WDL is a collaborative transdisciplinary blog about the impact of digital technologies upon writing and lived experience. We talk about writing and reading in the context of 'new and old' media, transliteracy, craft, art, process and practice, social networks, cooperation and collaboration, narrative and memory, human computer interaction, imagination, nature, mind, body, and spirit.
Last night I was talking to a friend about the Web 2.0 phenomenon and we wondered if it wasn't about time for at least the beta of Web 3.0 to hit the streets.
It seems Jay-z himself (that's Jeffrey Zeldman) has already been thinking the same thing.
In October I reported here that Dion Hinchcliffe had written about J LeRoy's post describing Alex Pang's open space discussion on the topic of the death of cyberspace, held at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.
Now Alex has started a new blog called The End of Cyberspace for further discussion of the subject, and one of the first posts links to WDL via my October post mentioned above.
Is there some accuracy in the notion that the concept of cyberspace is on the way out? What do you think? Remember - 'cyberspace' was conceived of by a writer. Maybe it is up to us now to imagine its successor. (More on this from me anon.)
I'm delighted to announce that I have been awarded an AHRC Speculative Research Grant for a one year project investigating the interdisciplinary applications of experimental social software to the study of narrative in digital contexts.
Time is very tight. We will be advertising in January for a one year post-doctoral researcher to start in March/April 2006, so I am publicising this information before the Christmas holiday for the benefit of potential applicants. The post is based in Leicester, UK, at De Montfort University and the project will be supervised by myself, Professor Sue Thomas supported by Simon Mills, who is currently devising a PGDip in Publishing & New Media at DMU.
Thanks to Richard McManus at Read/Write Web for the link to this beautiful Flickr multimedia montage slideshow by Leigh Blackall.
This article by Nicholas Carr at his blog Rough Type is now a month old - sorry for the delay in linking to it - but it's a must-read critique of Web 2.0, the Wikipedia debate, and issues we discuss here at Writing and the Digital Life. He writes:
The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices.
and at the end:
Like it or not, Web 2.0, like Web 1.0, is amoral. It's a set of technologies - a machine, not a Machine - that alters the forms and economics of production and consumption. It doesn't care whether its consequences are good or bad. It doesn't care whether it brings us to a higher consciousness or a lower one. It doesn't care whether it burnishes our culture or dulls it. It doesn't care whether it leads us into a golden age or a dark one. So let's can the millenialist rhetoric and see the thing for what it is, not what we wish it would be.
I'm giving a talk at the Café Scientifique in Leicester, UK, on Tuesday 8th November, at 7.30pm. Please do come along. I'll be talking about transliteracy, blogging, Web 2.0, and my book Hello World. More information at http://www.cafescientifiqueleicester.com/ Hope to see you there.
Stream of words! Yes. I should have put in some paragraph breaks. I can do it. You see. I've got it in my head that starting a new post is the best thing to do... I am recalling, trying to recall, what I have learned of logspace while I have been mentally otherwhere The reference to the quill reminds me of a Tom Sharpe novel - _Grantchester Grind_ (not that good) where the crooks get thrown off course by the apparently archaic ledger system of Porterhouse College and take it into their heads that the dons use quills... From which follow all sorts of false assumptions... I wouldn't like to use a quill myself, though mss suggest that people did rather well with them, accommodating themselves to the cons. (In the last few days, on another list, someone wrote to say she felt she had lost the ability to write poetry away from a word processor!) Quillspace may have contained rather few people anxious about time... Recalling the need to blot one's work quite frequently, etc, implies something like necessity to compose what one is writing before committing it to paper... Such skill as one had in that direction seems to have been lost. My first grown up (infants) writing was with a steel nib. I recall ballpoint pens being frowned upon; and the sufferings attendant upon fountain pens... I keep meaning to remark somewhere, and now will do, how the efficiency of pens of all sorts has improved at the same time as word-processing tech in its widest sense - palms etc - has improved. There are some kinds of writing that I really can't do away from the keyboard i.e. writing that is at least facilitated by the machine, though it goes further than that. But much, for me, still needs the notebook, usually at the early stages where I am working out to some extent what it is that I am doing... Because seeing it on the screen, for me, makes me believe in it a little, whereas what is in a notebook, especially the horrible cover colours that you get from woollies, is ready for crossing through And that is to do with all sorts of things which... And at that point I run out of... I think it's vocabulary You speak of what cyberspace could be. Indeed. But what is it? That was an unasked question in my earlier post. I think of that finely off the wall question you asked at the last Incubation - where is your mental hard disk? or words to that effect... I distinguished earlier between dreams and waking, but of course its far more than that. I've been watching a good friend running into operational difficulties over the last year or so as her memory goes. Just her memory. Her logic is fine. As memory gets thinner, her deductions as to what's going on have more and more drastic effects. On the one hand she lives in an increasingly permanent state of negative capability, reconstructing shared narratives each time the sharer enters her field of vision; on the other there is often no real negative capability because there is nothing in the other mental hand; so she cannot evaluate any deduction. It leads to some confusion; and I am fascinated to know (but only