This is a very simple question I would like to extend to the group that has, what I expect to be, a very complex answer.
What do you use the internet for?
What would you like to see different about this service/product? What would make this product worth more to you? What would make you want to use it more?
Is there something that doesn't exist yet that you wished did?
I use the internet for storing data, sharing data and finding information and products that make my life easier, more fun or make me more knowledeable.
What I'd like:
More organization...easier to find the information that is available. I'd like to see less garbage. I'd wnat to use it more if there were more consistency between web pages.
Maybe one username and password to enter the internet then never have to enter them or sign up for anything.
I love collaboration like Wikipedia and Flikr. I love free stuff like Wikispaces. I like my Google groups. I feel like a net citizen first. I love the anarchy and the organization. I like the free speech. I like the low cost barrier to entry. I like getting opinions fresh not recycled like TV. I like the creativity. I love instant messaging especially for my work and that I can tell when other people are available. I like Creative Commons. I like Stumble that just finds you a great web site at Random. I like interacting with people all over the world. I like things not being all nicely packaged, glossy. Rather a little rough around the edges. I like the spontaneousness of it and I like the self documenting history of a lot of it.
I agree. The internet really is the great equalizer, where people from all backgrounds and statuses can come together to collaborate, share information, and hold an occasional flame war. There are some seedy and rough neighborhoods, but on the whole it's very easy to collaborate and share with like minded people in so many areas of interest. Ever since I've joined this and a few other GTD/productivity groups, my inbox is flooded daily with great ideas.
I will normally use the internet to gather news and information, to research, and to communicate. I have no idea what I would do without it.
I think this is terribly naive statement. The internet is an equalizer, it's a filter. Untold numbers of people are simply not represented (or even interested), or cannot afford it. As more and more sites add pictures, simple dialup isn't enough either - gotta have hi-speed to make it "the internet". Once again, those with ways and means make the required ways beyond the means of those without.
Yes, I agree that there's quite a bit "interesting" or "useful" about the internet; however, calling it an equalizer is naive. It is not ubiquitous, much as it might seem to be as we sit at our keyboards frantically clicking and keeping up with the buzz.
Bryan Ewbank wrote: > > "The internet is a great equalizer"
> I think this is terribly naive statement. The internet is an > equalizer, it's a filter. Untold numbers of people are simply not > represented (or even interested), or cannot afford it.
Bryan, I don't think he said "Everyone now has a computer and broadband." He said it's an equalizer. I think that means that more of us humans can connect with more of us humans. I speak daily with a guy working out of his tiny apartment in New Delhi. He helps me with my website, and I help put his child through a better school. He has stated repeatedly that he's pretty clear that wouldn't have occurred without the Internet. I IM with a small group of kids who live in a fairly isolated village in Nepal that I visited in the mid-90s. There's no way that would have happened without the Internet.
Will we all eventually all make the same exact amount of money, and all own the same tangible items and everything will just be great because of the Internet? I sure hope not, but I do think it makes the world a better place.
How would I improve it? Speed. That's the only thing I ever moan about. When the Internet is as fast as phones and TVs, I'll be happy.
> Untold numbers of people are simply not represented (or even interested), or cannot afford it.
Yes, but those who do have access to it (even over low speed links, or text based browsers, like the one I am using to post this message now), have access to so many more resources and people than they could have ever hoped to have had before. I was listening to an interview with Carol Queen a little while ago, and in it she was talking about how much better equipped people (and particularly young adults) are these days when it comes to learning about human sexuality (her field). As she put it, when she was growing up her public library had just one book on the subject, and it was never on the shelves. Now there are plenty of places, such as www.sfsi.org, scarleteen.org, and so on where you can learn and ask questions (anonymously, if you need to).
Now duplicate that access across most fields of interest and you can see that in some sense it is an equalizer. No, the internet is not ubiquitous. But it has spread its resources out over a far wider area than ever before, and it continues to spread as time goes on. Hell, it's only been about a decade since the idea of the internet hit the public consciousness, and it's already more accessible than most books are, and that medium has had a few thousand year head-start...
Make that "untold numbers of people are not interested in it". There is a difference between choosing to use your limited dollars for something like tv and truly being to the point where you can barely buy food. I won't say that there aren't people out there like that, but I do think this is a smaller number than you would think. And I'm not convinced that having internet access is something critical to your development as a human being.
I access the internet on a Mac beige G3 that I picked up for $125 dollars. Monitor was $50. My husband's computer is one that we spent $500 on almost 10 years ago. Still runs Win95 with 64MB of RAM and a monitor that I paid $13 for at Goodwill. I've accessed the internet on Macs that weren't power macs. I've stayed on dialup because I've had too many people tell me that if you go with broadband, you can't go back to dialup. I don't want the internet to assume that sort of importance in my life.
