InternetPsyche

Communication Nation: What's the best tool for communication?

2010-05-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

Communication Nation: What's the best tool for communication?

If I had my druthers, there'd only be one answer for all of these conundrums - Mu. Refer to my blog post about omnicasting, which is a part of mu, and then also compare with the above illustration. All of the forms above can basically be mapped to the omnicube, and mu should be designed to handle (if not replace completely) all of them.

Email - asynch, unicast (or multicast if cc:)

Commercial groupware - asynch, multicast

Wiki - a document, which is a 'conversation piece' nominal form in a muspace

E-learning tool - video is just a plugin to mu, one of many forms of media, and synch/asynch inherent, so elearning tools are unneccesary

Weblog - in the VoxBox metaphor, any output by a person is reachable via their presence icon in a muchat interface, be it blog, tweet, IM, etc.

IM - merely a synchronized unicast

Commerical desktop video - video enabled muspace chat 'room'

audio teleconference - merely a muspace with no video media. Mu is multimedia, so its not necessary to differentiate between audio and video teleconferences

Discussion forum - Usenet, forums, groups and threaded comments are all just versions of multiuser spaces but they happen to be totally asynch. Mu can handle asynch with the VoxBox metaphor.

Amplify and Four Views

2010-05-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

Eric Goldstein recently revealed new features being added at http://amplify.com and I referenced the Room with Four Views in regards to the various conversation streams that could be possibly viewed. I tried to write a full description but it was too stream of consciousness and really needed a graphic, so here it is:

Posts (blue) are just the posts themselves, sans displayed comments (a spring, to extend the "stream" metaphor). The stream and/or a profile is posts+comments (blue-grey), while comments (grey) are the bridges between the four quandrants, "leaks" so to speak in the streams. I guess what I've nicknamed the "Amplifile" would be a torrent, or a rapid. ;-)

I struggled on the placement of "Featured Ampsters (Posters)" and decided that while it ontologically fits on the Global quadrant (lower right) it made sense to put it in the center, the focal point.

So it's clear, the quadrants are:

1) Private view (upper left) - My posts
2) Empathetic view (upper right) - Another's posts
3) Peer view (lower right) - Others' posts (includes your own)
4) Global view (lower left) - All posts

Subjective, Objective and Internet Technology

2010-05-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

I've reprinted the section of the table that deals with Internet technology from the post Mental Functions Table. Here you'll see how the basic structure of the Internet can be seen to metaphorically mirror Jung's model of human psychology, particularly in his first and most basic concept of Introversion (Subjective) and Extraversion (Objective). Some of the technologies past and present can easily be mapped (I'd welcome suggestions of others).

Extraverted (E)	Introverted (I)
forward	backward
active	reflective
superficial	deep
expend energy	conserve energy
external	internal
talk to think	think to talk
public	private
speaking	writing
same	different

Server (e)	Client (i)
synchronous	asynchronous
client/server	peer-to-peer
server computing	grid computing
rss	http
ftp	bittorrent
IRC	IM
IM (Y!, AIM, XMPP)	Solipsis
push	pull

A robust social networking system would incorporate both side of the I/E dichotomy, and offer granularity in between. There are purposes for both types of networking, as I'll explain over time.

It seems the original model of the Internet has been lost with the commercialization of it, and developing robust personal servers has fallen by the wayside. It's time to return to the basics: develop simple and secure server technology, develop sophisticated interfaces for the common user, distribute the software to each data server instead of relying on the cloud.

The cloud is a bug, not a feature. Remember that. It's important.

AllPeers BitTorrent Plugin Preview For TechCrunch Readers

2010-05-12T18:25:00.000-07:00

AllPeers BitTorrent Plugin Preview For TechCrunch Readers

This sounds similar to what I propose for sharing all content in a subjective space with others in the objective space. In a multiuser environment, all objects are shared via bittorrent. In fact, Id propose that all objects have a metadata (tag) layer, and an internal bittorrent layer. essentially, turning every jpeg into an xpeg, every doc into an xdoc.

Google doesn't need to hire a Head of Social, it needs to be social.

2010-05-11T18:08:00.000-07:00

I was recently alerted by Chris Parandian at Amplify via GigaOM that "Google says it’s willing to accept its shortcomings on the social web and bring in a “Head of Social” to set it on the right course."

Umm... What Google needs to realize is that having a director-level position to provide leadership and focus for a marketing strategy isn't their problem. Their problem is that they're a bunch of geeks who couldn't cocktail party their way out of a recyclable plastic bag.

Harsh? Yes. But since they're anti-social Vulcan geeks, they don't have any feelings to hurt, right?

And that's the problem.

Now let's talk about it in non-invective terms (despite the fact that it's so much fun).

In Jungian terms, Google is a highly self-selected Paradise of iNtuitive Thinkers (xNTx in MBTI code). Admittedly structured more like a engineering graduate student research program than a real company, everything iNtuitive and Thinking is rewarded, and seemingly anything Sensing or Feeling is either "taken care of" for the staff, or just neglected. Their bodily needs are taken care of (food, fitness and relaxation) and everything Feeling oriented (Orkut, FriendConnect, iGoogle, Buzz and Wave - i.e., their social brands) has been an abject failure.

It's typical for a company to not realize their neglect of the Feeling function - the business world to date doesn't reward the Feeling side of their employees- except when they finally get around to using it amateurishly at attempts at creating "corporate culture" which usually amounts to overt and exaggerated uses of Extraverted Feeling (lots of "shoulds" and neo-pollitically correct terminologies and "team building").

