Social Network Testing & The Semantic We

This place is getting more like Gattaca every day. I was doing some thinking in the car this week - I've been in the car a lot this week - about

FOAF profiles and the whole Six Degrees of Separation thing, and I wondered if in the not too distant future, we might be supplementing our resumes and c.v.'s with social profiles giving details of the layers and the strengths of our social and professional network connections, affording would-be employers the chance to overlay and match our network profiles against their model candidate network profile like a relationship or social form of psychometric testing. (I wonder what having RageBoy in your social network would throw up in such a test?...)

Social Networking, a discreet pastime in itself for some, surely must be more complex than simply being about collecting basic vanilla connections and relationships. From casually flitting about networking sites the other day, I found comments from professional social networkers such as "My mission is to meet 1,500 people this year, last year I only met 1,200" and this seems like a very clinical approach where the only important measure is the number of people you add to your network and not what you add to it. For some it's evidently just a numbers game, but surely it must be less linear than this?

Google uses their PageRank method to sort and order links so that the more hyperlinks that point to a specific site, the higher the rank value of that site and the closer to the top it floats in Google's search indexes.

Put this into the context of social networking and FOAF, and I suspect that before long we'll be ranking individuals and their connections in this way too, by calculating their social value in terms of the number of people they 'know' and weighting their links accordingly or, more interestingly, by attibuting a value to the life contribution they make in other ways, e.g. applying a value multiplier if you've written a book or a software program or some other kind of social contribution or identifier like race, linguistic skills, parenting skills or information that may be put to more sinister uses; your biological make-up or your genetic profile.

On that last point, I suppose that if we're completely serious about our social networking - pure social networking - then there's no point in having someone in your social network who's going to die young from heart disease through lack of exercise or smoking habit, after all what use would they be to us in the long run?

Increasingly I get a sense that the early murmurs and machinations of the Semantic Web are creeping progressively over our world and infesting it like some form of nano-technology-esque meta sludge, gradually and imperceptibly pushing us to revaluate and logically re-organise every aspect of our lives in preparation for the day when we are entirely depicted and rendered in a database somewhere or indeed, everywhere on the Web.

Friendster

This is actually troubling me a little. Friend is such an old word to descibe part of what the Friendster network hosts. In one aspect I think that it's perhaps all a matter of degree.

For example I don't know David Weinberger, in fact we've never met nor have we spoken on the telephone, but compared with 6.999 billion other people on the planet, I do know him better than a complete stranger. We've occasionally exchanged emails over the last three or so years on various topics and he considered me friendsome enough to send me a pre-release copy of his book SPLJ last year for which I was very grateful.

From our Web based relationship I have discovered that I can appreciate and I am interested in what he has to say about the frontiers of the Web. I think he's funny. He seems like a decent chap. But is he a friend in the conventional sense? No. Is he a complete stranger? No. From what I know of him I'm sure, or at least I'd like to think, that we'd stand a good chance of becoming friends given some major geographical realignment.

It seems that there's this relationship middle-ground on the Web just north of 'I know of him' and just south of 'I know him' and certainly several miles away from at least one conventional, physical definition of the word Friend. My blogroll is entitled 'equaintances', a cute way of describing this quirk of knowing people without really knowing them. But it's deeper than that.

Perhaps this is the future of friendship and relationships, perhaps in twenty years it'll be possible to be married to someone you've never met, with cyber families comprised entirely of advanced, highly evolved decendents of the Tamagotchi.

Conference Blogging Blogging

OK, tonight I'm having you guys round to my place so we can blog the DigitalID World conference blogging.

AKMA, David Weinberger, Chris Locke, Denise Howell, Frank Paynter and Doc Searls among many others are blogging the conference in Boulder as we speak.

I suspect, like me, you might feel majorly left out so the next best thing is to have a communal blog about their blogging. I have a thin-pipe 56k WiFi network locked, loaded and good to go, there's some beer in the fridge, porridge a plenty and there's some good stuff on the telly tonight just in case the conference blogging reports slow down. My place around 7pm GMT. Bring your own bottle.

Real-Time Conference Blogging Real-Time Blog

7:04pm - OK, there's this guy sitting in a navy blue Volvo estate outside my house and I think he's trying to get onto the network.

7:09pm - The Volvo guy is still there.

