Joho the Buttkicker: David Weinberger
David Weinberger was one of the first bloggers I started reading; he has been a huge influence on my blogging style. When I jumped on the blogging bandwagon to create a nonprofit technology resource, he showed me that an authentic personal voice was the most powerful conduit to convey ideas and information – creating sticky content that strikes a balance between the formal and informal.
Formally kicking off the NTC, David's presentation and speech struck that perfect balance he does so well on his blog Joho the Blog. Funny, insightful, academic, and down to earth, David led us through the evolution - and impact of that evolution – of content, ideas and organization from the physical (e.g. libraries, Encyclopedia Britannica, newspapers) to the digital (Amazon, Wikipedia, blogs). Prior to the web, a handful of authorized content producers controlled the information we consumed while how that content was organized was prescribed and tightly controlled. The web blew that paradigm apart - it converted the ownership and control of content from broadcasters to the “Us” and our networks (basic Cluetrain Manifesto/Time Person of the Year stuff).
For me, David has provided a much needed framework to understand the work that I’m currently engaged in. I’m trying to figure out how to help nonprofits understand that mission-driven online strategy is not about driving traffic to your site- the digital equivalent of having to go to a library in order to get information – but about how to distribute content as widely as possible to have the broadest impact on our causes. We are a sector of content producers with extraordinary expertise. But for most of us, our websites are not destination points; our content is static and siloed away for only our most dedicated supporters. While I admit that metrics and branding are challenging, but not impossible, I believe it’s necessary for us as a sector to start seeing ourselves as not niche web portals, but content distributors that put our content in front of as many people as possible – through tagging, widetizing, engaging in established online social networks (yes…for better or for worse, think MySpace) and content exchanges between partnered organizations. I’ll blog more about scenarios in my next post. Chew on it, ask questions, let me know what you think.
Hi Sonny, here are my thoughts, notes on David Weinberger's talk. I really enjoyed this talk. I agree with him that the need to embrace fallibility is key to our survival, though it entails risks that it is also crucial to address.
From the keynote of David Weinberger, we were reminded and shown how the Internet defies the physical limits of space -- that while no two things can be in one place, forcing us to hierarchically prioritize and displace, that online there can be a multiplicity, an infinity of high-value centers, and that the dynamics of credibility and authority are defined anew. Inherently interlinked, and more widely valuable through links to others, wiser websites faciliate flow in the nearly frictionless economy of the net, providing the context which is the common basis for both credibility and authority. While traditional media claim that link friendly blogs are naval-gazing, and truly many are, news sources like the NYT link almost exclusively within itself -- a supremely self-referential and narcissistic act that tacitly implies that the rest of the world is a straw straw man and that all the worthy news is within it's purview. Blogs and the thousand hourly comments by readers who may often be better placed to know than overextended journalists are reshaping news and continuing to assault the tyranny of broadcast with the democracy of voices finding a soapbox on every corner. Personally, I prefer discussion and conversation over soapbox orations, and sadly, there's not yet an ideal format for sharing online conversation.
That said, it begs questions like how do we distinguish the loudest voices from the better ones, the most urgent or the most popular or impressive from the most important? When so many of the widest read channels are owned by so few, how do they shape, edit and modulate the voices of civic speakers?
some more notes and questions:
--from a single order to ....
===multiple orders
-==disorder...
---personalized order
--first order
--2nd order, meta, card catalog,
--3rd order--content and metadata in the same space.
-leaf on many branches, messiness as a virtue
--metadata and data,
no difference, what you know, and what you're looking for...
there is a difference, but they exist in an interchangeable medium... their definition is determined by context and subjective interpretation by people.
--risk of blurring abstraction
--is he saying that the map is the territory, that there's no difference between the real and the abstracted?
authority =/<> credibility
simplicity understanding.
--walls between readers & writers dissolves.
--openness to criticism enhances credibility.
--embracing fallibility.
---small talk, iterate on differences in conversation, finding whats complex.
usefully complexifying what's being given us as simplicity.
-understading, heidegger,
-externalization -- we externalize structures of consciousness, meaning.
My questions...
--how do you foster construction in a context of exploitable fallibility?
--redefining importance as other than impressiveness and popularity.
--what is the definition of we in this context? where does individualized attention become meaningfully social.
--individualized socialism.
--"we" ness is a partial.
--does we mean we have a socially defined selfhood? I'm skeptical about this.