Group-think is another common plague of companies, especially companies with strong competencies in a particular field, or a field that naturally attracts certain Typological structures (accounting firms attract and are dominated by STJs for example). What happens Typologically with group-think is that the predominate Type gets continuously reinforced, like a perpetual motion feedback loop, to the point of exaggeration and caricature, and attempts at anything outside of that Type is amateurish and even sometimes petulant (especially when someone points out how poorly they're doing it). People who don't prefer those functions are either forced out for not lock-stepping it with the rest of them, or leave on their own accord because it's such an unrewarding atmosphere.

I've frequently described geek culture and especially Google as a group of self-reinforcing NTs that result in a sort of collective Asperger's Syndrome - all Thinking and a complete lack (to the point of outright denial) of Feeling.

Google doesn't need a Director of Social - it needs therapy. It needs to collectively get in touch with their Feeling side across the whole company. Despite the fact that the strength of Google is their deep NT research model and highly scientific algorithms, everything they do touches People, especially Search. Right now they have the power to turn on a dime and basically control the World, and that's a very high moral perch to be on - and morality falls into the realm of Feeling, not Thinking.

Google has an office here in Pittsburgh (because of Pitt and CMU), and it's expanding to over 150 employees right now. So there's been a lot of job posting by Google lately. Lots of my friends and family have been encouraging me to apply there, and for a while I was considering it. Then I looked at their job postings. Every single one of them fell into two categories 1) geeky research or programming and 2) project management - not a single one of them had anything that would attract someone who prefers Feeling. Now they may have posted a few lately that I haven't seen, but I gave up looking a while ago. If the company is *that* dominated by NT types, I doubt it has the atmosphere that I'd find attractive in the first place, let alone a specific job.

From unannounced iGoogle format changes on a select few Beta testers by force (I'm one of them and haven't used it since), to a gotcha! inclusion of Buzz in their Gmail interface (with Facebook-like public-by-default settings), it's obvious that Googlers just don't have a clue how to respect the needs and space and values of their users. That isn't a "Social Web 2.0" strategy problem. It's a corporate culture problem. And corporate culture comes from the collective Typology of its members. Hiring (and creating a department of ) Persons Who Prefer Feeling is just going to create a situation where "if you want to do Feeling stuff, you need to go work in that department - we don't do that in this wing of the office" attitude.

Now it's difficult to attack a collective problem by applying therapeutic techniques to the individual members. After all, it goes against the grain of Typology to try to force someone to be a Type that they aren't, and it's very difficult to effectively work on every staff member's individual development to strengthen their non-preferred functions (nor is it really the place of a company to do so). The role of the company infrastructure is to 1) make aware to its members of their individual strengths and therefore, weaknesses and 2) provide an infrastructure for them to do it on their own.

One strategy that they can implement, however, is active recruitment of more Feeling Types in every department (but NOT through psychometric testing of interviewees - that's an unethical application of the MBTI). Another is to make sure they look at all of their products through the lens of Feeling. Will implementing this new feature violate our users sense of self, of identity, of morals, of privacy? Does it add true social value, and does Feature A *need* social value in the first place, or will it just get in the way? Does it let the person opt-in and exercize a modicum of free will? Do we have the staff (in touch with their feeling side) to support (with feeling) the new users we hope to attract? Is this "social" feature actually how people in the real world with social skills actually interact? Does it enhance those skills if it doesn't do it itself?

It seems that Google has never used this strategy to date - Orkut failed once they bought it. iGoogle actually pissed people off (as well as Buzz). Wave is an excellent idea, but they forgot to integrate it with Buzz, and the interface sucks. Google Friend Connect is stupid, Blogger support sucks (and lags waaaaay behind WordPress and LiveJournal), Delicious stomps Google Notebook's ass, Reader is unuseable, and Google's version of customer service is to provide a Usenet knock-off discussion group to let the users stumble around in the dark together playing Marco Polo. Their only social success so far has been YouTube, and they didn't even invent it - they BOUGHT it, and the success of YouTube has NOT been through any social networking features of the site - it's been through links in emails, IMs and Facebook to your friends and family members and crowding around your co-workers grey cubicle at work while the boss is at lunch.

Basically anything that requires empathy, sympathy, morality, individuality, aesthetics or community, i.e. Introverted or Extraverted Feeling, Google has failed miserably at (with one glaring exception - the variant Google logos - which seems to be evidence of that "go to this department if you want to do Feeling stuff" syndrome - and it used to be all done by ONE guy!). By attempting to solve the problem by hiring a "Head of Social" they're doing the equivalent of finding a mail-order trophy bride to their cooking and cleaning, clothes shopping and party hosting, instead of taking a shower, buying a new wardrobe that fits (and wearing it!) and learning some social niceties that everybody else doesn't have a problem doing on their own naturally.

Google? GET THERAPY, then GET A REAL GIRLFRIEND.

excerpt from a discussion about reputation points

2010-01-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

I was recently "quoted" on another person's blog. I think it's a first for me. In a blog post about reputations, Gia Lyons referenced some of my points in a discussion on the Jive community forums. I've excerpted my posts from the discussion if you feel like skipping the larger debate. Thanks Gia, my first honor ;-)

From a discussion on this link, my posts:

First Post:

My background is with Jungian psychology for definitions of my terminology, so please bear with me if its new to you.

When trying to design a reputation system, its important to recognize that it's ultimately derived from one's subjective opinion, despite the fact that it has objective pieces and parts. Context is also important.

Objective in Jungian terms means "shared and compromised" to summarize a complicated concept. Subjective means unique and personal. Ultimately the things that I think matter in terms of a person's reputation are going to be different than yours, but ultimately I probably will, in some manner, "poll" people who also know the shared/objective third person, and ask others in shared objective terms, such as "politeness," helpfulness," "participatory-ness," or some other tag or label.

