what I want for christmas
Archive for November, 2005
metadata
At yesterday’s meeting we talked about image recognition, organization, browsing, and searching. New techniques often require the “seeding” of metadata by humans before recognition can take off on its own. This ties in with thoughts on tagging (mostly stimulated by our Tag-Guru Phillip): what happens when you get a lot of people tagging, how can this new metainformation can be used, what is “good” and “bad” tagging, and what does “bad” tagging do to the system? For example, what happens when I tag a photo of my laptop with “waffles”?
In some arenas tagging like this might be okay because I can personally filter content returned from a tag-based search. But what happens in the work world? Or what about reliance on other applications (I’m trying to avoid saying “agents”) for searching and even possibly decision making? Who will be the tag-police?
That term makes it sound nasty and controlling. Though I do think that we will see the emergence of tag “moderators” once the idea of tagging crosses over to non-personal and social domains. OK but really, these “moderators” have been around for a while. Think librarians, knowledge managers, etc. People who study and work at the classification, sorting, indexing, searching, retrieval of information. Only now they have to deal with an added variable: you and me and our ability to help with that classification.
Think of the library scenario. Imagine that you are able to personally tag books, articles, journals, magazines, etc. found in the library. Monitoring these tags would be a fulltime job. That brings me to what I was thinking when I started writing this…a new job market of people who monitor and balance the metadata or metainformation of the world’s content. Can you imagine that too? Does it already widely exist and I clued out on something?
nt
Every few hours I have these thoughts that almost become posts. But who will read it? Who will not read it? Those questions stop me so often. Lately I have nothing because it is all something that maybe I should keep from someone. It could be a passing feeling and I shouldn’t post it because it might mean more here than it does in my head. Or maybe it means a lot to me but will not receive the attention it deserves with these words. As a result, I feel as though the only things I can share right now are superficial, trivial things.
Like, for example, this question – “when was I conditioned to spread peanut butter on toast or bread before the jam or honey?” That seems to be the norm but who decided that? Tonight I put the jam on first, then the peanut butter and you know what…I think I like it more. I do remember an episode of Mr. Dressup I think it was, where he made a peanut butter and jam mixture in a large bowl. Both could then be spread at the same time.
Maybe it’s the early darkness that is getting me down. To retaliate, my body is shutting down by 6pm, I’m in bed by 8 and I wake up between 4 and 5. It feels weird, I feel out of the loop. It might also be the cold. My apartment is at its coldest between 5 and 7pm. My body starts to shut down accordingly. As I write this my attire says everything about this screwed up state I’m in, this feeling of darkness and chill that sticks with me into the next day. From bottom to top I am wearing green moccasins, red and black striped knee high socks, patterned pyjama bottoms, a red and pink and white striped shirt, a black hoodie, and my parka…yeah it’s cold. I hope that gives you an amusing mental image.
I don’t know what I would do if I actually knew many people in my neighborhood and they were the type with inclinations for surprise visits. No I don’t think I’ve ever had that sort of living arrangement. Home has always been very private, too private for my liking because it is lonely. Haha I remember one summer when an ex decided to “drive through town” and see me. It was already not the most invited “drop by” as I had not seen him since even before we ended things. That was done over the phone when I was living in Ottawa…I won’t go into the details but he came by and my younger brother answered the door. He knew that I would be very disturbed by this visitor and I recall trying to hide in the kitchen, which was quite useless given the very open layout of our home in Regina, while we negotiated the “why is he here?” “what should I do?” “I don’t understand” “you have to do something”. What made this surprise visit even more awkward was my state…I was not showered, wearing only a full body longjohn suit and making chocolates on a Friday morning in August.
Hmmm…me thinks that I am rambling. I’ll think about this tomorrow and wish I would have not written it but it’s cheap to delete. Lately I’ve been asking myself “why am I posting?? what is the point and am I benefiting anyone besides myself?” My hopes are that some answers will make themselves known through the posts given some time.
nt
Oooo I am very excited with how the site looks now…it is just more “alive” so I feel like posting more. I should be careful though because I have the potential to complain a lot today. So instead let me introduce you to some new things…
Say hello to some links on the bottom righthand side. There you will find some friends with relatively public blogs, a link to my flickr page and a new one, my CiteULike page. Phillip starting raving about CiteULike a long time ago but I couldn’t be bothered then. Now that I am back knee-deep in lit review it is proving to be rather useful. To make it not all about my thesis I am also using it to keep track of books I have read, am reading, or will read for pleasure. Great little tool!
renovations
I am screwing around with the look of this site because I was getting bored with it. Visually that is. Please let me know how the new stuff works in your browser (or doesn’t work). Also let me know if the colours or backgrounds offend you / hurt your eyes.
