brianfrank

Never mind my last comment.

I should've just said "Second Life." Those users -- at least the ones who stick around -- invest alot of capital (cultural, emotional, financial, etc).

I don't know if Second Life will be the company that gets the next wave right, but I think we should look at what they (and their users) are doing, to see who'll be the big winners in 5 to 10 years.

Here's a fairly recent post on GigaOM about it: http://gigaom.com/2007/09/26/7-reasons-why-second-life-shoul...

...and then there's the story posted by pg about declining use of wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Log_analysi... ... and my comment on there: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66946

What do you think might happen if the federal government tried to implement a centralized innovation initiative?: Would it be a joke? a moderate success? a non-entitiy? or could it even be counter-productive?

Beauty. Thanks pg for finding a "concrete example" that iamwil wanted to support my post yesterday on 'web3.0' (or whatever it should be called).

If wikipedia is really serious about growing, they might do well to start figuring out how to progress from being merely a place to manage existing knowledge, towards being a vehicle/engine for developing/creating new knowledge.

Why wait around for new fields to open up? Start encouraging users to stick around and do it there...

Sorry, I know it's pretty fuzzy. I don't know if there are any examples until something starts going wrong (IF something starts going wrong).

You make a good point about the average user needing to know less and less. Which is great, I hope that continues -- and I'm sure it will...

But that also means that users may not be developing any kind of knowledge capital or competence -- unlike the people who build tools.

Developers don't just build tools; they also build their own knowledge and skills at the same time. And their knowledge and skills are specifically 'invested in' (or to use another metaphor, 'married to') those tools, platforms, and applications that they develop. The fact that developers have invested so many years learning to master PHP, Ruby, etc, makes those tools even more valuable -- it makes it less likely for developers to leave them behind.

Whereas the value of web sites and applications to users doesn't necessarily follow the same curve. The fact that it's becoming easier to use means they don't have to make any kind of an investment -- maybe it's just something they do to avoid doing work. After two or three years of using MySpace, how much value, equity, or affinity has been created between MySpace and the user?

My example in the essay was that right now MySpace is doing pretty well, but its value is more in the people using it than the site itself; if users start spending less time there and go somewhere else, like Facebook, they might merely follow each other.

The question to ask is, What would users be leaving behind if they left? What might they follow?

Here's a concrete example: retail rewards cards. (But I think web users are as easily fooled by those kinds of schemes.)

Obviously this is a work in progress. Thanks for pushing me to develop my case.

Nice. I like those suggestions... But wouldn't it be more fun just to steal movie titles. How about The Web Identity > The Web Supremecy > The Web Ultimatum... did I get the order right? Anyone remeber the 'Ernest' films?

I agree that the terms are silly and abused, but unfortunately we seem to be getting stuck with them. I'd love to have better ones (know any?), but for now, you have to admit that people at least know what they refer to: things that'd otherwise be too ambiguous. These over-simple terms aren't bypassing consensus, they are a means to consensus-building.

As to the earlier comment, the whole point of the essay is that we need to look at fads as if they are bubbles, users as if they're investors. See Davenport and Becks 'Attention Economy' as well as Mark Anielski's 'Economics of Happiness'. And to see the where I'm eventually trying to lead, see David Warsh's 'Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations' and the 2005 World Bank paper called "Where is the Wealth of Nations."

Granted. My case isn't very concrete. I'm going by the very general principle that if something isn't growing -- making new connections, adapting, and creating -- then entropy starts to happen.

I don't think the web can grow much more complex without it outgrowing our ability (as both users and providers) to use it effectively -- at least not to its full potential. Therefore growth will probably have to be balanced by growth in our intuitive knowledge and competencies: education.

This is great! I just wrote a similar essay on http://blog.openconceptual.com/ proposing a 'philosophy of enterprise,' which also served as an introduction to the work of Alfred North Whitehead -- a philosopher with a mathematical background who wasn't fooled by the supposed certainty of abstractions:

"Philosophy has been misled by the example of mathematics; and even in mathematics the statement of the ultimate logical principles is beset by difficulties, as yet insuperable. The verification of a rationalistic scheme is to be sought in its general success, and not in the peculiar certainty, or initial clarity, of its first principles." "The position of metaphysics in the development of culture cannot be understood without remembering that no verbal statement is the adequate expression of a proposition."

Whitehead (who was an early collaborator of Russell's) made these statements while Wittgenstein was a schoolteacher and Russell was still enthralled with his early work, which W. himself later rejected in favour of the ideas he is now (justly) celebrated for.

Whitehead's lack of a legacy in professional philosophy is partly due to the fact that he felt it was nevertheless necessary to articulate a sort of heuristic metaphysical framework -- which few professional philosophers have been interested in tangling with [actually, it's been pretty roundly criticized; I meant that philosophers aren't interested in countering or improving it] (for reasons PG points out in the essay).

By making such an attempt, he has much in common with Heidegger, who has remained more widely read and cited than Whitehead perhaps (for another reason pointed out by PG) because of his esoteric and unclear style. It's as if James Joyce and Kurt Godel both composed universal cosmologies: whose do you think would be more popular among later generations of young philosophers?

Whitehead also agreed with PG's attitude towards Aristotle's impractical metaphysics: "Metaphysics is nothing but the description of the generalities which apply to all the details of practice."

I think PG's "test of utility" has potential, but I think we should be careful not to let it stray too far into an authoritative stance. (... while I try not to stray into "word soup.") What I mean is that, above all, we should be doing philosophy for ourselves but with others, in conversation. We may not get them to "do something differently," but if we can get them to do something with us (like discuss philosophy, as PG's essay has so effectily done here...), then we've done enough (for the moment). I think if we start believing our ideas are for other people's benefit -- that we somehow appreciate their needs and wants better than they do -- we get into hazardous situations of resentment and (ironically) competition.

My favourite "test of the value of any philosophy" (quoting John Dewey) is Dewey's question, "Does it end in conclusions which, when they are referred back to ordinary life-experiences and their predicaments, render them more significant, more luminous to us, and make our dealings with them more fruitful?"

That is roughly a more general formulation of PG's test -- only without the requirement of having someone else read it -- which (correct me if I'm wrong) sort of demonstrates PG's proposal: it was useful in getting me to act differently (or at least getting me to act), which I did by "cranking up the generality" -- to apply not just to written philosophies but any kind of idea or insight. (Now we wait and see how useful my [I mean Dewey's] philosophy is...)

And I fully agree with the last comment: we're just beginning to learn.