03/31/2008
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A couple of days ago, Channy wrote something about The rise and decline of web services: economics of exhibitionists and peeping toms. The gist of the essay is: For a web service, you need to have a delicate balance between satisfying exhibitionist desires and those of peeping toms. By way of example, he describes the history of the most successful web services in Korea: Daum cafe, sayclub, cyworld, naver cafe/blog combo and me2day.
An interesting observation, certainly, but I cannot but doubt if it’s somewhat an overstatement to see them through the eyeglass of the socio-psychopathological concepts and devices. I mean, no new insight or advice could be gained by maintaining such a psychodramatic perspective, but to trigger readers’ interests. It might as well be called in more pristine economic expressions maintaining the basic idea that web services need to get a balance betwen the need to advertise (show the entire world what they are up to) and the desire to be informed (see what everybody else is up to). The use of phrases such as “exhibitionists” and “peeping toms” distracts rather than informs readers like me.
Actually, their failures — for example, by being used as an instrumentality for whores in the case of sayclub — doesn’t appear to be the result of their failing to keep the balance and tilting one way or another. Rather, it might as well be attributed to their failure to keep spams from swaying the system (Here, I have used the word spam broadly, suggesting indiscreet or indecent use or exploitation by users for quick money, thereby harming those users sticking to the intended use).
I believe the issue of spam is where you really need to balance yourself. You want to attract as many users as possible, but those many users inevitably will include people who would try to gain (system-wise, or economic) advantages through means never intended by the system designer. Take the example of those spam blogs shamelessly and ruthlessly copying contents from other blogs in an effort to gain search-wise advantage. It’s not a desire to expose to the entire world that he’s a spam blogger, or to stimulate others to see what they are up to is really proliferating meaningless spams (I mean, they’re meaningful for the search engine, but meaningless for actual users) which encourages the generation of spam blogs. They’re only trying to trick the search engine. It has nothing to do with indiscreet desires of peeping toms or exhibitionists. Difficult problem is, where to strike the balance between encouraging users and usage (with appropriate, healthy incentives) and suppressing excessive spams.
03/30/2008
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You can’t see a lot of (English) information on Noguchi Filing System even using google, probably because the most important link went 404. Wikipedia also doesn’t have much. See explanations on it on 43 folders.
Some help from Boing Boing:
New documents (envelopes) are added at the left end of the “envelope buffer,” and whenever a document is used (i.e., the envelope removed from the shelf), it is returned to the left end of the bookshelf. The result of this system is that the most recent (and frequently) used documents migrate to the left, while documents that are not used often or not used at all migrate to the right. After the system has been in use for a while, the shelf starts to look like the following.
And, one and two posts by Edward Vielmetti. Interesting quote from the second:
Noguchi’s ideas are largely inspired by discoveries related to the use of computers… Nevertheless, when building a database there seems to be no way to avoid using fields, which amounts to classifying. Similarly, the entire process of tagging, be it in SGML or XML formats, involves labeling items of knowledge, often for commercial purposes. The digitization of data in itself does not necessitate classifying, but the use of database applications compels it to a certain extent. Categories, even the most sophisticated ones, once used necessarily reflect the limits of our vocabulary and conceptual horizon.
The strength of it is it is so natural, you can’t digress from it. You can use vertical Noguchi System (meaning you just stack papers on top of other papers) instead of Noguchi’s horizontal one and claim that it’s the most advanced hyperorganization scheme, as Eric Abrahamson says in p. 157 of “A perfect mess.”
03/26/2008
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In Patriot Act haunts Google service, Simon Avery explains why google services are not as popular as google has wished it to be:
The U.S. Patriot Act, passed in the weeks after the September, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, gives authorities the means to secretly view personal data held by U.S. organizations. It is at odds with Canada’s privacy laws, which require organizations to protect private information and inform individuals when their data has been shared.