7:11pm - Me and the Volvo guy look on as Frank Paynter just blogged this

Recession drives creativity... Martha Rogers was named by Business 2.0 as one of the nineteen most important business Gurus of all time in October of 2001. Chris Locke is in the top 50 business thinkers list. Martha Rogers is kind of a... dare I say it? Hell, she's a babe. [Sandhill Trek - On The Road]

7.19pm - One of my neighbours has asked the Volvo guy to move on before he calls the police. Bummer, bet they don't have that problem in Boulder. Doc Searls just blogged some more about Martha Rogers presentation:

Martha Rogers: Relationships are two way. Quotage:When I hear somebody say 'we're establishing a relationshi between our brand and our customers... I don't think so. Brands are untouchable icons.Relationshps are all different, iterative, have ongoing benefits, have a context that changes over time, and generate trust.What experience should I expect if I'm a customer?random acts of kindness by customer-friendly are not the same as customer centricity. The key interact, remember, respond.Every 20 years, the cost of processing a single bit of information declines by a factor of 1000.The more effort the customer invests, the greater their stake in making the relationshp works. Going to a competitor is reinventing the relationship.In the 20th century, competitve advantage came from product and brand. In the 21st it comes from information.Focusing on relationship equity will refocus the businesss on people.I'm with her on all this, but I hate the term "equity" here. Like "human capital," it cheapens itself. What makes relationships valueable is their pricelessness.More quotage:Reciprocity: do for customers what you want them to do for you. For example, full disclosure, when it's possible, provides immunity.She just asked how many people in the audience own a TiVo. Not that many hands went up. At Digital Hollywood, nearly all the hands went up.88% of ads in TiVo households don't get watched.The goal of a market economy itslelf is to facilitate signals from customers to supliers... The problem is that moving that signal up the chain is like the game of "telephone." [The Doc Searls Weblog]

7.28pm - The Volvo guy has finally gone. It's just me here alone blogging this momentous event.

7.31pm - The Volvo guy is back but can't get logged back onto the WiFi network for some reason. I'll go out and speak with him. Meanwhile, AKMA just blogged this on Martha:

Martha Rogers?s presentation was generally quite convincing; she invited us to think about the issues involved in digitial ID, privacy,... [AKMA's Random Thoughts]

7.37pm - A teenage kid from around the corner is trying to hack into my WiFi LAN. He's sending me messages challenging me to a game of Quake 3.

Digital Right Management: David Weinberger is moderating a panel on digital rights management. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

7.39pm - Volvo guy, if you are reading this how many sugars to you take in your coffee? Just hold up your fingers through the window.

7.40pm - The conference reports seemed have slowed down, they must be having lunch or something. I wonder what's on the menu? Smoked salmon perhaps.

What we're currently looking at.

7.43pm - They're back, that was a quick lunch, (actually perhaps it was just a coffee break, I wonder if we'll notice the effects of caffeine in their blogging? Frank Paynter just blogged this:

Digital Rights Management Panel 
Brad the Microsoft guy, Ken the Internet2 guy, Bala the privacy management guy, Denise the litigator. David Weinberg - moderator.Denise: DRM is a system of technological protection measures that are used to control access to digital material. Pay for use model. [Sandhill Trek - On The Road]

7.47pm - I'm over at Doc's looking at some photos he took of the conference delegates having lunch.

7.50pm - I'm feeling sorry for Volvo guy so I print off a screen dump of Doc's blog so he can look at the photos too, I'm holding them up against the bedroom window....the Volvo guy just smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

7.53pm - AMKA just blogged this:

David's Right, Mainly 
David Weinberger is chairing the DRM panel, which includes Brad, the Microsoft guy; Ken, the open-source Internet2 guy; Bala, the... [AKMA's Random Thoughts]

8.03pm - The conference blog hasn't changed for over 10 minutes.

8.07pm - Nope, not a dickie bird. A watched blog never posts I guess. Volvo guy has just started his engine, it's getting cold outside.

8.46pm - Nothing blogged at the conference for nearly an hour. What are they doing? Volvo guy left about 15 minutes ago.

8.51pm - Hah! Life at last, but Doc sounds like he's not enjoying himself, says he's bored. He should try sitting staring at a static webpage for an hour ffs:

No wonder it blows. David Weinberger's DRM panel is up. Denise is on it, so she can't blog it (at least not now). Eliott Noss is sitting next to me. He just told me he's seen ten panels just like this one. Me too. I'm tuning it out. Hate to say it. My ears go on when I hear David's or Denise's voices, but otherwise I'm elsewhere.Woop! Brad Brunnel, the Microsoft guy, just said something about "You, the consumer..." Ack. Thought: the whole DRM conversation is about prophylaxis. It's putting a condom on the consumer. Not pretty. [The Doc Searls Weblog]

7.55pm - Hey the Volvo guy just got back, looks like he's been to McD's, I can see him with a large drinks container. Yes, he's drinking out of it with a straw, he must have been hungry. Shame he missed Doc's post there.

