One of the more controversial predictions in my first book, Interface Culture, was that as software interfaces became increasingly cultural in nature -- closer to rock albums or novels -- interface avant-gardes would begin to form, tools for viewing information that were deliberately opposed to "mainstream" approaches, that challenged their users instead of talking down to them, sometimes to the point of being difficult just for the sake of it. (Like, say, giving your site a URL that was almost impossible to type properly.) I should have added the inevitable next stage in this process: the mixed feelings of regret, envy, and excitement among their followers when they sell out to the Man.
The Basics
- I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of seven books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej at earthlink dot net. Media requests should go to Matthew.Venzon at us.penguingroup dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)
My Books
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!
> I should have added the inevitable next stage
> in this process: the mixed feelings of
> regret, envy, and excitement among their
> followers when they sell out to the Man.
regret, envy, excitement...and maybe even panic. Imagine if Google sold its GMail product to another firm. I, for one, would be more than slightly nervous that I would lose access to the content of my email. But such mergers and acquisitions are to be expected. That is why the notion of "open and accessible content" is so powerful. This is what lets users effectively take their content with them. Downloading one's address book information into a CSV file is an example of this freedom.
I understand that this facet of application adoption is not that to which Interface Culture highlights in its identification of "avant-garde" data viewers. There is a relationship, however, between such views and open data standards: Open data standards engender the creation of different views of the same data. For Delicious, the primary data are the bookmarks, the corresponding user tags, and the relationships among the tags. Custom views include any of several Firefox plugins, and portlet-like Delicious webpage modules. A much more obvious custom view is that which is provided by any browser that is able to import a user's exported Delicious bookmarks. This last view is awesome in that Delicious provides the ability to perform this export. And this brings this (flailing) argument full circle by illustrating the worth of open data.
What is also illustrates is that the worth of Delicious is the service that it provides, and not the data that it stores. It's annoying that Yahoo!'s acquisition introduces much uncertainty into the future of this service. On the bright side, at least users can grab their data and start anew by building another custom view.
Posted by: Faiser | December 10, 2005 at 11:38 AM