March 27, 2009 at 22:07Society as a network
(Continuation of the reflections begun in the article Factors of the social realization of users ).
From an interview with Arkady Volozh, CEO and co-owner of Yandex:
“On the Internet, services that repeat the basic processes of life work well: searching for information, communication, social networks, advertising - all this exists in real life. Internet technology simply takes these processes to another level. Our strategy is to create what is in real life and can be enhanced by the Internet. ”
Here, “real life”, apparently, should be understood mainly as a traditional society, a social environment. Let's see what society itself can be in a projection onto the space of the Internet. By the way, why is the Internet called a network? Probably, by tradition - originally it was a network of wired computers. But this is the same as if by computer we mean only “hardware”. The Internet today is hard + soft, and soft, programming people, their activity. The Internet is a peculiar reflection of traditional society and we can see in this reflection that society itself is also a network. It includes not only people, the objects of this network are heterogeneous and connected by heterogeneous relationships. For example, a person can be a member of communities and organizations (relationship of ownership), inside organizations, be in a boss-subordinate relationship, while writing a book, planting a tree, having a baby and building a house - they will be connected by a causal relationship with this person. He also owns many things (property relation). These things themselves belong to classifications according to various other criteria, for example, a book refers to the subject, genre, national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is related by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition give birth to a child and build a house - they will be associated with a causal relationship with this person. He also owns many things (property relation). These things themselves belong to classifications according to various other criteria, for example, a book refers to the subject, genre, national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is related by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition give birth to a child and build a house - they will be associated with a causal relationship with this person. He also owns many things (property relation). These things themselves belong to classifications according to various other criteria, for example, a book refers to the subject, genre, national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is related by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is connected by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is connected by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definitionCount . It is suitable as a basis for modeling society as a resource medium and at the same time is simple enough to be implemented as part of a separate service in which users create content objects of various types and connect them with various types of connections.
In general, I have not heard that such a model was considered one of the ways to organize content. The main classification methods usually include hierarchical structures (trees, subfolders, etc.) and the facet classification method. In the subject of artificial intelligence, the varieties of the “objects + communications” model (semantic networks, frame systems) are considered a way of representing knowledge . In fact, the topic of ontologies in computer science also applies to this.. Perhaps the reason for not attributing these ideas to the methods of classifications lies in their orientation toward machine use, while people usually call classifications what is more oriented to people's perception. Or maybe the point is the mismatch of the concepts of ordering and classification - the second always implies the first, but the first is not always associated with the second. In any case, the network "objects + communications" is an organized environment and can be considered a way of ordering.
If the types of content objects and the types of relationships between them are such that they allow you to implement the main traditional types of Internet activity of users, then in parallel with this activity the content will be streamlined. Since links between objects carry certain information about these objects, these links are actually a kind of metadata. This approach can be called user-generated metacontent . Tags belong to another kind of metadata; a similar name was invented for them - people-powered metadata . There is a third, laconic definition - folksonomy . All of them reflect the meaning of the idea of "popular organization of content", but do not reflect the specifics of the methods of ordering.
The peculiarity of the “objects + connections” model is that the same object can belong simultaneously to different classifications, structures, sets. In the hierarchical (tree-like) way of classification, this is not, in the facet method, but for me this method is quite complicated and I still can’t imagine how it can be implemented in an Internet project that is understandable to everyone. Meanwhile, the mentioned feature is key from the point of view of solving the tasks formulated in my previous article Factors of the social implementation of users . Consider the points from it:
1. In the network "objects + communications" content objects are positioned approximately as in Wikipedia, i.e. belong to the common “ocean”, in which there is no “spot of universal temporary attention”, which all materials (authors) aspire to due to the rating. By the way, the idea of semantic Wikipedia with its typed linksalmost exactly reproduces the “objects + communications” model described here. As far as I understand, typing of created objects is absent as unnecessary, since all of them are assigned the only type “article for encyclopedia” by default. Actually, the wiki principle in Wikipedia is embodied by this very type, since it contains the positioning of the network encyclopedia as something created jointly and useful for everyone. However, if you allow more types of content objects, and also introduce a system of user voting, then this environment can be configured for other options for wiki-positioning or wiki-activities. In connection with the “common ocean”, I’ll also note a particular point related to commenting, since this is one of the most common types of activity on the Internet. The problem is, that in traditional services, comments do not have as many “rights” and opportunities as the commented author’s text, although they can be no less informative and interesting. In the network "objects + communications" all objects are equal; the positioning of the content, the context for it is determined by its author using the types of objects and relationships.
Paragraphs 2 and 3 are more technical, they relate not so much to the advantages of the “objects + communications” model (although this is a subject of separate consideration), but to ordered content in general. But in this case, the very fact of the existence of order in the network "objects + communications" is enough.
4. The combination of chaos and order - how to combine the unpredictable nature of discussions with the resulting ordered knowledge? From the point of view of the “objects + connections” model, discussions are a set of objects, roughly speaking, of a text type, connected by a variety of cause-effect relationships, we will call it conditionally “source-response”. But nothing prevents these same objects from having connections (belonging) to any other structures, including hierarchically tree-like ones. As the material is comprehended, these relationships can be established subsequently.
