Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
David, this is sort of theoretical, but I'd be interested in your
response. It seems to me that at the moment we have this huge amount of
data being sifted both by humans and machines. I read on the Net today
that 90% of the data on the Web has been created in the last two
years. Yikes! Before we even get to the point of understanding and
knowledge and wisdom we have two very different processes going on in
the data sift. Humans and machines approach and process the bits
differently, and maybe that's a good thing -- different perspectives,
different assessments. I'm not thinking either we or the machines are
arriving at any singularity any time soon, if ever.

All that being said, what sorts of different knowledge networks might
evolve, and how might they best interface? How do we take these
differences into account? What's the near and far future for all of
this?
  

    
Ted, re: 76, you ask "What's the near and far future for all of
this?" I have decisive and clear answers to both parts of this
question: The near future will probably be pretty much what we
currently have, and I have no idea what the far future will be.

The easy part is why I have no idea. It's because the future exists to
make fools of us all. 

Right now, it looks like we're going to become more and more dependent
on machines to sift through the data for us, and to notice connections
that we can't see. Machines are likely to scale at this faster than we
can either as individuals (for sure!) or in various social formations.
Of course, you never know what will be invented, but that's how it
seems now. So, I assume that computers will come across more and more
-- not fewer and fewer -- weird correlations, like the fact that if
you're obese, your friends are more likely to become obese. And while a
site like Galaxy Zoo may enable humans to classify millions and
millions of galaxies as spiral or ovoid, I expect computers are going
to be far far better at noticing farflung anomalies in the data coming
in from radio telescopes and the like.

As for the best interface among the knowledge systems, we're seeing
strides in standardizing before the fact and in building systems that
can make sense of huge, messy, ad hoc piles of data. In between these
two poles, there's the Linked Data format that makes it much easier for
computers to make connections -- crosswalks are the new metadata --
without having to get everyone to agree to standard vocabularies, etc.
ahead of time.
  

    
In these kinds of systems leveraging big data and big computing power,
how can we best leverage the role of the human and the role of the
computer? It seems to me that sense-making requires both, and I find
myself wondering what systems and disciplines might evolve that we
couldn't have imagined before we had all this computing power, and a
network to connect all people and computers to each other. What new
roles are emerging that weren't there before?
  

    
Piggy backing on Jon's question, can you expand on the knowledge
economy and the changes taking place within human culture? The old days
were driven by individuals plying knowledge. Now it's all about
collaboration with other humans as well as machines. What kinds of
changes is that bringing about?
  

    
Jon (re: #78), we've already seen new competencies, and new value
arising from old competencies. We all know people who are unbelievably
good at pointing us to links. (Sometimes this is a brain function, as
with Peter Kaminski, to name one friend, and sometimes it's a brain +
computer function, as with Jerry Michalski (to name another friend) who
supplements his own massive brain with TheBrain.com to record his life
notes. For another example: designing ontologies is a new skill,
although not without precedents. Or, to take another random example,
someone like Dan Brickley has an astounding ability to design systems
that navigate gigantic clouds of linked data. Someone like Esther Dyson
combines technical, business, and cultural knowledge with a social
network that encompasses most of the tech world. You can ask questions
of Peter, Jerry, Dan and Esther that you couldn't reasonably have asked
of anyone before.

But, without taking a single thing away from these awesomely brilliant
people, in each of these cases, the role is enabled by the Net. We can
ask your question, Jon, about roles by flipping it and asking what new
services the Net is providing by enabling these roles.

So, to get to your question: "[W]hat systems and disciplines might
evolve that we couldn't have imagined...? What new roles...?" My answer
is: I don't know. I really don't know what's going to happen. No one
does.

"Yeah yeah," one might want to reply. "But your just being coy. Or
maybe a coward."

But I'm not being coy. The best I can do is point to some traditional
areas that are not currently well-supported. Would that help?

- Taxonomies, nomenclatures, classification. Having common ways to
refer to things is really helpful. We can make up for them to at least
some degree by cross-walking and mapping. It's always going to be
messy. The rise of unique IDs and namespaces is helping a great deal.

- Filters. We used to not worry about filters because all we could get
was the filtered product. Now we have to worry about them all the
time. But we also now _filter forward_ rather than filter out: When the
site TheBrowser.com puts together a front page with 10 items on it
from around the Web, all the other items that didn't make it onto the
front page are still fully available; TheBrowser.com has merely
shortened the number of links it takes to get to its ten. 

- Consensus. We used to think that we "all" agreed on some things. We
had authorities we "all" trusted. Now we have communities of belief.
Links and conversation can help us get past the fragmentation that
makes us stupid, but not past all fragmentation.

But we should keep in mind that we've lost these old formations to a
large degree because they don't scale, and because they presented
themselves to us under false pretenses: they were never as baked into
the world as they seemed.

It's _our_ knowledge now.
  

    
David, we want to thank you for joining us here at Inkwell.vue. This
has been an excellent conversation (archived for sharing at
http://bit.ly/2big2know).  The conversation officially ends today;
we're hoping you'll join us again! Thanks also to everyone who
contributed.

And we'll keep reading your posts at http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/!
  

    
Thank you! You Wellians ask wicked good questions!

Thanks for the insights, the challenges, and the fun.
  

    
Thank you! This was great and your book and work are valuable
resources.
  

    
Yes, thanks!
  

    
I hope you'll stay around to answer a few more questions. I'm still 
trying to think of a good one. Love the book -- and the other night when I 
had friends over, they pounced on it: "What is this about?" "This looks 
good!" etc etc, so I had to promise to lend it. 

Can you say more about that taxonomies category?