So when we create a measurement, such as "was Joe Schmoe's answer helpful" we're creating a shared, objective measurement. That doesn't speak to Joe Schmoe's tendency to answer questions in the most derisive and patronizing manner possible (and from my personal experience, when dealing with OpenSource forum support systems, that's usually how it happens!).

Now Don Doozer also tends to be neck and neck with Joe Schmoe with the helpfulness of his answers, and he's a lot nicer. It turns out he's an IT guy for a non-profit organization that deals with quite a few computer illiterate people, so there's a background to why. There's nothing in the rating system to give him "nice" points, because I'm depending on a third party (a shared objective intermediary) to create a "niceness" meter.

Now I could create my own niceness meter label to apply to people, but it only contains my ratings, and doesn't benefit from wisdom of other people's opinions of Don's, and thus far, there's no way for me to share it. Now a system could allow for me to publish (share objectively) my subjective metering system, but that's not always desirable (particularly since I don't want Joe to know that I think he isn't nice). One is entitled one's opinion, but you're also entitled to keep it to yourself; and I'm sure we wish more people would exercize that second entitlement sometimes!

But let's say I have a peer group of people with whom I'd like to share my niceness meter, and whose opinions of niceness I hold in high regard. I decide I'd like to incorporate their opinions as well. But I'd like to keep my opinion as the primary meter, and only let their collective opinion "tweak" the result.

But there's a person in my peer group who I know is a poor judge of character, and actually thinks people who are rude are actually being mercifully nice. I'm not a fan of his opinion, despite the fact that he's a great peer in the current context. What's actually happening is that we don't objectively share the definition of "niceness." Do I have the ability to tweak the formula to incorporate my (low) opinion of his (inappropriate) opinion?

But wait, let's say there's a meter that I haven't considered (timeliness of response, for example) that others have considered. Is there a way to "suggest" that meter, or subconsciously incorporate it?

It turns out that if I incorporate that last meter, some dark horse candidate comes around the bend and ends up winning the Kentucky Derby, and that this dark horse happens to have an extremely high reputation in the opinion of both Don and Joe!

This is getting pretty complicated isn't it? Well, so are reputations.

Ultimately, any reputation system that depends on "global" objective/communal/shared systems is going to be gamed and ultimately fail in the relevance game. Once you know the rules, its easy to break them. But its impossible to game a system when it isn't known by the gamer, because that system is private, subjective and personal.

Reputations algorithms are ultimately subjective and therefore any attempt to quantify them must be customizable by the person depending on their results. In order to be customizable, they must be transparent. In order to be useful, they must be understandable by the end user who may not understand algebraic equations.

Reputation is going to be one of many Next Big Things in the next generation of Social Software, and unless it takes context, subjective and objective concepts into account, it will boil down to devolved popularity contests.

Second Post

My first attempt at a reply was lost to the ether, but I think my "keep me logged in" check box should stick this time.

Your kudos and concerns about recommendations are both spot-on. For example, I've been stuck at 90% on my LinkedIn profile because I lack two more recommendations. Now I actually have an issue with that, because it's not my fault - it isn't my responsibility to have a recommendation; the onus is on others to recommend me, not for me to solicit recommendations. I hate grovelling, brown-nosing and otherwise acting as a salesman. For me, the incentive (for the goal of 100%) should be the other way around - recommend 3 others.

It may seem silly to use a Likert scale numeric metric for a recommendation, but it does have some value. If it's one of a few (or several) metrics used in the final rep algorithm, you'll be able to tweak its influence in the final "score" (presuming you have a way to view the 'rithm transparently and can change it). How you tweak that Likert score can be influenced by the commentary that accompanies it.

It's pretty easy to give someone a "high five" when you're enthusiatically entranced by them, but if you're being overly gushy in your commentary (in someone else's opinion), that enthusiasm can be tempered by one's opinion of their opinion.

Let's presume it's a +10/-10 scale with commentary (I prefer 10 point scales over 5, because it allows for more nuance). The final outcome of the score would be affected by

1) my (subjective) relationship "score" (if any) with the recommender.
2) my (subjective) relationship "score" (if any) with the recommendee
3) my (subjective) opinion of the recommendation based on the commentary
4) the (objectively) collected (subjective) opinions of the recommendation
5) pick a metric, any metric.
6) and for their final rep score, how much recommendations factor into the final number

and of course we could go on ad infinitum with other factors, and none are really necessary. Having both a number and commentary provides for both subjective (free-form space to gush) and objective (a shared standard of measurement) factors.

Privacy about recommendations is important as well. There's not much incentive for me to give a negative recommendation if my name is attached - I don't necessarily think I need to own up to my comments, if my aims are altruistic and I'm trying to give constructive criticism. But privacy also allows for libelous commentary. Private recommendations could be allowed with a moderator/broker approval, if keeping things civil is an important aim, and you can even allow for hand-picked brokers/moderators. You could always subjectively "turn off" anonymous commentary but still allow for it.