Dividing related topics and combining distant ones - in fact, this also creates additional classifications to existing ones, which provides the model in question.
High-quality transformations of content - they need “one place” (one service, although, by the way, it’s not so necessary - you can think of some over-service features) and simply ordered content. We already have this. But we can add that the detailed typification of content objects and their belonging to many hierarchies at the same time (systematization according to many different signs and criteria) actually means a high degree of understanding and elaboration of the material.
As predecessors of this approach, you can specify the offline project TheBrain, in which different types of objects can be connected by different types of relationships. The difference between the proposed approach is a) orientation to the Internet, b) ideology of the wiki, c) other types of connections more suitable for Internet activity. Other predecessors can be considered the ontologies mentioned above and created by people, but machine-oriented knowledge bases of expert systems; in this case, the differences are related to the orientation on a) the Internet, b) people, c) the representation of society, and not knowledge. The latter consideration is interesting in that it means a different understanding of the concept of the Semantic Web: the future of the Internet is associated with the identification of the potential of society as an organized resource environment in which the main role is played by the interaction of people and their meaningful activities, and the results of their activity (in particular, in the form of metadata) are used by machines. This corresponds to the idea of the dominance of the creative component over the routine; nevertheless, we should rather talk about the synergistic effect of the interaction of society and machines. In fact, the latter also belong to a common network, i.e. are one of the types of its objects and represent a "computing" resource. (Udt 04/06/2009This can also be expressed in the thesis that identifying and using the potential of people is easier than trying to teach machines how to do what people can do. The latter, of course, you need to try - it identifies and pushes the boundary of the capabilities of machines and the field of their effectiveness, but, apparently, there will always be an area where people are still more efficient. Understanding this determines effective development strategies for both the “human” field of the Internet and the machine and the interaction of these areas. )
As stated at the beginning of the article, startups essentially program the activity of people on the network. Perhaps, the proposed reflections can be attributed to the creation of a certain language or toolkit of this kind of programming, but now oriented not at start-ups, but at ordinary users of the network, who in such activity could find great opportunities for their own social realization. For example, if you create complex objects from simple objects that will also belong to a common network and have connections with both your internal and external elements, this will give users the opportunity to very detailed and accurate reflection of various aspects of reality. These last statements, however, are rather vague; they require further detailing of the material, which not all could be performed in this article due to the growth of its volume; it also needs further reflection and discussion.
From an interview with Arkady Volozh, CEO and co-owner of Yandex:
“On the Internet, services that repeat the basic processes of life work well: searching for information, communication, social networks, advertising - all this exists in real life. Internet technology simply takes these processes to another level. Our strategy is to create what is in real life and can be enhanced by the Internet. ”
Here, “real life”, apparently, should be understood mainly as a traditional society, a social environment. Let's see what society itself can be in a projection onto the space of the Internet. By the way, why is the Internet called a network? Probably, by tradition - originally it was a network of wired computers. But this is the same as if by computer we mean only “hardware”. The Internet today is hard + soft, and soft, programming people, their activity. The Internet is a peculiar reflection of traditional society and we can see in this reflection that society itself is also a network. It includes not only people, the objects of this network are heterogeneous and connected by heterogeneous relationships. For example, a person can be a member of communities and organizations (relationship of ownership), inside organizations, be in a boss-subordinate relationship, while writing a book, planting a tree, having a baby and building a house - they will be connected by a causal relationship with this person. He also owns many things (property relation). These things themselves belong to classifications according to various other criteria, for example, a book refers to the subject, genre, national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is related by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition give birth to a child and build a house - they will be associated with a causal relationship with this person. He also owns many things (property relation). These things themselves belong to classifications according to various other criteria, for example, a book refers to the subject, genre, national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is related by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition give birth to a child and build a house - they will be associated with a causal relationship with this person. He also owns many things (property relation). These things themselves belong to classifications according to various other criteria, for example, a book refers to the subject, genre, national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is related by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is connected by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definition national tradition, etc. (in other words, the object “book” is connected by the relation of belonging to the objects “theme”, “genre”, etc.). In turn, the "theme" is associated with many other topics, materials, books, authors and organizations. From these considerations we can see the model of the network “objects + communications”, which in its abstractness is simply a definitionCount . It is suitable as a basis for modeling society as a resource medium and at the same time is simple enough to be implemented as part of a separate service in which users create content objects of various types and connect them with various types of connections.
In general, I have not heard that such a model was considered one of the ways to organize content. The main classification methods usually include hierarchical structures (trees, subfolders, etc.) and the facet classification method. In the subject of artificial intelligence, the varieties of the “objects + communications” model (semantic networks, frame systems) are considered a way of representing knowledge . In fact, the topic of ontologies in computer science also applies to this.. Perhaps the reason for not attributing these ideas to the methods of classifications lies in their orientation toward machine use, while people usually call classifications what is more oriented to people's perception. Or maybe the point is the mismatch of the concepts of ordering and classification - the second always implies the first, but the first is not always associated with the second. In any case, the network "objects + communications" is an organized environment and can be considered a way of ordering.
