snowstorm

Posting a link, in the post on Morgan Kaufmann, I encountered this page, which really points to a lot of important stuff, as well as perhaps containing important stuff itself, though I'm not sure what to do with it. The questions it raises are about how to manage my on line identity, in particular my identity as a blogger on Blogger, and also as an Amazon Associate. I want people to be able to connect with me, via the blog, in a very positive way, and some of these settings are doubtless a key to that.

Liz, if, now or another time, you have any thoughts about that for me, let me hear them. But I feel very hard to message. There's the comments on these posts, though I'm not entirely sure I'll see them - I'm anxious about it. E-mail is, if anything, more problematic still. It's essential to me in certain specific cases - and a great blessing - but, for instance, I don't have any idea, even, whether anyone is messaging me via GMail. It seems like I could go to Google+ easily from here, too, though I don't have any clear idea to what end. The questions do go on an on.

The problem with comments is ... well, there's a fundamental problem, which can only be corrected in the interface, which is that messages aren't delivered to my front door. Instead they are delivered to some obscure locations which are actually not entirely easy to find. I made reference to this in yesterday's post titled E mail. But why aren't all our messages being delivered to one easy to find location? It might seem, on the face of it, that it is because of some difficulty in sharing access, on the part of message senders and message deliverers, to our in boxes, but that actually isn't the problem at all. The problem is, something needs to be done to prevent our front doors from being buried in piles of new messages. We might be able to limit who can send us messages, to prevent this from happening, but that's complicated by our desire not to miss out. Really, the complete solution is being able to process our in boxes effectively. We need to pick up the mail, every day, and bring it inside, and start the process of Integrating it into our Data Warehouses. Everyone uses the same words to describe the beginning of this process: we call it sorting the mail.

It's distinctly possible that I am not enjoying the benefits of having my mail all delivered to one in box and being able to immediately begin the process of sorting it, in a highly controlled way, because of my lack of insight into available technology. I know my comprehension of existing technology - my Yahoo mail, my Google account, my Facebook - is extremely superficial. And I benefit from continuing to work with these interfaces, gradually acquiring a little more facility for them. But it could also be said that, if, even with my very limited facility for these things, I am not able to access fundamental processes, it suggests that there is still opportunity in these aspects of the state of the Web, opportunity for development work. I cannot be the only person struggling this way.

So what's the way for us to move forward, Liz? Comments are really beautiful, really intuitive from here, but so totally public. Perhaps we could discretely, carefully, use them to work out some better protocols. I suspect Google+ might be a valuable resource. There's also Facebook. The goal, at any rate, would be to develop a more controlled space for collaboration on questions like these that I feel I am raising a snowstorm of. The goal would be to collaboratively assemble collections of documents - the minutes of on line meetings - and then to disseminate some of those collections through selected channels onto the Web. The goal is to become fellows at MIT Media Lab, and other such places, all or largely through teleportation, that is, through media. The goal is to do this at our leisure, however we please. I have a lot of time and energy for this kind of work. I will continue to blog away, now that I feel I've made a start. What do you think of all this?