The Machine is Us/ing Us(Final version)
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Text is linear
Text is unlinear
Text is often said to be unlinear
Text is unlinear when written on paper
Digital text is different.
Digital text is more flexible.
Digital text is moveable.
Digital text is above all…
hyper
hypertext is above all…
hypertext can link
here
here
and here
anywhere virtually
virtually anywhere
Oct 17, 1996
Most early websites were written in HTML
HTML was designed to define the structure of a web document.
p is a structural element referring to “paragraph”
LI is also a structural element referring to “List Item”
As HTML expanded, more elements were added.
Including stylistic elements
like <b> for bold
and <i> for italics
Such elements defined how content would be formatted.
In other words, form and content became inseparable in HTML
Digital Text can do better.
Form and content can be separated.
RSS/XML
XML was designed to do just that.
<title>does not define the form
<title>does not define the form,It defines the content
Same with <link>
and <description>
and virtually all other elements in this document.
They describe the content, not the form.
So the data can be exported,
free of formatting constraints.
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Anthro Journals
With form separated from content,
users did not need to know complicated code to upload content to the web,
Create Blog
Your blog has been created!
There’s a blog born every half second
and it’s not just text…
Movies on YouTube
Photos on Flickr
XML facilitates automated data exchange
two sites can “mash” data together
flickr maps
Who will organize all of this data?
TAG
anthropology Web2.0
Who will organize all of this data?
We will.
You will.
XML + U & Me create a database-backed web
a database-backed web is different
the web is different
the web
we are the web
When we post and then tag pictures
we are teaching the Machine.
Each time we forge a link,
we teach it an idea.
Think of the 100 billion times per day humans click on a Web page
teaching the Machine
the Machine
the machine is us
the machine is using us
Digital text is no longer just linking information…
Hypertext is no longer just linking information…
The Web is linking people…
Web 2.0 is linking people…
…people sharing, trading, and collaborating…
…people sharing, trading, and collaborating…
…people sharing, trading, and collaborating…
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We’ll need to rethink a few things…
We’ll need to rethink copyright
We’ll need to rethink authorship
We’ll need to rethink identity
We’ll need to rethink ethics
We’ll need to rethink aesthetics
We’ll need to rethink rhetorics
We’ll need to rethink governance
We’ll need to rethink privacy
We’ll need to rethink commerce
We’ll need to rethink love
We’ll need to rethink family
We’ll need to rethink ourselves.
Michael Wesch Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Kansas State University