If the types of content objects and the types of relationships between them are such that they allow you to implement the main traditional types of Internet activity of users, then in parallel with this activity the content will be streamlined. Since links between objects carry certain information about these objects, these links are actually a kind of metadata. This approach can be called user-generated metacontent . Tags belong to another kind of metadata; a similar name was invented for them - people-powered metadata . There is a third, laconic definition - folksonomy . All of them reflect the meaning of the idea of "popular organization of content", but do not reflect the specifics of the methods of ordering.
The peculiarity of the “objects + connections” model is that the same object can belong simultaneously to different classifications, structures, sets. In the hierarchical (tree-like) way of classification, this is not, in the facet method, but for me this method is quite complicated and I still can’t imagine how it can be implemented in an Internet project that is understandable to everyone. Meanwhile, the mentioned feature is key from the point of view of solving the tasks formulated in my previous article Factors of the social implementation of users . Consider the points from it:
1. In the network "objects + communications" content objects are positioned approximately as in Wikipedia, i.e. belong to the common “ocean”, in which there is no “spot of universal temporary attention”, which all materials (authors) aspire to due to the rating. By the way, the idea of semantic Wikipedia with its typed linksalmost exactly reproduces the “objects + communications” model described here. As far as I understand, typing of created objects is absent as unnecessary, since all of them are assigned the only type “article for encyclopedia” by default. Actually, the wiki principle in Wikipedia is embodied by this very type, since it contains the positioning of the network encyclopedia as something created jointly and useful for everyone. However, if you allow more types of content objects, and also introduce a system of user voting, then this environment can be configured for other options for wiki-positioning or wiki-activities. In connection with the “common ocean”, I’ll also note a particular point related to commenting, since this is one of the most common types of activity on the Internet. The problem is, that in traditional services, comments do not have as many “rights” and opportunities as the commented author’s text, although they can be no less informative and interesting. In the network "objects + communications" all objects are equal; the positioning of the content, the context for it is determined by its author using the types of objects and relationships.
Paragraphs 2 and 3 are more technical, they relate not so much to the advantages of the “objects + communications” model (although this is a subject of separate consideration), but to ordered content in general. But in this case, the very fact of the existence of order in the network "objects + communications" is enough.
4. The combination of chaos and order - how to combine the unpredictable nature of discussions with the resulting ordered knowledge? From the point of view of the “objects + connections” model, discussions are a set of objects, roughly speaking, of a text type, connected by a variety of cause-effect relationships, we will call it conditionally “source-response”. But nothing prevents these same objects from having connections (belonging) to any other structures, including hierarchically tree-like ones. As the material is comprehended, these relationships can be established subsequently.
Dividing related topics and combining distant ones - in fact, this also creates additional classifications to existing ones, which provides the model in question.
High-quality transformations of content - they need “one place” (one service, although, by the way, it’s not so necessary - you can think of some over-service features) and simply ordered content. We already have this. But we can add that the detailed typification of content objects and their belonging to many hierarchies at the same time (systematization according to many different signs and criteria) actually means a high degree of understanding and elaboration of the material.
As predecessors of this approach, you can specify the offline project TheBrain, in which different types of objects can be connected by different types of relationships. The difference between the proposed approach is a) orientation to the Internet, b) ideology of the wiki, c) other types of connections more suitable for Internet activity. Other predecessors can be considered the ontologies mentioned above and created by people, but machine-oriented knowledge bases of expert systems; in this case, the differences are related to the orientation on a) the Internet, b) people, c) the representation of society, and not knowledge. The latter consideration is interesting in that it means a different understanding of the concept of the Semantic Web: the future of the Internet is associated with the identification of the potential of society as an organized resource environment in which the main role is played by the interaction of people and their meaningful activities, and the results of their activity (in particular, in the form of metadata) are used by machines. This corresponds to the idea of the dominance of the creative component over the routine; nevertheless, we should rather talk about the synergistic effect of the interaction of society and machines. In fact, the latter also belong to a common network, i.e. are one of the types of its objects and represent a "computing" resource. (Udt 04/06/2009This can also be expressed in the thesis that identifying and using the potential of people is easier than trying to teach machines how to do what people can do. The latter, of course, you need to try - it identifies and pushes the boundary of the capabilities of machines and the field of their effectiveness, but, apparently, there will always be an area where people are still more efficient. Understanding this determines effective development strategies for both the “human” field of the Internet and the machine and the interaction of these areas. )
As stated at the beginning of the article, startups essentially program the activity of people on the network. Perhaps, the proposed reflections can be attributed to the creation of a certain language or toolkit of this kind of programming, but now oriented not at start-ups, but at ordinary users of the network, who in such activity could find great opportunities for their own social realization. For example, if you create complex objects from simple objects that will also belong to a common network and have connections with both your internal and external elements, this will give users the opportunity to very detailed and accurate reflection of various aspects of reality. These last statements, however, are rather vague; they require further detailing of the material, which not all could be performed in this article due to the growth of its volume; it also needs further reflection and discussion.