Comments on: Idiocracy: We Have Been Warned

By: Toby Bell

Toby Bell — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:37:12 +0000

I guess I am referring to the semantic Web as a whole. That we’re being guided to think of information as a collective (Wikipedia links, Rotten Tomatoes, IMdb) all of which are fragile and random and tied to content objects loosely. To make sure we find and understand stuff in the new consciousness, we’ll have to make sure at the moment it is created it not only contains the best content but that all the ways to further describe and score and relate it to others are also as clear as possible. We need to rate the historians so that we limit pollution of opinion versus research/facts. Gartner is supposed to be part of the larger antidote to opinion.

By: rita knox

rita knox — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:02:02 +0000

I find blogs very hard to read. Not because of the content but because the links, which I follow, disrupt my thinking . . These other threads are launched. They may or may not be close to the central theme, but they are there now as a parallel path to the main thesis.
One approach may be to only tag things where it’s really needed . for example, I understand why you tagged the Gettysburg address, but if I followed would get me off on abe Lincoln and book I just finished about him though team of rivals was better . see, am going off . then thinking of doris kearns Goodwin, wondering what she’s up to . . you mention a texan so I start thinking about connection George to what you are writing, wondering what he’s doing these days . .
So this is not good in an era of easy distractability. When I did serious work – certainly in 80s when I was doing research at Lockheed – people would sometimes walk into my cell while I was thinking . would interrupt me . and disrupt a line of thinking that had taken me 15-20 mins to develop . I didn’t take notes, might not have helped, but often couldn’t get back to what I was thinking about. .. much worse with gartner. I should turn off my volume so I stop getting auditory interrupts. .. see links are embedding a dictionary in the piece. Sometimes I’ll stop reading to look up a word, but will often wait until after if I can follow the topic with knowing the exact definition.
Anyway, I digress . I’m missing your point . . when I read the last bit, I see it’s about metadata. But don’t understand the connections throughout the piece unless it’s to illustrate that there are many layers to anything that’s said.
Don’t be insulted . . I am probably the densest person who will read your stuff .. I’ll read the comments people made to see how they saw this .. you suffer from being too well educated

By: Toby Bell

Toby Bell — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:04:49 +0000

Thanks, Glenn. I think the plan is to abstract as much metadata from content as possible leveraging analytics instead of people. Then we’ll relationalize it (XML) and bind to semantic layer over structured data. In labs. Mwahaha.

That’s because people don’t have the time or inclination to serve the needs of others… or maybe the incentives. But if content and metadata had more obvious value, things might change quickly.

As to your other remark… See ?!? My point exactly. Most readers wouldn’t wonder if my memory (or research) was accurate. So in years to come only your reminder will serve the truth. It was an intentional device about how individual memory isn’t viable. I even included a link to the movie with a list of the actual actors.

Plus, I just wanted to use the Nolte mug shot somewhere.

By: Glenn Euloth

Glenn Euloth — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:53:19 +0000

A very interesting and thought provoking post. I wonder how hard it will be to find a balance between the meta data we create (effort required) and how easy it is to find or search for?

Also, Nick Nolte was not in Beverly Hills Cop – you are thinking about 48 Hours