second hand thank you) what _space_ she is in when she is misconstruing. The trouble is, all it takes usually is the presence of someone she knows to roll her back to her previous back up point and then all the false suppositions vanish - if it weren't for my own failing memory I'd quote Prospero But where we are mentally is a total state. I'll say that another way. Where I am mentally may be a total state, but what I mean is we are moving through a mode of three dimensional mental movie, which is constantly varying its parameters... So, cyberspace... is unlikely to be truly shared. We are networked nodes on a file server - or it'd be more like the heavenly choir all singing glory be together, which can hardly be consensual this side of legal stimulus So cyberspace is a story we tell ourselves maybe (the maybe there is wild and can be inserted at whichever syntactical point you wish in the sentence), like the C prompt - or on my portable hard disk E prompt, which is an F prompt in Greater London - it's all changing But unlike waking and dreaming in all their multiplicity, it's a construct as well. In the last couple of hours, someone wrote in Another Place (the comfy, easy to use listserv) that when we create new cyberspace we try to make it as natural as possible; and that seemed as relevant to what I had written here as it was to what I had written there As it is though, such cyberspace creations, if we evaluate them for natural verisimilitude, are a bit like empty buildings turned into clubs by strategic lighting
The death of cyberspace. I wonder... For a start, re "One of the key aspects of Web 2.0 is that it connects people so they can effortlessly participate in fluid conversations and dynamic information sharing", that is what is hoped for and / or what is claimed. It may not be so. There remain those who are unhappy expressing themselves remotely.. One friend is really only happy physically talking, though she can manage phone; another needs to be there with you... Maybe technology will catch up with these needs, but it's a long way to go. And that raises the ever present difference in equipment and connection. Physical meeting and conversation is riddled enough with one-uppersonship - some learn to command quicker than others; some eschew it - and a hierarchy exists now in electronic communication which is separate from the content and importance of the information being exchanged. I don't see that permapresence and convergence actually alter the fact that we are looking at cyberspace through a window. We still are. 2 examples - 1. I can't remember the details but I was once in a fix whereby I had to boot and then march some way without that window, without anything on the screen, and was able to - unsurprisingly - because I knew what it would be doing. 2. As long as I remember where I am when I wake, and find myself in one of the several places I know well, I don't always turn the light on when it's still dark. Because I know where I am... In both cases, my relationship to reality is the same - in the latter I am an animal shivering in the dark autumn morning; in the former I am an extended human being front-ending a hideously complex logic system dreamed up by my fellow animals through an electronic story book. I don't feel particularly in cyberspace when I am at the keyboard. I am aware of the details of the town outside, of the neighbours next door - who appear to be driving a tractor up and down stairs - and so on. I am aware of my cup of tea, waiting for the steam to subside, a very here and now non cyber sign; and I am wondering whether to revisit last night's leftovers when I know putting on a jumper will take care of the urge to eat. Put a headset and goggles on me and ok, I am there; but I am not wearing a headset and goggles. What I am doing is not, in this context, very different - ok in some ways - to where I was in 1962, when I got my first typewriter and watched my words slowly scroll away and curl into a roll of foolscap white paper... The differences beyond that are of course enormous. I can change this as I go and it will be read perhaps within minutes around the world, god help you all. But *that is where the cyberspace happens. A permanent point of presence wouldn't actually alter that necessarily. I'm guessing that the taxi button connects the presser to a taxi near by, using the phone as a gps. And that's why I mentioned the possibility of using a computer without a screen - the processor doesnt need a screen, just input - if one has been attentive to the exchange between human and human extension. Pressing a button doesn't put me in cyberspace anymore than phoning for an ambulance. Someone remarked something (!) along the lines that unfamiliar technology will be experienced as magic. And familiar technology is accepted as part of the way things are (turn off your electronic catflap and watch your cat do a hanna barbera routine as it butts an unresponsive door. "I tell you yesterday I could walk through this door!" "Sure," says the cat next door, who relies on scratching the paint off its) When we press a button, it's no more complex than ringing a door bell, or using an automatic garage door mechanism. The taxi button is, as far as I am concerned, a high price to pay for wearing an electronic tag. Surveillancespace. Last night, searching for something of my own on the net I found a web page that said "if you know Lawrence Upton tell him there's a page for him and he can update it" and then there were facilities (at a price) to run a credit check on me, know about recorded misdemeanours etc - though one knows these facilities are there, to have it labelled that jeering way was very uncomfortable, like living in one of those prisons with an all seer at the centre or being brought up to believe St Peter is writing down even the most casual of sinful thoughts. Reality being an individual construct as much as anything else, I am doubtful about the integration of cyberspace and reality. Maybe cyberspace is becoming more insidious. Access to it is certainly becoming more speedy. But that's it. I am not in it any more than, most of the time, I am in my own dreams. When I start getting spam there, I'll believe
Said with some trepidation
Lawrence
Another metaphor for Web 2.0. Can anyone contribute more?