That is, you have to decide whether you need to spend large amount of money for a cms including email, or waive your right of privacy for a cheap solution that is based in the U.S. Really, however, it’s a question of whether the law that regulates your country, your profession and your clients’ privacy information will tolerate the Patriot Act requirements. Worse, gmail is clever, because it needs to analyze the content of email and usage habits to determine the advertisement it wishes to show you. If you’re clever for one purpose, you can be for another. Or, if you’re running out of money, the question is really, “You have to decide which law you are going to break,” as Professor Darren Meister has said. Complying with the law is costly these days.
If you feel happy because you don’t use gmail, think again. Read the following passage from Global Financial Warriors by John B. Taylor:
SWIFT — formally the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — is a Belgian company that operates a messaging system to transmit information related to financial transactions between banks around the world. There is a huge amount of information in SWIFT, and through the program developed at that time, subpoenas were issued to SWIFT to obtain some of that information. Using the information from SWIFT, intelligence experts could then map out terrorist networks and fill in missing links in chains of terrorists. The information was useful for targeting and disrupting terrorist acts. Authorized by such legislation as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA), the program was fully legal under U.S. law. (pages 19 — 20)
For the rest of the story, read, Bank data is sifted by U.S. in secret to block terror and Bank data, terror and the Times both from the New York Times.
03/25/2008
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In another life, I did some translation for a living. I liked it. My attitude toward it was like that of Andrew toward lawyering in Philadelphia:
JOE: Are you a good lawyer?
ANDREW: I’m an excellent lawyer.
JOE: What makes you an excellent lawyer?
ANDREW: I love the law. I know the law. I excel at practicing it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do.
JOE: What do you love about it?
ANDREW: Well… many things. But I think the thing I love the most, is that every once in a while, not that often, but occasionally… you get to be part of justice being done. It’s really quite a thrill when that happens. (Philadelphia movie script)
Every once in a while, not that often, but occasionally… I want to translate things to share my thinking and feelings, like this discussion on death penalty between a blogger in Korea (as a father) and his sons:
Father: Death penalty means taking someone else’s life. That’s why there are so many countries against it. Suppose you, or your family member faces a death penalty. It would be very sad, and difficult to go through even if you have committed a crime, wouldn’t it?
Worse, someone has to do the dirty work. It is a law enforcement, but at the same time it’s doing a killing for a living, like executioners long time ago. Is it right to kill people for justice?
(After thinking for a while)
Son I: Well, what about asking another condemned criminal to do the work? He’s going to die anyway, isn’t he?
Fater: What about the last person facing death penalty?
Even if he’s condemned, he still got his human rights. You can’t ask another person to commit a crime.
Son II: What then about starving him to death?
Father: If you have to take someone’s life, you should at least have the respect to take it at once.
You commit killing by not giving food. (translation by me)
It’s hillarious to read, like most discussion with kids is. Although I kind of feel sad to feel funny about a discussion on such a serious subject. Still, I’d like to add: If you starve someone to death, it’s not only you who have committed a crime. By negligence, everybody has contributed to the killing. And, the strongest argument against death penalty, I think, goes beyond technicality or logistics issue. It’s more philosophical, like death penalty should be banned because of human fallibility (that people tend to make errors) and that power given to a man (or an institution run by a man) should be restricted. It has such a finality. You can’t undo it.
03/25/2008
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The following is from techcrunch:
The long term answer to all of this [unanswered emails] isn’t that people need to try harder to respond to communication requests. The long term answer is that someone needs to create a new technology that allows us to enjoy our life but not miss important messages. If I knew what that solution was, I’d quit this blog and go do it. Someone out there, though, has the beginning of an idea on how we can better manage our electronic communications. And he or she may someday turn that into a product and save us. 2,433 unread emails is an opportunity for an entrepreneur
Techcrunch is probably talking about a technology to sort email messages and point me to the most urgent ones, which assumes that the technology — or machine — understands and actually reads your emails. Probably, it’s going to be a variation of the spam filter or a sort like that, probably based on the reader habit and stuff. Isn’t google gmail doing that, for other purpose of shooting advertisements based on the content of the email and the user habit? Apparently, evolution is a better approach than revolution, especially in cases like this.
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