The current friction between people who create content and those who create content factories evokes the evolution versus intelligent design debate. Why do the intelligent designers of content feel under siege as content factories create ever more gluttonous methods for manufacturing it? What does each side have to teach the other? Here are the arguments. (more…)
Industrialization is transforming our information economy, destroying old business models and creating new opportunities. The impact it will have on new media will make Web 2.0 seem tame in comparison. To understand this transformation and leverage it effectively, you need to parse the myths from reality.
Back in May 2009, I argued that industrialization is the most transformative force on the Internet. Human tasks are rapidly being displaced by machines. Factories of advanced technologies are being constructed to automate the manufacture of information and content. Predictably, there is much hand-wringing and righteous indignation expressed about this economic sea change. (more…)
If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ll know that we love sharing “big ideas” here. Ideas about thought networking, semantic technology, and our relationship in general with information on the Internet. We’d like to keep this blog focused on big ideas, so today we announce the launch of Primal Fusion’s new Products blog. We’re renaming the current blog to, quite simply, our Ideas blog.
Our new Products blog will focus on sharing information about the products we’re building at Primal Fusion. Visit it for updates and announcements, tips and tricks, and the occasional sneak peek at what we’re working on behind the scenes.
In a recent article in The Guardian, Cory Doctorow called for search reform. “Search is the beginning and the end of the internet,” he wrote. While I agree things need to change, a reformed Internet built around search is like a reformed energy policy built around oil. If we only look for solutions through the narrow lens of search, we’re unlikely to solve these problems at all.
Cory’s article is a tight encapsulation of widely held concerns over search. We share too much private information with search engines. They hold too much power over what is relevant and important. And there is a troubling lack of transparency and accountability into how search engines weigh these decisions.
His bottom line: Vesting this kind of power with a handful of companies is a “terrible idea”.
Fair enough, but when he ventures into possible solutions, Cory, like so many other Internet watchers, makes a serious wrong turn. “Put that way, it’s obvious: if search engines set the public agenda, they should be public.”
(more…)
Web 2.0 is social: many hands make light work. In stark contrast, Web 3.0 is industrial: the automation of tasks displaces human work. But trite definitions won’t prepare us for change. Whatever you call it, our information economy is in the midst of an Industrial Revolution. And if you don’t place the Web within the frame of industrial manufacturing, you won’t see the real disruptive change coming.
This story reads much like the first Industrial Revolution. Artisans and skilled tradesman used to create everything by hand. Then, through the emergence of a handful of technical innovations, came the age of mass production. It was a profound turning point in human history, affecting every aspect of daily life.
Today, most content is still created by hand, the best of it by highly skilled artisans drawing on centuries of scholarship and experience. Recently, we’ve seen significant innovations in social approaches to content creation. But Web 3.0 industrialization takes content manufacturing to an entirely different level. Instead of users manually creating content, machines automate the heavy lifting. Consumers simply push the buttons and get stuff done. Think spinning wheels versus textile mills.
Note: This blog post describes the current alpha release of Primal Fusion. If you don’t already have one, we invite you to request a free alpha account now.
The current release of Primal Fusion’s thought networking service is an early first step. In some respects, it’s more of a concept prototype than a fully-fledged product. So when we say it’s an alpha release, we really mean it! Given this, we thought it would be helpful to provide an orientation so you know how to get started after signing in.
Before jumping into the details, a few words about the big picture.
Primal Fusion helps you quickly pull together information about broad subjects from several popular sources on the Web. It does this by first summarizing related thoughts about a subject of interest, then encouraging you to make selections that describe how you think about the subject. Armed with this knowledge, Primal Fusion can act on your thoughts to help you get stuff done online. Currently, one action is available. It creates one-of-a-kind websites (like this one) that organize the information you’ve collected, using your thoughts as a blueprint. These websites are a great resource about the subjects you’re interested in - and they’re easily shared with other people.
The remainder of this blog post outlines a process we recommend for using Primal Fusion in its current form. If you have questions or experience problems, please check our discussion forum to either seek or share more information.
After signing in, begin by typing a few words in response to the question, What are you thinking about? Press Enter or click the checkmark when you’re done. Please note that sentences aren’t well supported at this time, so limit your response to two or three keywords.
To illustrate this recommended workflow, let’s use the example of Sarah, a college student.
Sarah needs to write an assignment about the relationship of economics and climate change. She begins by thinking about climate change, as you can see below. (Click these images to zoom in)
Our thoughts are fleeting and immaterial, this mysterious stuff that’s locked away in our heads. Painstakingly, we collect our thoughts and transform them into words and documents. This transformation from thought into action is time-consuming and expensive. Thinking is a decidedly “offline” and manual process.
What would happen if you could instead make your thoughts tangible and concrete? What if you could collect your thoughts as readily as you can search online? What if your thoughts could self-organize around your tasks while you’re off doing other things? Thought networking is the idea that’s driving our efforts at Primal Fusion to explore these big questions.
The Semantic Web has a branding problem: It was built to manage data, not semantics. Somewhere along the line, insiders renamed it the “Data Web”. That was a great move for Web researchers, but what will the semantics crowd do with the name? Just as “semantics” was misplaced in the Data Web, “web” is misplaced in our vision of a global semantic network. The Semantic Web won’t act like a web at all.
The reason is that form must follow function and “web” is the wrong form for semantics. Do you remember why you stopped using the Yahoo Directory and switched to Google? Both provide lists of Web pages organized by categories. The difference is that search engines involve you in the creation of those categories through your queries. When search engines became comparable to the directories in assembling relevant lists, there was no going back. The form of a directory, as a largely static structure, is incompatible with the function of search.
The Web suffers a fundamental problem. Search is a symptom of it. Surfing is a symptom of it. Even the website itself is a symptom of it. The problem is that content is organized for you, in advance. Pre-packaged content is like ordering off the menu at a restaurant. Sometimes it’s convenient, sometimes it’s just what you want, but many times, it’s a difficult choice to make. The Web wants to become made-to-order.
Search certainly helps. If I want to order off the menu, it’s great to have access to lots of restaurants and lots of menus. User-generated content is great, too, if you like to cook. But I don’t want to access content or create content, I want to consume it to get stuff done.
No one retrieves content for the sake of retrieving content; they have a deeper purpose in mind. “I need to create a report for my boss.” “I need to plan a trip for my family.” “I want to be entertained.” We’re task-oriented. All the intervening steps amount to the bill, tax, and gratuity. And since most tasks require us to visit many different sites, the overall cost is extraordinary.
A made-to-order Web would spare us these costs. If you’re ordering a specific task, much of the legwork can be delegated to machines. Computers are becoming increasingly adept at analytical tasks. They can break down content into bite-size pieces for our consumption. They are also capable of synthetic tasks, building the content back up into new forms. These types of analysis and synthesis tasks enable made-to-order.
