Internet Essay Topics.

[swestrup]

I've been giving some serious thought to writing some essays on the state of technology, where we are, and where we should be trying to go. I figure if I can get 7 or 8 written that I think are publishable, I can approach some place like betterhumans or similar and see if they would be interested in me doing a column or something.

To that end, I've started collecting a bunch of topics together that I thought I could write some essays on. Today, it occurred to me that the whole topic that I had described as 'fixing the internet' is a) HUGE and b) should be written as a gentle intro to NWO ideology. So, here is just a dump of what I have now (very incomplete - I spent maybe 2 minutes writing this down). Its not particularly pretty as its just a topic identifier and some brief notes to jog my memory about what I wanted to say on the topic. OTOH, I figured that it wouldn't hurt to ask on my friends list about what THEIR biggest beefs with the internet were, and what they think should be fixed. What I have is:

First Class People, Nyms and ‘Hats’.

Be able to log in anywhere, have subservient (‘kids’) accounts. Have multiple hats per nym. Have multiple nyms per user. Have group nyms.

Replacing bookmarks w/ proper indexes.

Associative bookmarks, meta-information, attributes, multiple-categories.

Semantic vs Syntactic web

Presentation vs. Content. The confusion of subjects (Plasma TV vs Plasma Physics), re-interpretation of data as appropriate to the user (images vs. descriptions, tables vs charts, side-by-side vs overlays). Web Designers vs Content Writers.

The problem with URLs

Permanence vs Impermanence, quoting, fair use, copying, deep linking, bandwidth stealing, meta-information.

Web feedback

Let anyone scribble on a web page, suggest better web layouts or clarify facts. Handle data spamming and fanatics with agendas. Amazon’s book rating problems and how to fix.

Collaborative filtering and classification

Why advertising isn’t inherently evil, and how to make the spam problem go away.

What’s wrong with flash and similar technology?

Non-extensibility, Lock-in, non-portability, non-open

Holographic Storage and Distribution Systems

Distributed, Encrypted information. Might make DOS attacks less likely, WILL help against slashdotting (cache’s with the data could broadcast it to other caches, even if the main site is down). Permits permanent storage.

Protocols: IP, TCP, UDP and why we need QPP

Revitalizing Usenet

The idea of a global public forum isn’t a bad one, but it needs to be updated. We might also want a global public blog system nowadays.

So, any suggestions?

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

Ah, if we're discussing the core philosophies of NWO:

Type systems and security: why your programming language should defend your agenda and not just its own.

Higher level protocols: digital social contracts, not software layers.

Distribution, mutation and randomness: thinking about computation as having its own logic and its own physics; why side-effects exposed through interfaces are the heavyweight objects; and the multiple-worlds semantics of distribute computation and debugging.

And further to the problem of URLs: references as computational objects with compositional semantics and a communal ontology.

And a thing we need to think about: using 3D displays for more than lame glitz. 'Cos now is (to my surprise) when they happen.

[sps.livejournal.com]

Ah, low level things.

No, Virginia, you are not a competent book designer.

WTF is with the pixel as the fundamental unit of graphic design.

User interface semiotics and the need to communicate with people whose cognitive strategies and abilities are different from your own. [OMG. I consider semiotics to be a low-level issue in this thing. Argh.]

Taking the last 35 years of compiler, language and operating systems research and bloody using it for a change.

Why extensibility cannot be added on in version 2. In fact, common uniform extensibility strategies from bottom to top (I don't know if you've noticed this in particular, but my NWO proposals have only one kind of 'pointer', and it covers everything from compressed content encoding specifications to allowing drag and drop of alien constants into source code).

Representation independence and the moral and technical requirement of universal readability.

Systems that defend themselves against technical error and vendor malfeasance; communal implementation denouncements.

And prospects. The prospects for:
automatic cryptography
online economy
offline presentation collaboration
integrated omnipresent computation (in which your sopace probes and your sneakers, your car and your paint all speak the same language)
democratic infrastructure and distributed socialism

[swestrup]

In both of the posts you brought up some good issues, but I must admit that I have trouble imagining writing a short, focussed essay on some of them. Maybe I'll discuss this further with you offline.

[sps.livejournal.com]

The lifecycle of data.
The lifecycle of art.
The lifecycle of nyms.
Taking back cryptography from governments and criminals.
The art of the fait accompli.

Microsoft vs Linux as centralised incompetence vs distributed incompetence; the threat of incompetence as a quasideliberate strategy. (I've decided, BTW, that 'quasideliberateness' is my new mental hook for highly invested evolved behaviour. It provides the explanation of willful incompetence that I've been looking for.)