Again, this is getting exponentially complicated, because it is. Ultimately a remote web-hosted SAAS platform (an objective/shared space) can't handle it, because it's infinitely subjective and requires (IMHO) a directly accessable desktop application. A peer-to-peer (or persona-to-persona) system is ultimately the only way to handle it. That's not a reason for SAAS companies to become despondent however. They can assist in many ways, by enabling the basic metrics and standards, by (objectively) "aggregrating" metrics on my behalf, by storing or processing via HAAS'n'SAAS. I think the best thing that SAAS companies can do is contribute to OpenSource initiatives that enable end-users to view and tweak rep systems, and make their own inhouse rep systems compatible with others and accessable via APIs. Short-sighted companies will fight this, but they'll ultimately lose.
~~~~~~~~~

Some of my first thoughts on this topic can be found on this blog post from June of '07. http://internetpsyche.blogspot.com/2007/06/reputation-systems-and-4-views.html

Great Decision Tree for Communication

2009-03-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a great decision tree for choosing which form of communications are best for the tasks at hand.

The duality of knowledge

2008-10-11T08:30:00.000-07:00

The duality of knowledge

A great article illustrating many of the Room With Four Views concept, as well as talking about Knowledge in terms of dichotomies, which Jung used throughout his theories.

TidBITS Opinion: Instant Messaging for Introverts

2008-10-11T08:28:00.000-07:00

TidBITS Opinion: Instant Messaging for Introverts

This is a wonderful article illustrating the problem with the Extraverted, Published, Shared, and Objective Internet without a balancing side of Introverted, Private, Personal and Subjective.

What Personality Type is Your Web 2.0 Fave? (Part 2 of Web 2.0 Personality Types) « SmoothSpan Blog

2008-09-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

Original post date: 9/4/07

What Personality Type is Your Web 2.0 Fave? (Part 2 of Web 2.0 Personality Types) « SmoothSpan Blog

Ahhh... he gets it!

Little by little I'm going to see which MBTI types he is mapping here, but what I'm pretty sure about is the J/P scale of the MBTI code, which indicates wheter you prefer to Extravert your Perception or your Judgment. Contrary to popular belief, it's not a mental function unto itself. It merely aids in determining the order and direction of the core preferred mental functions of Sensing, Intuition, Thinking or Feeling (in the I or E directions).

All of this is important to the Omnicasting Hypercube concept as well - how I prefer to communicate (form, immediacy and planned/unplanned) is integral to figuring out where on the casting or catching side of the cube *you* are, and as well as those people to whom you are sending or receiving communications.

As an Extravert, I prefer to communicate immediately, synchronized and with immediate good/bad feedback to my ideas (which are generally formed via Extraverted iNtuition/Ne). Since my secondary function is Fi - Introverted Feeling, I'm only going to want to express those ideas to intimates, or those I know won't be so dismissive of them. I exhaust Introverts because of this - ideas come out of me fast and furious and I don't reflect on them (it ruins the essence of them, and I probably am not all that married to the original concept anyway). Introverts need the time to reflect on them, and can usually only deal with fewer ideas at a time because of that.

So one can see where Twitter would drive some crazy (it's pure and extreme Extraversion), and Email is seen as a task to others (it can build up to the point where it looks more like a task list than communiques).

So let's analyze the dimensions:

Freeform/Structure : P vs J (or Ji vs Je)
Text/Multimedia : Pi vs Pe (map vs terrain)
Interrupt/Defer: Pe vs Je
Watcher/Participator: I vs E

Jazz Wars

2008-09-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Original post date: 6/14/07

I have a voice and an instrument in an infinitely large jazz orchestra and choir combo. I'm simultaneously a conductor and a member. I want to play my solo, be able to 'outplay' those in the orchestra that aren't playing what I like, and want to surround myself with harmonious synchcophants in my section. Sometimes I follow others, sometimes I attempt to influence the other players to play what I'm playing, or work with them to create a new piece. I like to hear what the other sections are playing, even if I don't like what they're doing, to give me something to play off of. Other times I want to hear someone solo (including myself). Some other sections I just like to listen to, without playing anything for a while. Other times I just let go and let all of it come in at the same level and listen for some common theme in the white noise, then play that melody.

Nothing in Web 2.0 allows me to do this.

Why OpenSource will never win the Desktop

2008-08-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

The following open letter was written on the Pidgin homepage, in response to the recent forking of Pidgin (the new fork was named FunPidgin, which is now called Carrier). This open letter provides a clue why OpenSource will never win the desktop - disdain for the very people for whom these programmers are "working" and an ego-centric demand that customers act the same way programmers do - with logic (i.e. Thinking) devoid of Feeling. OpenSource must recognize that it's not the job of the customer to be logical; it's the job of the programmer to have empathy (or Feeling) and put themselves in the user's shoes to understand on behalf of the customer why they want the things that they do, and why.

That's usually the job of the marketing department. But most OpenSource projects eschew marketing (particularly market research). It is after all, a department of Feeling.

Another opinion common amongst OpenSource development that is revealed in this letter is that options must be limited or we know better than you want you need, never mind what you want. Options are the realm of Extraverted Perception (Pe). It's the most open way one can create a program, because it inherently covers more bases. A modular programming style is what's needed, where there is no master program, but various small programs that plug into each other in any configuration. But programmers bury options deep within menus, and rarely explain what the options actually mean, or what they will do. People are wary to experiment with computer programs because of a lack of understanding (again, the fault of programming without Feeling).

None of this means that all programmers lack Feeling, but because of the overwhelming Thinking preference amongst most programmers, the lowest common denominator is constantly emphasized. Ironically, most of their user base is composed of Feelers, so they're constantly talking past each other.

The Cost of Progress and Options March 10, 2008 01:59 PM by John Bailey

We recently released Pidgin 2.4.0 with a UI change that seemed inocuous to me. The change was actually in four parts.

