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Transcript of the speech. #]]> http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-stanford-commencement-speech-2005/feed/ 0 http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2011/10/01/on-twitter-and-writing/ http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2011/10/01/on-twitter-and-writing/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:37:50 +0000 bruno boutot http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/?p=359 @GreatDismal
William Gibson #

Twitter for me is a casual conversational form, largely offhand by nature. Unrehearsed speech as opposed to writing.

“Writing”, for me, is a fundamentally different activity. I strongly suspect it’s different neurologically, physiologically.

Writing formally is like improv all by yourself, in an empty room.

I can remember seeing the emergence of broadcast television, but I can’t tell what it did to us because I became that which watched broadcast television. #

[1981]
And somehow I knew that the notional space behind all the computer screens would be one single universe. #

In the cities, the past, the present and the future can all be totally adjacent. #

Cities look to me to be our most characteristic technology. We didn’t really get interesting as a species until we became able to do cities — that’s when it all go really diverse, because you can’t do cities without a substrate of other technologies. There is a mathematics to it — a city can’t get over a certain size unless you can grow, gather, and store a certain amount of food in the vicinity. Then you can’t get any bigger unless you understand how to do sewage. If you don’t have efficient sewage technology the city goes to a certain size and everybody gets cholera. #

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William Gibson – Photo Michael O’Shea/G.P. Putnam/Canadian Press

Lovely piece about how technologies don’t just replace one another. Search for 3rd occurrence of “Displacive Fallacy” http://bit.ly/cJSAlb #

In high-technology societies, like the United States, our enthusiasm for the new leads us to what I call the Displacive Fallacy. This is the belief that a new technology displaces the old, and drives it from the field as a conquering army disperses the enemy. Pundits not so long ago prophesied that the telephone would displace the mails, that radio would displace the telephone, that the phonograph would displace live orchestras, and of course, that television would substantially displace both radio and the book. In the library world only a few decades ago some microfilm enthusiasts were predicting that microforms would displace books. Now we hear similar predictions of how audiovisual aids, motion pictures, tape recordings, television, or the computer will displace the book-or perhaps human beings themselves. #

Despite some conspicuous exceptions, the general rule in history is that a new technology does not displace but rather transforms or finds new uses for an earlier technology. Printing did not make handwriting obsolete. The automobile has not displaced the bicycle. Television has not displaced the telephone or radio. #

The Displacive Fallacy, however, assumes that there are only a limited number of social functions and that the categories of experience are not expandable. Such a static view is quite uncongenial to my pragmatic, experimental, and somewhat American way of thinking. Experience is ever expanding. New inventions do not simply fill old needs, for the inventor himself concocts new needs. He actually invents new forms of experience. Nobody “needed” the telephone, radio, or television. They were not the product of widespread demand but actually added new dimensions to human experience and created new demands. #

This simple fact has momentous implications both for the historian and the librarian. For each new technology produces its own new kind of record and leaves its own special new residue. If the historian is to chronicle the full range of human experience he must find ways to use, and must find the meaning of using, them all. The librarian has a special responsibility to save us from the Displacive Fallacy. #

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Daniel J. Boorstin – photo: Wikimedia Commons

“these are the kinds of comments and the kind of fashion writing we would love to have.” #

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Cathy Horyn, photo by David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons

So we’re looking at the collections journalistically, and in a very timely way, and then everybody gets to talk about it right away. And that’s what matters to people. Last February in Milan, we had a really great discussion about Prada and postmodernism. She did those very round-shaped full skirts, and the girls looked very meaty. Marko came on with this really great post about how it reminded him of his grandmother or his mother or something, about how they dressed, and it was really well done. Then this other person came on talking about feminism and socialism and what it was before the Berlin Wall and after the wall, and it was really smart. I was like, I never thought about that. And maybe I wouldn’t have thought about it, not being European and not having that experience. She wrote it in such a nice, interesting way, and I thought that these are the kinds of comments and the kind of fashion writing we would love to have. The blog is great for that. That’s when all the very interesting and quirky and cranky people come on. #

…the best thing they could do is to enable and protect the voice of the public. They could curate, train, promote, and collaborate with new people using new tools in new ways, for example. They could establish platforms that make that possible and networks that help make it sustainable. They could see it as their role to support a lively, healthy ecosystem and all of its members, including not only the new kids but also the struggling legacy media (by that view, I’ve long argued that the BBC should make it its mission to use its powerful megaphone to promote and support the best of journalism and media in the UK, no matter who makes it; that is a public good). #

