At 10:26 AM +0100 2/5/99, Ivan Pope wrote:
> But - it is often difficult to get the
> real value from lists because of their rather blunt nature. I have often
> seen very interesting people leave lists in disgust because they don't want
> to deal with the noise.
What you consider blunt others would consider energized.
The best lists are ones with strong character and personalities.
That's because the best lists have people who are interested in them
and involved in them. And that implies an energy level. And when you
have people with strong interest and feelings in a subject, there are
going to be disagreements. And disagreements get blunt.
Lists without aspects of this bluntness tend to be rather boring, and
to be honest, don't tend to have a lot of interesting material. To
stick to my bar analogy and see if I can push it to a level of
silliness way beyond it deserves, what you're asking for is the
excitement of a biker bar, but you're demanding the bikers be polite
in your company. Life just doesn't work that way. The best
information comes from people with the knowledge of the subject, and
with that knowledge comes a opinion and attitude. And trust me, you
can't get the knowledge without getting some of the opinion and
attitude that comes with it.
You also get people with strong opinions and no knowledge, but that's
also part of real life. Just spend time in a sports bar and you'll
see them all over the place.
> Anyway, I don't like to use real world analogies when talking about the
> Internet
That's too bad. Because the internet IS part of the real world, and
comparing on-line paradigms to real world ones helps us understand
them. Both by how the comparison works and where it fails.
> Of course, there are many perfectly fine mailing lists and then there are
> lists that are like panning for gold.
And isn't that just like the real world?
> I think my basic complaint is that we can't take advantage of the diversity
> out there without killing ourselves with traffic noise in the attempt.
Sure you can. But I think you're looking in the wrong place. you're
looking at server technologies to solve your problem. What you really
want is an intelligent client agent to sift through this and give you
the parts you want. No server will solve that -- every user will want
their own version of it.
Customized agents were hot three or four years ago, but faded,
because they are amazingly tough to build well (and you can't put
clickads on them). But go take a look at Apple's Sherlock as one
small step in that direction. It's truly cool.
One long term system I'm working on is a way to allow us to
mass-distribute information customized on a per-user basis. You'll
NEVER do that via mail lists, but once other technologies mature
we'll be able to do it. But even THAt doesn't solve your problem on a
global scale. you'll still need client technologies both to filter
and sift and evaluate, but also to go searching for information
sources to add to the input stream for your filters.
(and none of this is new. Go read Shockwave Rider, published back in
1976, and see just how close he got...)
> Of course moving the same concepts to the Web isn't going to solve that. I
> think we need much more subtle tools to do that. I was trying to think out
> loud about what they might be.
You want an electronic personal secretary, who reads your inbox,
throws out the junk mail, and files everything else in mailboxes
marked "urgent", "useful" and "I don't know"....
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano!