I do tech support and I talk to all kinds of folks. I talk to some who really shouldn't have a computer and to some who should never venture beyond AOL. I talk to some folks who are brand new at this and are really excited to finally get to learn how to use a computer. I'd rather talk to those folks any day of the week than some know-it-all. I'm amazed at how humble and apologetic they are that they don't know how to use a computer or the internet. I hope that the internet, in the long run, turns out to be more useful and entertaining than television. Television has become a despicable medium, one that discourages thought and jades the senses.
Bryan Ewbank wrote: > Untold numbers of people are simply not > represented (or even interested), or cannot afford it. As more and > more sites add pictures, simple dialup isn't enough either - gotta > have hi-speed to make it "the internet". Once again, those with ways > and means make the required ways beyond the means of those without.
Fantastic rant!
Someone mentioned the text browsers - some websites are unusable via text browsers. In fact, an association of the blind sued Target and others over the accessibility of their websites under the American ADA law.
And I would still argue that there are a lot of people without high-speed access to the internet - what percentage of the American public has access to high-speed internet versus those that do not? I would suggest it is a big number....
And even the idea of the Internet being an equalizer is being challenged - Verizon is pushing for differing charges for different users based on their requirements - so Google pays outrageous fees and Mom n' Pop goes out of (web) business if they can't pay the new "upgraded" fees for their growing business....
> As more and > more sites add pictures, simple dialup isn't enough either - gotta > have hi-speed to make it "the internet".
A frightening thing about broadband access... the US is, apparently, way behind the curve.
China will pass the US in total broadband subscribers by late 2006 to become the largest broadband country in the world. The US has fallen to 19th overall in household broadband penetration, and is in danger of being passed by Slovenia in early 2007. Israel leads all Middle Eastern and African countries, and is the third country overall in broadband penetration. Hong Kong leads the Pacific Rim, with a broadband penetration rate of over 73%. Meanwhile, in December 2005 the US passed 65% in broadband penetration among active Internet users.
Brian, I guess I should have clarified. This is what I get for trying to post before I've finished a cup of coffee. The internet is an equalizer of information. My apologies; I was not being considerate of the untold millions or billions without access due to interest, economic situation, or lack of equipment and especially without high speed access. I find your assumptions of my motives to be a little naive, but it was my fault for rushing off a post early in the morning. Some members of the group did seem to understand what I meant.
As it pertains to information, the internet does a great job of equalizing. No, it doesn't equalize economics or politics or even equipment. Thanks to the internet, the distribution and sharing of information is possible on a wide scale that was unimaginable 20 years ago. Information is not limited to small groups. Yes, there is a lot of bogus or sensational gunk out there, but for the most part, if you want to find something, you can.
I did take for granted that I've pretty much had high speed since about '97 except for a few times when I moved into an area that did not have high speed yet, but that is far from the intention of my original post.
So basically what you guys are telling me is that the thing that is "broken" about the internet is not being able to convey emotion and overall intent properly? :)
> Brian, I guess I should have clarified. This is what I get for trying > to post before I've finished a cup of coffee. The internet is an > equalizer of information. My apologies; I was not being considerate of > the untold millions or billions without access due to interest, > economic situation, or lack of equipment and especially without high > speed access. I find your assumptions of my motives to be a little > naive, but it was my fault for rushing off a post early in the morning. > Some members of the group did seem to understand what I meant.
> As it pertains to information, the internet does a great job of > equalizing. No, it doesn't equalize economics or politics or even > equipment. Thanks to the internet, the distribution and sharing of > information is possible on a wide scale that was unimaginable 20 years > ago. Information is not limited to small groups. Yes, there is a lot of > bogus or sensational gunk out there, but for the most part, if you want > to find something, you can.
> I did take for granted that I've pretty much had high speed since about > '97 except for a few times when I moved into an area that did not have > high speed yet, but that is far from the intention of my original post.
Vicki Brown wrote: > China will pass the US in total broadband subscribers by late 2006 to become > the largest broadband country in the world. The US has fallen to 19th overall > in household broadband penetration, and is in danger of being passed by > Slovenia in early 2007. Israel leads all Middle Eastern and African > countries, and is the third country overall in broadband penetration. Hong > Kong leads the Pacific Rim, with a broadband penetration rate of over 73%. > Meanwhile, in December 2005 the US passed 65% in broadband penetration among > active Internet users.
Not only that, but apparently US broadband is actually *slower* than much of the rest of the world.... but putting that aside...
Be careful of the stats - notice that these stats are refering to active Internet users (as you mentioned at the last). Perhaps a better comparison would take into account the broadband penetration into population centers - the US, like Russia, is quite spread out compared to countries like Austria, Germany, and Japan. Perhaps a comparison of broadband penetration into the populace at large compared to the number of rural citizens would help?
On 2/9/06, Justin Lilly <justinli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a very simple question I would like to extend to the group that has, > what I expect to be, a very complex answer.
From the turnabout-is-fair-play department: Why do you ask?
> What do you use the internet for?