Software upgrades promise to turn the Internet into a lush rain forest of information teeming with new life
By Steven Johnson at DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 10 | October 2005
And a discussion about the article at O'Reilly Radar
Ah the wonders of the blog. This morning I checked the Technorati link of this blog (see right hand panel Blogs that link here) to find out who has been linking to us lately. And through that I find Udo Schroeter, who mentioned my post about stone soup in the footnote of a post about his concerns relating to the buzz around Web 2.0. Also in that footnote was a link to a post by David Hornik at VentureBlog expanding on said misgivings and suggesting that an unhealthy side effect of Web 2.0 or as it is called there Bubble 2.0 is that 'there are a large number of "companies" being created again for the express purpose of being acquired.' That's what the 'bubble w.0' is about - that we could be heading for a second dot com boom and bust. Hmm. I find this depressingly likely....
Most interesting though was another link in Udo's blog to a previous post of his: Web 2.0 Or: 'that's great but how can I use it offline?' in which he points out the obvious:
Label this Web 2.0, or whatever, it's just great to see it work. But there is an obvious drawback. It doesn't matter how great a web app is, you can obviously only use it while you're online.
And of course this extends to the fact that you can also only use it (a) when you understand what it is and how it works and (b) you are part of a culture which uses it. At the moment, this group is pretty tiny, and its future size likely to continue to be limited for some dozens if not hundreds of years. I'm one of the most cyber-optimistic people I know, but just occasionally my feet touch the ground, and this is one of those moments :)
Just trying out the beta of the new Flock web browser.
It's designed to be highly compatible with Social Software. Features include being able to select text on a web page and turn it into a blog entry or just edit your blog from your browser. I actually published this entry direct from an editor in the browser so no need to log on via the typepad interfacce! You can also add your favourites to your delicious list and tag them and upload to your flickr account just as easily.
So far it only seems to support certain blogging software and Social Software tools so may be of no use to some. Still, an interesting piece of software that will no doubt be popular.
A few days ago I said I was hatching an idea which I may or may not post to the blog. Well, here it is, crazy or not:
We might describe Web 2.0 as organic, abundant, and extremely messy. Really, it’s a soup. Maybe it's a primeval soup. In fact it rather reminds me of stone soup. For those of you not familiar with stone soup, I googled the story and came up with several variations. Here's the one I chose to post here:
Once upon a time, somewhere in the world, there was a great famine. People jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a peddler drove his wagon into a village, sold a few of his wares, and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.
"There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "Better keep moving on."
"Oh, I have everything I need," he said. "In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you." He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.
By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the peddler sniffed the "broth" and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.
"Ahh," the peddler said to himself rather loudly, "I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with CABBAGE -- that's hard to beat."
Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. "Capital!" cried the peddler.
"You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king."
The village butcher managed to find some salt beef... and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all.
The villagers offered the peddler a great deal of money for the magic stone, but he refused to sell and traveled on the next day. And from that time on, long after the famine had ended, they reminisced about the finest soup they'd ever had. (Thanks to Fractint)
You could say that in Web 2.0, the application (del.icio.us, Flickr, whatever) is the stone, and the tags are the meat and vegetables. Together they provide nourishing and complex nutrition that we can all share. I think this is a rather amusing and whimsical but probably accurate representation of the primeval soup of Web 2.0 in which all kinds of permutations can happen as long as we all contribute. Further afterthought: "as long as we all contribute quality ingredients..."
What do you think?
(Btw, re whether Web 2.0 exists or not - I don't think that matters. What matters is the conversation about it.)
Dion Hinchcliffe writes about "J. LeRoy's recent observation that Web 2.0 will finally kill the concept of cyberspace as a viable ongoing concern." And, he goes on,
...he's probably right.
One of the key aspects of Web 2.0 is that it connects people so they can effortlessly participate in fluid conversations and dynamic information sharing. At the same time, computing devices are giving people permapresence on the Web through PDAs, phones, digital cameras, and a slew of other emerging devices.
Before now, you had to consciously go to cyberspace by sitting at a PC and looking at it through a window, in essence going to a place where you primarily observed and gathered knowledge. Not any more.
These days the boundaries between reality and cyberspace are becoming increasingly blurred and the activities on the Web are becoming more two way and integrated with reality, with the canonical example being the hypothetical Taxi button on a cellphone. With going into cyberspace no longer being a discrete step (folks are more and more always there now) and with the primary activity often being to interact with other folks transparently, and you have a folding of cyberspace so severe that it just disappears into the ether.
This extrapolation makes a lot of sense. After all, we've been longing for that always-on portal without perhaps realising that once we are always on, we are at the same time giving up the frisson of that step he describes. However much I want it to happen, I will also mourn that loss, just as I still mourn the sound of the dial-up modem doing its musical hardware handshaking thing down the phone line.
Are we really coming close to attending the funeral of cyberspace? I hardly dare think it...
The whole post is well worth a read, and includes a useful diagram too.
