network-interfacing

Feb 19

Take a moment to review the proposed features you’ve put together and consider the readings of this semester so far.

For those of you who have used are.na take a moment to reflect on the site, its interface, community, and content.

Put together a question or two (or three) that you might have in preparation for today’s conversation.

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~ inspo ~

• delicious bookmarking (first site to make/use/coin “tags”)
• https://pinboard.in/recent
• basecamp
• github

anti-algorithm (catered browsing, decreasing friction) usefulness vs frictionless to make easier vs to allow you to do something you couldn’t do before

what is are.na made of?

• block (content), connection (*), channel (a metaphorical folder, a tag with permissions)
  • • position, connectable id, connectable type, channel id

• core rule: content can exist in a variety of contexts

• interface as a wrapper of a datastructure (are.na: graph database)

• can you use are.na incorrectly? (what lends itself to some people using it and others not)
• usage vs experience (get your friends to use it (actually))

“emergent behaviour” from some sort of baseline structure - does the database format lend itself to emergence? - does the nomenclature (channel, block, connection) lend itself to a particular use? :naming has a lot of power to produce abstractions, interpretations, etc - are.na: clumsiness as novice or part of the design?

taxonomy: folksonomy: if everyone shares a tag, its meaning gets over-interpreted?

• viewing access vs user
  • even the act of making those accessible suddenly opens channels up to much wider behaviours and networks (search engines, levels of public-ness)
• “neutral”: making things look the same
  • how can we make the content overpower the branding
  • moderation and the balance between receding and regulation
    • “community garden”: one step ahead of any bad actor
    • its a little bit hard to use, so maybe a little bit more difficult to spam
    • a reflection of the team working on it (intro vs extrovert)
• day-to-day:
  • funding strategy
  • launching of groups
    • what are the advantages of creating and using are.na groups (or even initially using single-player mode)
  • are.na brain, what does a class’ brain look like?
• clunky vs seamless