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+--- Thread: Vision for a New Information Future (/showthread.php?tid=13555)
Vision for a New Information Future - Plenum - 11-24-2016
ok - I have to preface this by saying that I am not going to be the one to bring this into actuation. Or even play a role in it. I am just seeing where the 'system' could be improved, and where it leads to genuine connecting and inter-relationships. And if my 'vision' has any widespread validity, then others will come to the same conclusion independently, and drive the move towards these collective changes. So that's just my preface: it's seeing where things are currently 'flawed', in my eyes, and how greater genuineness and connectivity is possible.
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Premise #1: Facebook is immensely popular. It is doing something right. But it's also not perfect. And there are grumblings from people that don't like how it's changed over the years. Maybe there were things in the earlier years, simpler things, which made it work better than it does now. So let's not through out the baby with the bathwater. Facebook can act as a template and a model for this new information future. It's just that it's unlikely that the change is going to come from inside that company itself. They are too blind to the needs - the genuine needs - of it's influential members.
But the Facebook model is a start.
#2: get rid of the collective newsfeed. In this new information model, you go to a person directly, and see their latest postings. There is no 'mushing up' of content, which somehow dilutes and diffuses everything (my opinion).
#3: there would be a move back to a tumblr style posting, but with a greater emphasis on the written word, rather than the image, which was tumblr's strength. However, we know that instagram is a very popular way of sharing (precisely because it's unique content, not regurgitated), and so I envision that there would be a mix of text (diary style), and photo content as being the main means of production.
#4 there would be some 'app' where you could see all the people/friends that you've followed. You can order the people in priority lists, with the people in the first priority group sitting at the top of the page, as floating heads, with a number next to their name, indicating how many new updates there are. Then so on for the #2 priority lists (your ordinary group of friends, rather than the significant others in group #1), and then so-on for group #3 etc. And so you always get the information from the people that you yourself have deemed the 'most important, relevant, and insightful' at the top.
#5 your content can be marked as "PUBLIC' which can be seen (and followed by anyone), or marked as "PRIVATE", and you can choose who is in the private list. So you always have full control over your sharing.
#6 there would of course be a server-based system in place; but ideally, there would be 'open content' rules in place. Similiar to how anyone can host a private blog or website on a server; or you can host on wordpress.com, as a more collective enterprise. But you would be able to 'poll' a server, similiar to how you poll a rss feed, to check for new updates. So no one company would be in control of Identity Management, or central storing of data.
#7 So this would be a distributed system, and both the creation of content, as well as the consuming of content has control based in the user. All that one would need to 'follow someone' would be that person's email address or phone number, which would be linked to a location for that person's contant. Not sure how that would be technologically implemented.
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So why is this better than facebook?
1) facebook controls your data. It controls how the data is displayed. It can limit certain kinds of data. It also controls the interface.
2) greater interpersonal intimacy. By focussing on one-to-one relationships, in terms of reading and consuming content, you are in a closer relational space to that individual. You are in their heads, following allowing with what they are conveying. And the people/authors/writers who can communicate with a more lucid language (similiar to how musicians can speak to millions), will have a naturally greater influence and 'following'. So that sounds like a bit like twitter ... but without the expression limitations of twitter, or the locked down ecosystem. Again, no news feed in my personal model.
3) again, my 'vision' is more about a slight (but crucial) tweaking of how things are consumed and presented, rather than saying the current models are entirely bankrupt and broken. But as we know, slight differences in presentation/modelling can create massive changes in how people experience a particular system. Some things are anti-user, and pro-corporation. My intent is much more pro-user, in terms of control and dissemination.
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I also appreciate that in some ways, Facebook could conceivably be 'brute-forced' to give the kind of behaviour that I am describing. But my premise is that we require a new information model of relating, rather than trying to change a corporation that already has a set agenda in terms of adulterating your newsfeed (with ads, useless notifications etc etc).
That is their base mindset, which is not ethically-oriented, at heart.
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so what I'm trying to say is that user-generated content is (and ever will be king). And that returning to some sort of distributed blogging model is the goal. Somehow linking one's email address/phone-number to an rss feed. So the identity of an individual becomes the primary means to find them, rather than their wordpress blog etc.
RE: Vision for a New Information Future - BlatzAdict - 11-24-2016
buy out mark zuckerberg?
i agree the news feed is wierd. plus not to mention targeted ads and demographic targets. though a lot of what you've described as public vs private that functionality is already in FB. Then again contrary to what I'm saying Facebook has a list of unapproved websites that do not pull any meta data or link so any suspected limitation of free speech has been verified, though i'm not sure if all alternative opinions have been blocked as of yet.
I see what you mean with brute force not being feasible. Then again if you have something like a name and number connected to a specific feed how is anonymity created, since the nature of my work is in fraud, I can see a lot of ways people would be able to mess with other people by a system providing full freedom.
RE: Vision for a New Information Future - APeacefulWarrior - 11-24-2016
Well, aside from wanting an app and distributed data sharing, what you basically just described was LiveJournal and all its variants, the predecessors to the modern social network. Welcome back to 2003.
But I feel like the elephant in the room here, and the main issue behind most of Facebook's various questionable decisions, is the simple question of: How does this get paid for? For that matter, it's one of the most fundamental issues of the Internet as a whole right now. There are loads of advertisements and loads of companies collecting and selling data, because running popular websites is expensive. And there simply aren't any other good monetization options anyone has found (yet?) that have actually worked out, at least not on large scales. Small, private sites can potentially get by on paid accounts and\or donations, but anything with mass popularity pretty much has to have free and open access.
And if you can't charge your members for use, options for keeping the lights on become very limited.
The truth is, I don't think there is any sort of "magic bullet" solution here. No software app that can solve the myriad issues of privacy and data-sharing and data overload and advertising and monetization and everything else. I think this is a matter that society is simply going to have to work out for itself, arriving at whatever compromises people at large can swallow through their choice of platforms.
Plus, on the social side of things, I honestly think the data-overload problem is an even bigger issue than privacy. It's not just Facebook's News Feed. It's EVERYTHING. People in modernized countries today are absolutely overloaded with information every moment of their lives, and most folks just aren't equipped to deal with it. Facebook's news feed is one of thousands of examples of that underlying problem.
And there may not be a solution to it aside from time. Time for humans to develop coping strategies, and time for software tools to find a way to implement filters that don't simply create echo chambers.