#]]> http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2010/09/09/xkcd-vox-populi/feed/ 0 http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2010/08/05/in-abundance-as-in-scarcity-news-is-about-trust/ http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2010/08/05/in-abundance-as-in-scarcity-news-is-about-trust/#comments Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:56:32 +0000 bruno boutot http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/?p=264 It’s strange how the abundance of news shares some territory with the scarcity of news. #

Paolo Bacigalupi’s description of “news that you can trust” in a dictatorship parallels what’s happening with news in social media: who do you trust? #

With a new mix of Kulaap’s music from DJ Dao streaming over my stereo, I sit down at my little kitchen table, pour my coffee from its press pot, and open my tablet. #

The tablet is wondrous creation. In Laos, the paper was still a paper, physical, static, and empty of anything except the official news. Real news in our New Divine Kingdom did not come from newspapers,or from television, or from handsets or ear buds. It did not come from the net or feeds unless you trusted your neighbor or look over your shoulder at an Internet cafe and if you knew that there were no secret police sitting beside you, or an owner who would be able to identify you when they came around asking about the person who used that workstation over to communicate with the outside world. #

Real news came from whispered rumor, rated according to the trust you accorded the whisperer. Were they family? Did they have long history with you? #

This flurry of activity seems to show that traditional news media begin to feel that the anonymous comments that most of them allow on their Web site are not enough for readers involvement, a sentiment well summed up by Jay Rosen: #

@mathewi I agree about persistent identity. I agree that hosts getting involved is key. And I think that anonymity has become a big problem. #

The discussion is so wide that I think it can be helpful to frame the topic a little more. Online communities have debated and experienced anonymity long before news media landed on the Web, so we have a vast pool of knowledge to tap from. #

As Steve Buttry points out, anonymity and identity are not an either/or question. At Worth1000, for example, the range of ages among members goes from 12 to 80, so anonymity is mandatory, but with an unique and persistent identity. A second identity is a banning offense. #

Whereas at MetaFilter, only registered members can post but the basic rule is simply “stable identity”: the degree of openness is chosen by each member. As examples from the front page, we can see that stringbean is anonymous; KokuRyu is half-anonymous (he doesn’t reveal his real name but links to his website); and brundlefly, without giving his name, offers links to his other pages on delicious, flickr, facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. (aggregated identity is the best kind). Furthermore, it is allowed to have two identities on condition that they never interact. Also anonymity can be granted on request to ask a question, but only on a case by case basis. #

The most significant lessons from MetaFilter and other communities are that

• there can be several degrees of identity, either decided by the site or by the member,
• and these different degrees can vary from one context to another, on the same site.

So the first helpful question is “What?” What do we want from our readers?
Jeff Jarvis has swiftly pointed a major hurdle: #

we *allow* people to comment on *our* work when it is *done.* insulting #

We are here and now in the river of news, not in a “journalists-write/readers-comment” universe anymore. #

So, I think that “What we want from readers” has a huge role in helping us decide what we do with anonymity and identity. And from Mathew’s and Steve’s posts, we can see that we might want different things from different people in different contexts: sources, topics, news, questions, answers, opinions, votes, pictures, etc. #

Which leads us the second question: Why? Why would we want readers to be anonymous? #

If this is about “protecting absolutely the anonymity of a source”, I am not sure that we are able to guarantee it. But every news media should provide a tutorial on how to use anonymizers. #

There is also the question of access: anonymity allows readers to post without having to go through the hassle of registration. I think that this is what Mathew Ingram means when he writes in his post:

I believe that one of the principles of running a media site is that you should open up interaction to as many people as possible. #

The second point is that I think that “opening up” is not the same as “publishing”. There is already a lot of noise in communities with registered members and we all know that anonymity breeds noise. Sure, there is the slashdot system, which is certainly one of the marvels of the Web: long time members rate comments from 1 to 5 and readers can choose what level they want to read from 1 (all) to 5 (top of the crop). #

But as much as I love the slashdot system for rating comments, I believe that a news media on the Web is not in the same business as slashdot. Here, we are entering the economic territory that is the topic of my work in mediamachina but, briefly: before asking “Why should we have anonymous contributors?”, we have to answer “Why do we want contributors at all?”. There are probably a lot of answers to that one. Clay Shirky would probably say: “Because they are there“. In The People Formerly Know as the Audience, Jay Rosen quotes Jeff Jarvis: #