I use the Internet for a variety of things:
-- Reference/Research: Instead of trying to dig into books to find information, I can go to my search engine of choice and find information online. Error codes, language references, phone numbers, that sort of thing. This is also where various blogs, news sites, and hobby lists sit, I guess.
-- Amusement: I'm a too-voracious consumer of random information, and the Internet can be seen as a firehose of random information. I can waste far too much time clicking "random link" at Wikipedia and seeing what interesting stuff comes up.
-- Social Contact: I'm an e-mail list with a group of local friends, and we chat about whatever comes to mind or whatever happens to us. (One guy had an appendectomy this week.) Each week, we hash out where to have Friday dinner.
-- Self-Improvement: This is where the 43F group comes in, among other things. Through discussions on topics like GTD, procrastination, and lifehacking in general, I hope to learn to do "my thing" better. Being involved in these discussions helps keep me aware of things I should and should not be doing.
These days, I probably spend more of my online time at Gmail and Bloglines than anywhere else.
> Is there something that doesn't exist yet that you wished did?
An "off" switch? :)
Really, I think my biggest want is the ability to let go, get away, and not worry that I'm going to miss something. Some of this is just psychological, but some of it may have product-development potential in terms of intelligent filtering.
Just as you can train a spam filter to recognize what's spam and what's real, maybe someone could invent a trainable filter to digest sources and extract the things I would find most interesting? Imagine a sort of "custom newspaper" metaphor, where I could get the things that really interested _me_ without having to sort through the chaff that interests other people.
Or is there such a thing? If so, please point me in an appropriate direction.
> On 2/9/06, Justin Lilly <justinli...@gmail.com> wrote: > > This is a very simple question I would like to extend to the group that > has, > > what I expect to be, a very complex answer.
> From the turnabout-is-fair-play department: Why do you ask?
Fair is fair, I suppose. I actually ask for the simple purpose of making money from the ideas of others. I'm hoping to see what's not working for people and make it work, thereby gaining users and (hopefully) wealth as well.
Pretty much. Text interfaces sometimes cause unfortunate misunderstandings. One thing I do miss about snail mail is the trip to the mailbox sometimes gave you time to think about whether or not you wanted your letter to go out. With an instantaneous text interface, it's easy not to give proper consideration to a response. I apologize for the sharpness of my last post.
Robert Lynch wrote: > Just as you can train a spam filter to recognize what's spam and > what's real, maybe someone could invent a trainable filter to digest > sources and extract the things I would find most interesting? Imagine > a sort of "custom newspaper" metaphor, where I could get the things > that really interested _me_ without having to sort through the chaff > that interests other people.
> Or is there such a thing? If so, please point me in an appropriate direction.
You could probably use a Bayesian filter for this. I did a little experiment: I grabbed a few entries from the del.icio.us RSS feed on the tag "organization", converted each item to an email message, and stored half of the messages in a folder called "boring" and the other half in a folder called "nifty".
Then I ran my favorite Bayesian classifier, ifile (http://www.nongnu.org/ifile/) on both folders. The results weren't stellar because I only had a few messages making up the sample, but I was able to (roughly) classify new messages as "nifty" or "boring" based on the stuff I already had. The point is to collect a *bunch* of stuff in those folders, and then use them to classify new material.
I got this running under Unix with a few perl scripts. If you're interested, send me a message at vogelke+43fold...@pobox.com
> I got this running under Unix with a few perl scripts. If you're > interested, send me a message at vogelke+43fold...@pobox.com
Maybe Justin's working on a Bayesian-filtered RSS reader as we speak. :)
I'm on Windows, and I'm not willing to take the time to roll my own solution. (Hey, at least I admit it.)
When I was describing what I wanted, my first thought was Bayesian filters, too. If my life had gone a different direction, I might have hacked together my own system... but I'm apparently not the hackish fellow I used to be. I'm not even subscribed to Slashdot's RSS feed anymore...
Robert Lynch wrote: > When I was describing what I wanted, my first thought was Bayesian > filters, too. If my life had gone a different direction, I might have > hacked together my own system... but I'm apparently not the hackish > fellow I used to be.
I tried a Bayesian-filter based RSS reader (shareware) for MacOS X recently called Shrook - but it doesn't seem to have a lot of the features that are usually considered typical of RSS readers. The first one I missed almost immediately was the lack of support for folders used in OPML imports. Many readers don't support nested folders, but Shrook doesn't support any - it lumps everything together.
Nevertheless, the use of Bayesian filtering is interesting - it also appears to be across *all* of the feeds, rather than just a select grouping of them.
Shrook also has a way of "collecting" all of your feeds together so you can get them from anywhere with any browser using shrook.com. Here's the website for the Shrook RSS feedreader:
> I'm not even subscribed to Slashdot's RSS feed > anymore...
Slashdot seems to have the stuff "for nerds" that you won't find anywhere else - stuff like finding a 10th planet, rats that replay a solved maze memory in their heads (backwards!), and tabletop room temperature fusion by students at UCLA - all recent true stories.... I love the tech, but the nontechnology stuff keeps me glued...
