| Home
Archives
Archives before June 13, 2001
RSS Feed
Adaptive
Path (my company!)
About
peterme
Coordinates
Most of the Time
Oakland, CA
Interests
Current
American history around the time of the Revolution, figuring out how to marry top-down task-based information architecture processes with bottom-up document-based ones, finding a good dentist in San Francisco Oakland
Perennial
Designing
the user experience (interaction design, information architecture, user
research, etc.), cognitive science, ice cream, films and film theory,
girls, commuter bicycling, coffee, travel, theoretical physics for laypeople,
single malt scotch, fresh salmon nigiri, hanging out, comics formalism,
applied complexity theory, Krispy Kreme donuts.
surf
Click
to see where I wander.
Wish
list
Show
me you love me by
buying
me things.
Spyonme
Track updates of
this page with Spyonit. Clickee
here.
Essays
[Editor's note: peterme.com
began as a site of self-published essays, a la Stating
The Obvious. This evolved (or devolved) towards link lists and shorter
thoughtpieces. These essays are getting a tad old, but have some good
ideas.]
Reader Favorites
Interface
Design Recommended Reading List
Whose
"My" Is It Anyway?
Frames:
Information Vs. Application
Subjects
Interface Design
Web Development
Movie Reviews
Travel
|
|
| Nitpicky Academics and the Design of Social Software. Posted on 11/19/2002. |
|
Anne has a smart and lengthy post on what are the appropriate models for considering sociality when designing social software. She emailed me, expressing some concern about the rather academic tone of the post, fearing that it was too nitpicky and might be considered irrelevant. Here was my reply to her: Heh.
Well, as someone for whom whose weblog serves as an outlet for academic
tendencies, I don't think it's that much of a problem. First reaction: I'd love to see links to pages about some other cited
authors, etc., to provide context. As a non-academic, I recognize names, but
know little about them. Second reaction: The Web is an amazing entity in part because it allows for
a fairly seamless bridging of academic and non-academic life. I revel in the
fact that when I'm researching a topic, often the best results come from
".edu", and that there is a host of material that I can slog through to
improve my understanding. It also encourages a dialog across the worlds,
because, well, smart people can't ignore each other, no matter where they
are speaking from. Third reaction: Some of the crit theory stuff goes over my head, as I'm not
familiar with the source material. Once D&G were mentioned, my comprehension
factor dropped. Fourth reaction: This is exactly the kind of feedback Mr. Shirky needs. I
tend to think he gets a lot of leeway because he's clearly smart, and good
at presenting his ideas. However, I think there are often flaws in his
thinking that, for some reason, people don't point out. Since he's a
professor, I think he would enjoy this post and its points. Fifth reaction: I tend to think of sociality as a system. I tend to think of
anything sufficiently large and complex as a system. They can be really
messy systems, but systems all the same. If systems theory can address the
richness of biological evolution (and I think it can), then I think it can
address the richness of human interaction and sociability. It can't
necessarily define or describe it, but it can provide tools for
understanding. Sixth reaction: I've long had issue with the "controlling" nature of
information architecture. One of my first best talks was on "Adaptive
Information Architecture", on how we should let human behavior within an
information system drive the information architecture of that system as much
as any authorial control.
http://www.peterme.com/ia2000/ Seventh reaction: Make it easier for me. What does your postulating actually
suggest as a direction for moving forward? What are the design implications
of D&G? What is an evocative or performative technology? What use would it
have? --peter
I feel like explaining a bit more about the Clay Shirky comment. I've had the fortune of getting to know Clay, and he's a wicked smart and really good guy. When he writes, I listen. But I've noticed that people tend to accept Clay's writing with little criticism (except for his essay on weblogs, which did engender quite a bit of disagreement). I assume that 'cause Clay is a professor, he'd actually be welcoming of nitpicky criticisms of his theses, as this is pretty much how the academic field advances. In fact, I'm pretty sure he does welcome them, given the email exchange we had after I posted my comments on his weblog essay.
0 comments so far. Add a comment.
Previous entry: "Stir your brain..."
Next entry: "Adam is a house a-fire!"
Add A New Comment:
|
All contents of peterme.com are © 1998 - 2002 Peter Merholz. |