Categories
Design

On Dan Hill's "Adaptive Design" Piece…

I still haven’t completely formed my opinions on the recent IA seminar on “Adaptive Design” I attended (Dan Hill from cityofsound speaking). He’s put up the presentation along with some notes which should make the whole process rather easier. The one thing that I know stuck in my head throughout the whole thing was that there was a regular appeal towards building adaptive sites with an architecture that allowed experiementation and adaptability. There were a few more people talking about component-level systems like Lego as well. They too kept talking about the simple rules of the system that governed the use of these blocks. Everyone seemed to think that the job of the designer was the development of rules and components within self-contained sites. I kept thinking of Operating Systems and the Internet – universal computing machines lying behind the scenes forming an architecture. And then I started thinking of Applications and Sites as the components within these machines. In a sense we’re already designing components within a larger open system – allowing individuals to assemble their own ‘machines’ (which amount to their interactions with computers). Maybe we’re getting this all wrong – maybe we shouldn’t be looking at the products we make and trying to componentise them still further. Maybe we should just look to simplify what each function does and have them hang off one another by using standard formats and useful proceedures for interoperability…

I’ll give you a quick example. Blogger is a way of storing content in a particular format. It can feed that information out as e-mail, html and rss. The e-mails can be sent to me to be viewed on my e-mail client, or they can be sent to Yahoogroups where they can be displayed out of context or repurposed to be sent out to large groups of people or in a digest format. The HTML can be viewed by a web browser (of which there are several different types including speech browsers, braile browsers etc) or pulled into databases (a al Blogdex and can also be printed out to be carried around with me, or put into a palm pilot, or screen-capped and adjusted. RSS feeds can be read by applications like NetNewsWire or by IM programs like Trillian or they can be aggregated (as on Haddock Blogs) or they can be put into databases and reused. Each one of these is a component. Each one of which is something that a user decides (or decides not to) use in assembling the magic “machine that makes things happen” (ie. their person computing space). So maybe that’s what we should be concentrating on – single use (or simple use) applications or sites that do something very well, can be removed or replaced from the processing chain of information. Maybe that’s adaptive design. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with us making the architecture at all. It’s already there.

Categories
Social Software

First thoughts on Wiki

A few thoughts on Wikis:

  • There aren’t enough simple sets of instructions for people who are completely unfamiliar with Wikis. It’s quite hard to make the mental leaps necessary to get past that very initial stage of frustrated apathy. But once you do it’s tremendously easy to use and has essentially no further technical learning-curve. Suggestion – someone writes a guide to starting a wiki in non-wiki format for a change.
  • The most significant aspect for me is this sense of pottering, of idle investment – that it’s not important to achieve perfection, consensus or conclusion and so any small piece of work you do feels like a valuable contribution – a step in the right direction. They’re even faster to use than weblogs, and more flexible (with all the benefits and problems that involves).
  • The next stage in development would seem to me to be an aesthetic one and a usability one – there’s clearly work that needs to be done before they go fully mainstream, and if publishers are going to approach this kind of stuff then they’re going to want some reassurement that the content won’t simply be lost – so some kind of collaborative moderation system will probably have to emerge there (at least for commercial applications).
Categories
Social Software

In which Tom mentions that he's just started his first Wiki…

Little to say except that I’ve spent some of this evening working to install my first ever Wiki using UseMod. I’ve got a very specific project in mind – getting a group of less-than-totally-tech-savvy community members to get together and assemble their own FAQs, site history and help files. Adrian Hon’s recently got something similar going with the Metafilter Wiki which I’m very impressed with. This feels extremely interesting and experimental – very much like weblogging did three years ago – but as far as I can tell Wikis already have a weight of history building behind them. I’ll keep writing about how the project appears to be going (but I’m not planning to link to it from plasticbag.org just yet).