We've had the idea for quite some time to put typing notifications in the conversation history area in Pidgin, just like Finch has always done and Adium has done for as long as I can remember. Code wizard that he is, Sadrul pounded this out in pretty short order. Sure it had some bugs, but given enough feedback, he was able to fix most of the issues with it. There are a few minor problems left, but I'm confident they can be worked out over time. This change proved controversial. At least one of our developers still doesn't like it. I do, but I'm a fan of a few different UI changes that have been made in the last year. I think it's safe to say we're going to stick with this change.

After the typing notification change, the old icon in the menutray was removed. The same developer who dislikes the history area notification also hates the removal of this icon. I personally don't care one way or the other--both notifications affect only the currently visible conversation, and other notification methods exist, such as the Guifications plugin. This change has also proven to be controversial, but I believe that's mostly because this change and the history area notification happened in the same release.

The next big change was the removal of the bar that allowed manual resizing of the conversation input area. This has caused far more uproar than I ever expected. The closely-related fourth change is that the auto-resizing of the input area is now a first-class citizen and cannot be disabled. Again, this caused much more of an uproar than I expected. The same developer I mentioned above also disliked these changes quite strongly.

These changes are each quite innocent on their own. The combination, however, has caused a flood of complaints over the changes in behavior. I'd like to detail some reasons for the changes and why there is a cost associated with restoring them.

The typing notifications in the history area have been requested numerous times over the years. To me it seemed reasonable, considering that libpurple's other two UI's have the same behavior. Granted, there is no real reason for the change to have happened, but it's not the end of the world. There is no loss of functionality and no "usability" issues as have been claimed. Anyone who wants the old typing icon back can fairly trivially write a plugin to restore it.

The input area is a whole new beast. We introduced an autoresizing input area sometime back in the 2.0.0 betas, before we renamed to Pidgin. Most people never saw this because we showed the buddy icon of the person we were conversing with to the left of the input area, and we forced the input area to be the larger of the minimum size (1 line, I think?) or the height of the buddy icon. This had some interesting bugs, too, as under some circumstances the size would be saved there because of the manual resizing option, so the input area would not autoresize. Another fun bug came with pasting text. Pasting sufficiently large quantities of text with a sufficiently small IM window would cause the autoresize to expand the IM window in very strange ways, sometimes resulting in conversation windows larger than the screen. There was also a bug in which dragging the manual resizing bar would not save the size of the input area correctly, so using it to work around the other bugs wasn't guaranteed to work either.

Sean decided to scrap the manual resizing because it significantly simplified fixing some of the autoresize bugs that he had fixed. Anyone thinking it's laziness may be justified in that opinion; I don't really know or care. I don't think it matters much, but apparently some users think it does. Yes, there are some bugs still, the most notable being the 1-pixel bug where a new conversation has an input area that's only about 1 pixel high. The changes also seem to have caused a crash in the xchat-chats plugin, which hijacks the history area of the conversation window and replaces it with the same widget xchat uses for irc channels. The plugin does this only for chats. There's also the fact that the lower and upper thresholds for resizing don't work well for rather large IM windows. On the mailing lists, we've already determined that what we have is not the optimal solution (thanks to a few helpful users--a very rare breed), and we are working towards making it better. We won't, however, bring back the manual resizing anytime soon.

The whole debate over manual resizing brings us to another debate--a ton of users are demanding that the automatic resizing vs manual resizing be a preference. We're not willing to do that, as it incurs a cost we're not willing to bear. Ethan Blanton said it best himself in a message to the support list:

Each individual option may be simple or trivial, but they add up. Options to do with UI behavior are _particularly_ expensive, due to their frequent interactions with the vagaries of UI toolkit behaviors, etc.

This expense takes the form, mostly, of subtle bugs and extra programmer effort. We have had numerous examples of options which appear to be simple on the surface causing numerous bugs and undesirable behaviors. A recent and memorable example of this was the option for persistent conversations -- I think we all agree that the ability to have conversations "open" without an open window is one which is appreciated by many users, but this seemingly simple feature has caused quite an avalanche of small and not-so-small bugs. In fact, there is speculation that the one pixel high input area which some people are seeing stems from this very option.

Anyone who tells you that options are not expensive is either not a programmer, or has never worked on a large program. It is true that orthogonal options in a clean code base can be implemented with little cost in *many* circumstances, but even the most forward-thinking and competent programmers will be blind-sided by subtle interactions on occasion, especially when throwing third-party libraries and code into the mix.

Making both behaviors available will certainly cause additional bugs and stupid behaviors that would not appear if we were to leave well enough alone or even to revert to the previous behavior. Reverting to the previous behavior, however, again introduces complex interactions that we're not exactly excited about having, not to mention brings back the bugs that were successfully eliminated with its removal.

Aside from all this is the fact that while we could keep the same interface forever, we don't feel it's necessarily a good idea. Experimenting with the user interface is a way to achieve progress--we can't learn without experimentation, and what we learn from said experiments helps us to make Pidgin a better application. Yes, it causes friction with users and some developers, but it is a necessary process. That's the important thing to keep in mind--we're not taking features away in an attempt to punish users or see how far we can push users. Our changes are legitimate attempts to improve Pidgin's interface, reduce the number of bugs present, and make Pidgin the best we can for our own needs.

In that vein, we are fully aware that we cannot make everyone happy with our UI. It's simply impossible. There are numerous other messengers out there, many of which will certainly meet some users' needs better than we can. We also now have libpurple as a real, usable entity which anyone can use to get our protocol support while getting a UI completely different from ours. This raises my final point--there are options in the IM application space, even though they may be expensive for users to bear the consequences of.

