@stoweboyd wrote a post (’Streams And Sense Making‘) in which he also reacts to my last webtrends post ‘Towards a web of activity streams realizing the synaptic web paradigm‘.
Since my comments on his post became to long I decided to publish it as a post (point taken Stowe :). Although my response is directed to Stowe, I’m interested in anyones comments and feedback.
Hi Stowe,
Many thanks for taking the time to read my piece on the emergence of a activity stream web and how it in effect realizes the synaptic web paradigm; I appreciate it a lot.
First, to clarify to your readers : I never used the term ‘sixth sense’. It relates to Edo Segal’s post. However, the effect that content of interest to you will automatically reach you can (in effect) be understood as a ‘new sense’ in my opinion. Content of interest to you can automatically reach you due to what you post, reposts etc. and the connections you make based on your interests. More on that later.
It’s a long piece indeed, a bad habbit I’m trying to shake off (but not in this response :) About it’s rambling quality: I can agree, that’s what you get when you give ‘a rough overview of some [...] current thoughts’, as stated in my intro.
I have one question though: what do you mean with ‘This is one of those metaphors that says more about the people using it than the thing it attempts to define, however.’? What does it say about the people using this metaphore?
I totally agree that we are not going to craft a new sensorium to deal with streams. However I do think that, together, as users of the web generating the activity streams, WE ARE the new sensorium based on our existing cognitive skills: creating a web of highly specialized ’senses’ as meant above.
To explain this: we constantly identify new interesting content, post it, repost and reply to it, and, we connect to sources (users) we think are of interest to us. The local networks formed in this way, react strongly to the kind of information from which they we’re seeded in the first place: in other words, this network senses and reacts strongly to specific information.
Hence, looking at it globally I can describe this as a sensorium with many highly specialized senses. The question remains how this global sensorium can be effectively used by all the individuals that make it up. Here the synaptic web metaphore really ends : a neuron can’t perceive the global network, we as humans can do that much better; new search techniques could be required here.
Can you agree with this thinking? Why do you think it’s a valid theory or not?
Thanks again for your reaction,
Freddy
Again, to all reading this post, your feedback is also very much appreciated.
Tags: activity streams web, future trends, real-time web, reply to, sensorium, social media, Stowe Boyd, synaptic web, web search