Categories
Random

The Unwedding of Ultrasparky…

Of course the most important news in blogdom at the moment is the upcoming big gay wedding of Sparky and the Rooster (thanks to Google Images for those photos). I can’t say congratulations enough! I’m stormingly jealous as well – Dan is a wonderful sweet man who I’ve met once or twice now, and Rooster is… well… really hot. [proper pictures of the lovely couple (you’re looking at number one and two on that page)]

Categories
Random

On the Social Software Summit in New York…

It continually upsets me that things like the Social Software Summit in New York happen and that I don’t get to go to them all. Hearing Clay speak on areas very close to my heart in London recently was tremendously useful and interesting, and I find it intensely frustrating that there are debates ongoing around the world that really matter to me that I can’t attend. Hence my need to buy an iBook, hide in Norfolk and finally assemble some of my thoughts into a publishable form…

P.S. That’s Matt Jones on the left there. And aren’t there are a lot of Apple laptops in concept-forming-land…

Categories
Gay Politics

Three Stories of The Invisible Poof…

So the story goes like this… A friend of mine who used to work at The Express is talking with some friends in the office. She happens to mention me in conversation. A passing acquaintance of hers stops with a start… “Tom Coates?” she asks… “You know Tom Coates from Time Out?” My friend nods… The acquaintance gives a disapproving look… “I’ve heard things about him,” she says. “He’s supposed to be incredibly homophobic…”

You have to laugh. But then you also have to stop for a moment and look around nervously. How did I get here? My tendency to jokingly call other people poofs has got me into considerable trouble in the past, although my habit of referring to myself a great big poof has got me out of just as many… I always assume that the joke is understood – that people get that because I have strange trouser-feelings towards other men, I can say the word ‘poof’ when other people can’t… As a result it feels strangely liberating, and weirdly a bit like it’s challenging some entrenched conceptual positions somewhere down the line… So in one way, I suppose, it’s a statement of personal resolve with a little bit of overt confrontationalism thrown in for good measure.

More interestingly, perhaps is the way this kind of behaviour acts as a weird kind of bonding agent between traditional advantaged (straight) and disadvantaged (gay). I don’t know if it’s a collusive, mutually-useful, atmosphere-reducing strategy though or whether it’s all that and also a weird kind of selling-out. Does it buy into or even support our culture’s nervousness about the potentially sexualised aspect of man-to-man friendships? [check out Eve Kosofsky-Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet if you’re interested in this stuff]

Here’s another example for you… An old (straight) friend once looked mischievously towards me just as I beat him in an argument and said – in the most school-boy style that he could manage – “Yeah, well maybe, but you’re … a big homo!” After I’d spat my drink out of my nose, and howled in delighted outraged glee, I did the only thing I could do in the spirit of the occasion – I said, “Am not! Take it back! Take it back! You’re a big gay homosexual…” As I look back at this I can see more clearly than ever that this episode was basically a disavowal of any sexual component that might exist in our relationship. The fact that each of us felt capable to declare in turn, and comfortably, that we weren’t big homos – even when we both knew quite clearly that one of us was and was pretty comfortable with it – was evidence that our relationship had become easy, comfortable and free. But at the same time, in retrospect you wonder if this is an appropriate way to structure your sexual identity.

When I look at my relationships with gay men, they’re strained at best. I have a few very close gay friends in London – many less than I had in Bristol. Some are close as family to me, some of these ponced off to New Zealand and deserted me and I don’t see why I should forgive them. But while I’ve always found overly heterosexual posturing tedious, after a flirtation with gay identities, I’ve also come to find the trivial assembly of scene-based identities in London deeply irritating – even repulsive. There’s more honesty in the basic down-and-dirty sex that happens continually around London than there is the posing and posturing of the gay scene. Or at least so it seems to me at the moment.

