dreams of freedom was interesting in its look at past attempts by the state to make models, theories of human behavior - and in the that process successively machinising people. It also showed how this funneling of human potential into situations where we are confronted by each other via the market always works nett against social interest . . as people will alway try and look after themslelves - to the social expense if the are set an unachievable set of goals.
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