8.59pm - Just received some spam from someone called FarmGirl, entitled "You know you need it". Deleted without opening.

9.01pm - Steve Himmer is doing coverage of my conference coverage coverage.

9.03pm - AKMA & Doc a few minutes ago. I seriously think that if they read this right now and then read Steve Himmer's coverage that the world would just explode instantaneously. It would indeed be very cool if they blogged this at the conference, but I'd rather die an old man thanks very much. How about you Steve?

9.07pm - WOW! AKMA just blogged me blogging his blogging - I can't believe we're not all space dust. How can this be?

Makes You Think 
One of the remarks that Craig Bundie made in his talk this morning was something to the effect that ???computers aren???t the problem; connectivity makes computers a problem.??? Did you get that, Gary? [AKMA's Random Thoughts]

9.07pm - Wait a minute, all my clocks have frozen at 9.07pm.

9.49pm - Wha, where am I? What? Wow, so that's what a wormhole looks like. Anyway, Denise Howell just blogged War & Peace while I was orbiting Pluto: Saturn's rings looked really nice tonight.

Chat With Nat 
Nathan Torkington with O'Reilly blogged our DRM panel and will have an MP3 of it available at that link this afternoon. I had the greatest chance meeting with Nat before the panel. It went like this. He and I were clustered with our laptops by the registration table, plugging in to the powerstrips there. My purpose at the time was to jump on to iChat and hook up with Kevin Marks, stranded back in California. Kevin was going to walk me through using Quicktime Broadcaster to send him the audio of the panel. We figured out that wouldn't work because of NAT issues with the IP address assigned by the WiFi (I'm merely pretending to know what that might mean). Though the WiFi NAT was less than cooperative, the Nat next to me was just the opposite. While I was iChatting away with Kevin, I was real world chatting with Nat, who when he learned the predicament offered to make an MP3 of the panel and email Kevin. Perfect! Okay, but not all. Logged off iChat, checked email. Kevin had sent me the video from the O'Reilly OS X conference, of Dan Gillmor and others discussing DRM. (Kevin has been absolutely great at keeping me up to speed on the latest permutations and commentary in this area.) By this time, Nat and I were past the "who are you with?" part, so I told him, Hey, Kevin sent me this O'Reilly conference DRM video. And Nat said, Hey, I took that O'Reilly conference DRM video! We proceeded to impress the hell out of ourselves by transferring the video and our contact information from computer to computer over the WiFi via iChat and Rendezvous.The panel talk itself went well I think, particularly David's organization and focus, but I'm admittedly biased. We had too little time and too much to try to cover. I'll try to blog my notes and sources soon. [Bag and Baggage]

10.10pm - Well that's it for Europe's coverage of the conference coverage. It's been a good night, patchy at times but altogether worthwhile. Plus I made a new friend in Volvo Guy. night all.

11.13pm - Whoa, this coverage of the conference coverage finally made it onto the conference coverage and I'm now blogging this right...now....as I type. It's like that scene in Spaceballs the movie when they play the video tape of Spaceballs the movie to work out what happens next by fast forwarding the tape. Is it a bad thing when blood starts to come out of your ears?......:

Welcome to the real world, Neo 
Gary Turner: 7.37pm - A teenage kid from around the corner is trying to hack into my WiFi LAN. He's sending me messages challenging me to a game of Quake 3. [The Doc Searls Weblog]

Ngghhh!

DARK HELMET: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
COL. SANDERS: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
DARK HELMET: What happened to then?
COL. SANDERS: We passed then.
DARK HELMET: When?
COL. SANDERS: Just now. We're at now, now.
DARK HELMET: Go back to then.
COL. SANDERS: When?
DARK HELMET: Now!
COL. SANDERS: Now?
DARK HELMET: Now!
COL. SANDERS: I can't.
DARK HELMET: Why?
COL. SANDERS: We missed it.
DARK HELMET: When?
COL. SANDERS: Just now.
DARK HELMET: When will then be now?
COL. SANDERS: Soon.