Standards?
Some thoughts prompted by NG264's piece on standards in the blogosphere.
Doesn't this whole idea assume a homogeneity in the purposes & uses of blogs that doesn't, indeed maybe shouldn't, exist? Sure, it would be neat if everyone who wrote a software review (for instance) followed a certain format that would allow the reviews to be collated/indexed/rendered searchable. But where does that leave individuality, creativity, our right to be different? The joyful messiness of an organic form of self-expression?
If I feel moved to write about a particular piece of software, I just want to say what I have to say (which may be trivial, technical, practical, frivolous....) without shoe-horning my comments into some predetermined standard.
I may be misreading the SmartMobs entry, which is less coherent than I would expect from a student assignment:
"Datamining" ourselves "democratizies"[democratizes?] tools that were previously cost [costly? cost-effective? something else?] and prohibitive [huh? what did they prohibit?] for most people. They can also make it easier for many more people to contribute more effectively to a general "knowldge [knowledge?] commons". The idea of creating databases about different aspects of our [our what??] has actually been around for a while.
I'm automatically suspicious of the quality of argument, when the quality of expression is so low.
Software reviews may also be an unfortunate example. The main purpose of standards often seems to be to facilitate interoperability, in the interests of promoting manufacturing efficiency & profits, with user benefits an almost accidental side-effect. So standards applied to blogged software reviews would speed the process of sorting sheep from goats, help consumers choose between competing products.
Fine, but is it why we blog?
posted by bluefluff @ 1:19 am
5 comments
5 Comments:
Hi Lynne! I have to thank you for helping me learn a lesson. The lesson being: proofread! I guess that my mind got ahead of my typing fingers in the post you quoted.
Here's what I meant to write:
""Datamining" ourselves "democratizies" tools that were previously cost prohibitive for most people. They can also make it easier for many more people to contribute more effectively to a general "knowledge commons". The idea of creating databases about different aspects of ourselves has actually been around for a while. Part of the core of Catherine Austin Fitts' Solari concepts is the creation of public community databases that make hidden information and knowldge about a locale explicit and transparent. This allows people to create indexes to track the health and status of all sorts of factors that directly affect them, and their communities."
Thanks again for the constructive criticisms, and observations.
Thank you, Sam - the rewritten version makes a whole lot more sense :-)
I've no problem with public information databases ('pinning' comments to locations on GoogleEarth is just one example I'm aware of, amongst many). It's the extension of standards to blogs that makes me uncomfortable.
Just one point: existing mechanisms for tracking/searching blogs brought you to my comment very swiftly, even though I took no deliberate steps to draw it to your attention & I was working within the existing, supposedly standards-deficient situation. Doesn't that suggest further standardisation would be superfluous?
The main purpose of standards often seems to be to facilitate interoperability, in the interests of promoting manufacturing efficiency & profits, with user benefits an almost accidental side-effect.
I really struggle with this, the main part I don't agree with is that user benefits are an emergent property rather than the main objective. Surely standards, agreed or de facto, are of more benefit to the user than they are to the manufacturer? For example, when Whitworth became a standard for nuts and bolts it gave them a commercial advantage but it made life a good deal easier for those who use these things as they could be sure that the next batch they purchased would work with this batch and the previous batch. In terms of software production I'd guess that most developers would be happier creating their own standards rather than complying with others but there are clearly problems with this now - there were few standards when I started using a word procesor and I'm sure that files saved in Wang IWP format would be of little value now. It would be far easier for the developers of StarOffice, for example, to use their own file types rather than the additional work required to save to other formats - Word doc and PDF. And the fact that we need PDF points to the issues caused by lack of standards doesn't it?
I can't reconcile "facilitating interoperability" with ease of manufacturing, far from it. And I think using recognised standards can only be aimed at users and is often at the cost of additional development work. Standards don't equate to sterility either - Bina added the IMG tag to an existing standard rather than creating his own version of HTML from the ground up. Standards needn't stifle originality or artistic endevour but might help us all find such work far more easily. My reading of the piece by Sam is that we will be able to find things in a more efficient way and that has to be of value doesn't it?
Thanks for picking this up, Nog.
Our underlying disagreement is, I suspect, too profoundly political to pursue here. I would just observe that the primary reason for 'aiming standards at users' is to grab market share (viz, the oft-cited VHS vs Betamax example). Once a standard is agreed, manufacturing & support can go ahead confidently.
On reflection, I think I'd want to make a distinction between artefacts & ideas. A standard screw makes a lot more sense than a standard blog entry. I'd prefer to see effort invested in search technology than in telling people how to write.
I think the day the blogoshphere becomes neat & tidy, standardised, is the day many of its citizens (if that's the right term) start looking for an alternative place to be anarchic.
Let's see what 2006 brings :-)
I don't think we disagree but we're reading the original piece differently. You probably know me well enough to know that conformity is, to me, an anathema but I don't see the idea of standarisation as imposing conformity. I use tools every day - as do you. Those tools include language and the web and the PC and other stuff. I'm restricted in that I only speak English with any real confidence but the standarisation of the language doesn't restrict the way I use it!
Standards do drive market share, no doubt about that, and Beta was better technology (as was/is the Apple). In real terms both Beta and the IBM PC won on marketing rather than the quality of the product but the user wins, without standards we'd all be buying music on hetrogenous formats (remember that 45 RPM and 33 RPM were actually competing formats). We can't win those battles and however much we Brits love the underdog isn't it better to corrupt from within? I learnt English and MS and IBM Clone PC. Rhodes said that being born English is to win in the lottery of life and if we can write HTML that is read by IE (spit!) we can talk to 85% of the installed user base. In general all innovations split 85:15 in terms of take-up and the people who lose out are the early adapters, a friend of mine had a Jaguar XJS with an eight-track player, great car but the sound system was worth nowt!
Ultimately the great thing about the blogosphere is that if enough of us don't like what's coming down the track we can thumb our noses at it and stick with what works for us :-)
Happy 2006!
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