Anti-social bot invades Second Lifers' personal space - tech - 02 November 2007 - New Scientist Tech

2008-08-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Anti-social bot invades Second Lifers' personal space - tech - 02 November 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Original post date: 11/5/07

In a user interface that rewards the subjective, it is absolutely impossible for something like this to happen. A bot can't invade your personal space if you are totally in control of your personal space and everything in it. Why is that person's avatar even sent to my modem in the first place? Why can't I control the objects in my virtual space (including other people's avatars)?

Yahoo succumbs

2008-08-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Original post date: 4/8/08

Ahhhhh....Yahoo has succumbed to the most conservative of standards and wont even allow adult designations in profiles and for adults who act like adults to form a segregated community. This heightens the need for a peer-to-peer profile system where information is exchanged directly between people who converse and either actively ask for the form information or freely give it out to people who request to see it.

Yahoo is succumbing Extraverted Feeling devoid of Introverted Feeling. Community standards over individual standards. The internet is an Introverted technology, and there are plenty of ways to enable it that way, but like the rest of the Web 2.0 community, they're Extraverting where they should be Introverting.

From: Yahoo! <yahoo@one.yahoo-email.com>
To: xxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 11:00:11 PM
Subject: An important notice about your Yahoo! Profiles photo

We're making some changes that will affect one of your Yahoo!
profiles. After April 9, 2008, mature content will not be
permitted within Yahoo! Profiles.

In accordance with this new policy, users will no longer be able to
designate an "adult profile," and mature content will be removed.

The profile for the Yahoo! ID xxxxxx is marked "adult."
The picture associated with this profile will be removed and
deleted on April 9, 2008.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/xxxxxxx

We encourage you to upload a new profile photo on that date that
complies with the Yahoo! Terms of Service and Community
Guidelines. Please take a moment to review our Terms of Service
and Community Guidelines.
http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
http://info.yahoo.com/guidelines/us/

For additional information or to learn how to get a copy of your
photo before April 9, 2008, please visit our help pages:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/members/profiles/index.html

Thank you,

The Yahoo! Profiles Team

Visit the pages below to view the terms of service
and privacy policy for your country:

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report

2008-08-01T10:09:00.000-07:00

original post date : 9/13/07

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report

these may or not be MBTI types, but theyre probably archetypes. (I haven't blogged about Jungian archetypes yet, but that's from lack of time, not interest. They'd be good AI interfaces to cluster programs around).

In the Omnicasting Hypercube, the dimensions used here would be "participation/interaction v. consumption"

The types of activity are actually on multiple dimensions when pulled apart, but have been collapsed into one dimension here. Nothing wrong with that, but they can be seperated to show greater nuance and granularity.

One Ring To Rule Them All?

2008-08-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

One Ring to Rule Them All? (original post date November 8, 2007)

With the announcement of OpenSocial, Google has, with one fell swoop, violated their own commandment of “Do No Evil.” OpenSocial is actually the information superhighway to hell paved with good intentions. OpenSocial does nothing to empower the end user, it actually further empowers the companies that provide the remote server Big Brother “social graph” BULLSEYE to exploit the end user for their personal information that belongs only to the end user and does NOT need to be on any other computer than a person’s personal computing device.

This is the perfect illustration of how Web 2.0 technologies keep using Extraversion (Objective) where Introversion (Subjective) is called for. The Internet is a subjective technology, not an objective one.

The solution is NOT to create one profile on a remote server, with different views depending on the user. The real solution is to create MANY Personas on my computer (or storage system) that are perfectly discreet and do NOT overlap anywhere except on the subjective end. You DON’T need to do this on a remote server owned by a company whose ethics on exploiting the data can be compromised either internally or externally. It only takes one mistake by an ignorant intern to criminally expose things that should have never been combined in the first place.

OpenSocial now should be the singular target of every person in the world concerned about the inherent right of privacy, control and the inherent and original design intent of the internet - distribution of information across the network of networks. NOT consolidation. Where is *my* desktop social networking application? OpenSocial does NOT empower the end users. It empowers the companies waiting to exploit and rape users of their information.

Data portability is supposed to be the reason behind creating this standard. Has everyone forgotten that data isn't supposed to be portable? Database and hypertext theory clearly states - write once, then reference. This information is already written once - on my personal computer. I'll keep my data, thank you. Just give me your code to play with it.

So pardon me if I declare myself Don Quixote de la Mancha and announce the formation of the Windmill Coalition. I will be at my local inn and if you would like to join me on my chivalrous adventure, I drink Jim Beam on the rocks with a splash of water and I will be glad to call you my squire Sancha Panza.

*headdesk*

A discussion about APML and Web 2.0

2008-08-01T08:50:00.000-07:00

Original post date: 11/8/07
This comment discussion (I hate blog comments - they should be redirected to forums) followed this article about APML, another Ring forged in the mountain of Mordor.

Jonnyajax

2007-10-22 19:20:08

Great post Mark.

At Cluztr, we've been supporting APML created from each users clickstream - which they control and manage. We've gotten great feedback so far the output is an increasingly accurate picture of one's interests.

Amazon, Google and all kinds of other services have been leveraging this kind of attention profiling for years. It's about the time the user can start using it for their own benefit.

Privacy issues are marginal compared to the benefits and potential uses of APML.

Besides, the kids today don't care about privacy.

Reply to this comment

michael j pastor

2007-10-26 08:49:09

jonnyajax, allow me to rephrase your comment to a different concept

...Besides, with treatment options as advanced as they are, kids today don't care about having safe sex either, but that doesn't mean AIDS has gone away.

Privacy issues are never a marginal issue, and thank you for alerting me to your company's practices in regards to clickstreams and your attitude about your user's privacy. I will be sure *not* to use cluztr from this point on.