“Give the people control of media, they will use it. The corollary: Don’t give the people control of media, and you will lose.” #

So we have a huge incentive to involve people in our processes: survival. We want to welcome our readers, we want to encourage participation, we want to reward contributions, we want to build trust. In a nutshell: because trust is the royal road to commerce. #

It means that we are in it for the long haul. I am not so sure that we should be interested in drive-by anonymous shooting. Sure, we need to help our readers and our journalists to learn how to collaborate. So anonymity can be granted at an entry level. But the long term objective of a vibrant community is to have trusted members with a persistent identity. This is probably not for all our present readers. We know the standard numbers in community participation: only 10% of our readers will participate and only 1% will become regular collaborators. Anonymous people are not part of these 10%. #

So, finally, comes “Who?” Who can be anonymous? #

- Sources who need to be protected: this is a tough one.
- Visitors at an entry level: in that case, anonymity must be seen as a first step and further steps should be provided, with incentives.
- People who prefer to have a persistent identity with an alias. The progressive solution of MetaFilter is a good blueprint.
- Anonymity can be granted in special cases one post at a time. #

BUT, but, but, before I (at last) end this post, I have absolutely, imperatively to say that moderators should not be anonymous. Hm. Maybe I didn’t express myself clearly enough: some readers can be anonymous sometimes but #

MODERATORS SHOULD NEVER BE ANONYMOUS! #

It isn’t. Moderators and admins are the most important members of a community. But they are “Members”. Moderators are people. Community is about people. Moderation is about being part of a community, about exchanging with other members, about helping, about explaining, about conversation. And, yes, occasionally about banning. Anonymous police forces have no place in a community. Please listen to cortex. #]]> http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2010/03/22/anonymity-and-identity-in-newsmedia/feed/ 8 http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2010/03/20/steve-buttry-is-building-a-new-newsmedia/ http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/2010/03/20/steve-buttry-is-building-a-new-newsmedia/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:42:38 +0000 bruno boutot http://modadmin.boutotcom.com/?p=184 Steve Buttry has begun to recruit his staff. He is the new Director of Community Engagement at Allbritton Communications, preparing the launch of a new Web site in the DC area, one of the most expected new project of newsmedia on the Web.
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Steve Buttry has just be named last month Editor of the year by Editor and Publisher.
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The simple text of the first 4 job descriptions illustrates perfectly the skills needed in a new newsmedia: #

Senior Community Host: #

Duties will include: #

leading community engagement in coverage of breaking news;

recruiting and managing relations with community bloggers;

moderating community conversation in live chats, discussion forums and site comments;

handling community-submitted content;

managing special community-engagement projects, such as events and contests;

coaching and mentoring other community managers.

We’re looking for an experienced digital journalist with involvement in community engagement avenues such as blogging, crowdsourcing and social media. #

[[I applaud here the use of  "community host", instead of "manager" or even "editor".  Buttry's choice of words shows his understanding of the issues and his innovative strategy. "Host" sends the clear message that community is first about welcoming and hospitality.]] #

You will be a part of a team of community managers who will undertake a variety of duties, including: #

recruiting and managing relations with community bloggers;

moderating community conversation in live chats, discussion forum and site comments;

handling community-submitted content;

managing special community-engagement projects, such as events and contests.

Journalism experience helpful but not required. Applicant must be involved in digital engagement avenues such as blogging and social media. Work may include evening, weekend and holiday duties. #

We want someone to lead our efforts to engage with the community through social media. While you will take the initiative in developing the duties of this position, some of them will be: #

managing social media outlets, such as Twitter feed(s), Facebook fan page(s), YouTube and Flickr channels;

monitoring and responding to social media references to our work;

aggregating social media content for linking to or posting on our site;

promoting our content and community-engagement opportunities using social media; using Twitter and other social media to crowdsource breaking news stories, supplementing staff coverage;

planning tweetups and other social-media-oriented community events.

We’re looking for an experienced digital journalist who uses social media extensively for personal and professional purposes. #

We want someone to lead our efforts to engage with our community through mobile devices. While you will take the initiative in developing the duties of this position, some of them will be: #

planning and executing mobile engagement projects;

managing and producing mobile-focused content;

working with tech staff to ensure quality of mobile site;

working with social media producer to plan and execute strategy for mobile-focused social media;

working with tech staff on mobile apps.

We’re looking for an experienced digital journalist who’s an avid user of mobile devices and has ideas for engaging the mobile audience. #