I suppose, at thirty, I’m finding myself at a weird crossroads. Am I a self-hating gay man who finds himself unable to feel anything but repulsed by the community of my fellow poofs? I don’t think so.. But there’s something wrong, somewhere… Else why would I feel so invisible? Why would my sexuality have deteriorated so fundamentally in importance to me. Most people I meet don’t know I’m gay. Many people who read this site don’t know I’m gay. Despite being best poof in the world once, significant gay sites have just not even noticed my man-friendly tendencies… But this is wrong! They should know. It’s important to me. Maybe the answer comes from another story… I’m walking down a street with a straight friend of mine, and we’re watching the hot boys walk by, and I’m lamenting my lack of relationship (for the thousandth time) and asking if they thought I was just criminally fucked-in-the-head and they reply… “Tom, I don’t know how to say this, but I hope you’ll take it as a compliment… I don’t think you’re in the slightest bit fucked up about being gay, I think you’re fucked up about everything else…”

Categories
Social Software Technology

Towards a way of measuring a stale paradigm… (ps. needs an edit which I'll come to later)

Let’s start by positing the idea that Thomas Kuhn is right when he talks of paradigm shift – that ideas don’t simply change slowly over time, but instead occasionally move with seismic speed, size and repercussions. That the progression from Newton to Einstein could never be accomplished piecemeal, but had to happen by an instantaneous leap.

Let’s split this concept in two directions which will interact with it differently – that it’s not only theories that can operate in this way, but also products. Let’s think for a moment why a theory reaches the point where one can tell a paradigm shift is about to take place… Normally it’s because a large-scale incongruity of data appears that seems to contradict the theory. Small scale contradictions emerge all the time – and they can be treated as exceptions (or more precisely circumstances where the theory is unlikely to fall down, but where it seems likely that there is more going on than we are able to perceive initially). But the more minor contradictions that emerge, the more special circumstances that appear, the more likely it is that someone will try to resolve them with a higher level theory that will encompass more of them…

What’s the equivalent for products? I would argue that the mark of a stale paradigm – one in which there is significant need for a paradigm shift – would be one in which one (or both) of two things happens. Firstly branding could emerge as the most important aspect of the product itself – with a complete absence of reasons to distinguish between two products (since both accomplish precisely the same function) then the arms race moves into pure marketing. This is a significant difference between products and theories, in that there can be two products that are essentially identical (or functionally competing for the same mindshare in the same area) in which neither can in and of itself ever be dismissed on any grounds other than taste.

The second (and more interesting) aspect might be that the product would experience non-essential feature-creep – the complementary opposite (mirror-image) of the flaws in the theoretical paradigm – minor issues with the way they are used or interacted with that are resolved by the partial dilution – or working around – of the initial paradigm. Thus a product might evolve hundreds of secondary features, none of which are crucial to its use, and which are mostly used by very niche audiences or by all audiences on very rare occasions. A side effect of this might be a market saturated with apparently radically different solutions to the same marginal problems, none of which achieve any apparent dominance simply because none of them have enough of an edge over any other.

Classic examples of stale paradigms? Shoes (evidence is branding and redundant feature-creep), Word Processors (evidence is redundant feature-creep) and Community websites (evidence is massive feature-creep [cf. Infopop‘s Ultimate Bulletin Board] and a recent proliferation of subtly different community applications, none of which have achieved paradigmatic dominance).

Categories
Radio & Music

Danger! Danger! High Voltage!

Prepare to have your world widened – for Meg is right – the song (and video) for Danger! High Voltage by the Electric 6 is about to colonise your consciousness and redefine music for you for the next twelve months. It’s going to be huge. The following images will be burned into your retinae. Await the coming..!

Categories
Random

No! No! It's a sin against television!

This will mean nothing to the people who come here to read rambling usability articles, or stuff on social software – or even the few people who come to hear me ramble on about what happens after-hours. This will only make the slightest sense to those few people in the world who are obsessed with Fame Academy, or more specifically Ainslie. Will the world please explain to me how David, the self-satisfied little pop tramp with a potential career as long as his butt-hair could possibly beat Ainslie? I mean, sure… Ainslie can’t really sing in tune that well… And yes, he has a tendency to get all worked up and run around like a lunatic, and coat himself in mud, and hide in cupboards… But at least he’s not a wanker?

Categories
Random

100 Greatest Gay Britons…

If I had to choose the gay men that I consider to be worthy of the 100 Greatest Gay Britons poll that is happening over at Naked Blog, I would probably make sure that the following were among them: EM Forster, Alan Turing, Siegfried Sassoon, Cary Grant, Dirk Bogarde, Morrissey and Neil Bartlett.