One does not need to reveal anything about one's self to utilize the concept of an APML construct. Sorting and ranking of interests is a basic psychological construct, and it's something that we do *internally*. I don't need to tell a web service *all* of my interests to tell them what I'm interested in getting from them. There's no need for portability with a concept that never moves from where it belongs - with me, on my computer, in my head.

We don't announce *all* of our interests to the outside world when engaging with a particular person about a particular topic. NOT collecting information about pron tells me just as much about you as actually doing it (and in some ways, more - either you are a sexually repressed neurotic robot or you're blatantly lying and using another browser to look at pron).

It is *not* as simple as turning your tag cloud from delicious into something portable, because not all tags are created equal. Sorting and ranking is a highly complex internal judgment process that compares N^N concepts to each other.

APML is yet another attempt to create the One-Ring-to-Rule-Them-All (like OpenID). You don't need One Ring, you need Many-Specific-and-Appropriate Rings. But most importantly, you need an application that *MANAGES* all of those rings, and nobody else needs to see what you do within that application, and that application doesn't need to reside anywhere except on your desktop computer of choice. Outside services just need to given the appropriate Ring (let's be cute and call it a Friendship Ring), not my entire collection of Rings.

The whole point of the hypertext and the internet is that information is distributed, so why do all of these companies keep trying to consolidate everything?

The death of Web 2.0 will be when people realize that they don't need to do everything publicly and blatantly to get what they want, and you don't need a company that drops the "e" in -er to do it.

Reply to this comment

Jonnyajax

2007-10-31 11:22:05

Michael,
You're obviously very pasionate about your privacy, as are others who use social apps, but not everyone.

The explosive popularity of online services like Last.fm, iLike and Pandora have shown that people are more willing than ever to give up aspects of their privacy in exchange for the benefits of social networking and discovery.

To explain my statement that "privacy issues are marginal ..." was with the assumption that whatever social service has the appropriate privacy features in place for their users, whether the user chooses to leverage the option or not.

re: "thank you alerting me to your company's practices in regards to clickstreams and your attitude about your user's privacy."
I suggest you read our Privacy Policy and TOS. Cluztr follows the guidelines set out by AttentionTrust.org, giving users full control, ownership and transparency in all aspects of how their data is handled.

My personaly attitude about a user's privacy is that it is inherent to the user in question, therefore, we provide numerous privacy features to accomodate everyone.

Reply to this comment

michael j pastor

2007-10-31 22:18:44

I think the popularity of *all* present social networking sites is merely because *there has not been any kind of personal alternative of ANY kind*

You don't need to give up ANY of your privacy rights in ANY way to gain the benefits of social networking, and I'm personally (especially on the eve of Google's announcement of OpenSocial) completely flummuxed as to why nobody understands this.

I don't need to upload my address books to others' websites to network - my address book IS the network. All giving up any information to any site does is empower the company to make money from my information, when the real person who should be making money from my information is ME, the end user.

It's impossible for a social networking site to provide privacy practices because it is INHERENTLY IMPOSSIBLE for them to do it because the very premise of social networking sites as they are imagined in the current day is PUBLIC.

WHERE are the private desktop versions of all of this web 2.0 crap? Nowhere, because the plethora of beta-driven websites on steroids couldn't survive on a desktop, and most of all, they can't find a way to monetize it.

The problem with wikis

2008-06-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

Original post date: 9/17/07

I have a problem with wikis. They don't allow for concurrent multiple points of view on one subject. Wiki pages essentially are trying to achieve the objective/collective and don't leave room for the subjective/individual. (Now, by controversial, I mean *within* the context of the topic. Not whether or not the idea itself is accepted. We're presuming an apriori acceptance of the topic to begin with)

Let's say you've got a controversial topic about which many people have differing opinions. Jungian psychology is a good example. There are varying interpretations of the works of Jung. Jung wrote in Turn of the Century Swiss German, and most modern English speaking Jungians today are using a singular translation of Jung's works as the basis of their studies. It's many degrees removed from the original primary text, so there's bound to be different versions of what Jung meant. If I were to create a Jung wiki, the collective editorship would be forced to agree on one definition of Introverted Thinking. Why isn't there a "Gospel of Jung according to Beebe" and "Gospel of Jung according to Pastor" ability?

And speaking of Gospels, let's talk about the Big Gospel - the Gospel of Jesus. The Gospels show different versions of the life of Jesus, and they don't all necessarily mesh. The Gospel According to Judas is a good example of a wiki contribution that was edited out by the collective editorship. What if wikis allowed for multiple viewpoints to stand side-by-side?

Software developers have a fear of 'forking' when it comes to software development. I think that attitude has overcome other forms of scholarship, to the detriment of many voices. It's time for the Triumph of the Subjective, yet again.

Tags have reputations too

2008-06-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

Original post date: 9/8/07

Tags, or labels, have finally come to the forefront of memetic space, but there's still a problem.

Until recently, we've been stuck with folders, a hierarchical way of organizing all of our information. It's essentially meant that we've been stuck in two dimensions, a Flatland perspective of semantic space. Tags have the potential to turn everything into N dimensional space, or in database terms, truly relational.

One presumed aspect to tags so far has been the attitude that all tags are created equal, and they're not. This is especially true given that tags have synonyms, that words fade in popularity, and that connotation beats out denotation every time (triumph of the subjective in each of these cases).

Remember when card catalogs were the way we looked for books in the library? Remember looking for a subject using one word, and finding a card that said "See " or "See also ?" Turns out there isn't some objective method that catalogers use to decide which term will be the Primary term to list books under said subjects. Yes, there is a vast thesaurus librarians use, but which term they use in the end is completely subjective. Well, people do the same thing:

Is it
Web 2.0?
Social Web?
Dynamic Web?
Platform Web?

Heres another example, and one that will seem controversial and offensive to some (apologies ahead of time to those who think some of these words should never be uttered again), but it's invaluable as an example

Negro
Negroe
African
African-American
Afro-American
Colored
Of Color
Nigger
Nigguh
Nigga
Nig

Now tell me all of the above don't have their own reputations, and *that they're different for everyone*. Another important aspect to consider- there's a good chance that if you rank a certain tag high, that your close peers will as well. If you're a bigot, so will probably be your friends. Theres also a pretty good chance that youre not going to want to publish your personal ranking of tags too, but that you'll share them with your peers. Pretty damn difficult for a central database like Delicious to handle if you ask me (an objective solution to a subjective problem).

So why ask them too? Tags, like friends and peers, should be private, ranked, personal and rewarded for subjectivity. There will NEVER be a central Rogets Thesaurus for Tags, and we should give up trying to create one. Reward the subjective and the objective will eventually come.

How do we enable this? Allow users to create a personal thesaurus, for one. If I come a cross a blog that is labeled African-American and I want to actually label it Afro-American (for whatever reason), it should allow for it and do it automatically for me. Secondly, allow someone to apply a value to a tag (that way high ranking tags will more likely bring you relevant information).

Allow for labeling tags as parts of speech, so that we can manipulate them further.

Allow tags and folders to be interchangeable. If I tag something with a few tags, allow me to rank the tags in order of importance (for that item, or in general), and then allow me to designate if the top ranked tag is the Broader term (top level folder) or the Narrower term (the deepest folder). This allows for parallel folder structures and virtual folder views. It's a helluva lot easier to move things around too.

The Triumph of the Subjective

2008-04-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

Jungian Thought and Internet Communication

Despite the last caveat, let's apply these descriptions to Internet communications anyway. To date, multi-user spaces have attempted to create the absolutely objective POV. The subjective POV has been completely ignored, or actively suppressed. There are a priori limitations to attaining objective communication in realspace, and there are also a priori limitations to internet communications. Therefore, simultaneity can only exist as an abstract ideal. This isn't to say that we should stop striving to close the gaps to achieve a synchronous nirvana, but we're doing at the expense and suppression of the individual end-user. In the battle between objective and subjective, when we're talking about Internet or Realtime Communications, the subjective wins by default.

I call this The Triumph of the Subjective.

Technologically, after all, my computer's specs are different than yours. Additionally, my internet connection speed is different from yours (as well as how I connect). So is my monitor measurements, screen size, and resolution. Psychologically, my perception of information is probably different than yours. How I evaluate said information is probably different from yours as well. Additionally, my color perception, vision acuity and hearing are probably different too. Jung originally saw objectivity and subjectivity as a dichotomy, an abstract and strict either/or : either it's a global view or an individual view. The power of imagination is that we can navigate the full spectrum of a bi-polar model, describing shades of gray between black and white. The power of computer technology is that we can illustrate those descriptions and share them with others. "Look, this is how I see this." With technological and psychological differences amongst every end user, we should take advantage of those differences and embrace the subjective just as much as we strive to create sameness and achieve absolute objectivity, and help people communicate, and understand, both.

With objectivity, until you have well defined Subjective points of view, you can't begin to find out what they have in common (pulling things into overlapping centripetal Objectivity).

Not Subjective vs. Objective, but Subjective and Objective. ---

Inbox 2.0: Yahoo and Google to Turn E-Mail Into a Social Network - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

2007-11-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

Inbox 2.0: Yahoo and Google to Turn E-Mail Into a Social Network - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Duh. ;-)

2007-10-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

In this slide, David Armano describes "agility" in terms of design in creativity and planning.

These have direct jungian counterparts:

Under "agile creativity", we have plan and improvise. Planning is the bailiwick of the J type in the myers briggs type code, which translates as extraverted judgment (in combination with introverted perception). Improvisation is the bailiwick of the P type in the MBTI, which translates as extraverted perception.

Agility is the jungian transcendant function between these.

Mozilla gets serious about e-mail | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

2007-10-05T17:01:00.000-07:00

Mozilla gets serious about e-mail | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

support this

The BFF: Reducing information overload

2007-09-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

The BFF: Reducing information overload

How to Change the World: Ten Questions with Chris Brogan

2007-09-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

How to Change the World: Ten Questions with Chris Brogan

the answers to these questions are all answered using the circular logic that twitter is kewl in the first place. But then, that's what Chris Brogan does.

InternetPsyche

Communication Nation: What's the best tool for communication?

Amplify and Four Views

Subjective, Objective and Internet Technology

AllPeers BitTorrent Plugin Preview For TechCrunch Readers

Google doesn't need to hire a Head of Social, it needs to *be* social.

excerpt from a discussion about reputation points

Great Decision Tree for Communication

The duality of knowledge

TidBITS Opinion: Instant Messaging for Introverts

What Personality Type is Your Web 2.0 Fave? (Part 2 of Web 2.0 Personality Types) « SmoothSpan Blog

Jazz Wars

Why OpenSource will never win the Desktop

Anti-social bot invades Second Lifers' personal space - tech - 02 November 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Yahoo succumbs

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report

One Ring To Rule Them All?

A discussion about APML and Web 2.0

The problem with wikis

Tags have reputations too

The Triumph of the Subjective

Inbox 2.0: Yahoo and Google to Turn E-Mail Into a Social Network - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

Mozilla gets serious about e-mail | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

The BFF: Reducing information overload

How to Change the World: Ten Questions with Chris Brogan

Google doesn't need to hire a Head of Social, it needs to be social.