I have an array of network visuality posts in the works the URLS are listed here in the interests of delivering something for you to bounce off;
Name: Fidg’t
URL: http://fidgt.com
Description: A rich though strictly ‘beta’ downloadable visualization interface capable of dynamically aggreagting user data from last.fm, flickr, and other tag based engines – very pretty.
Name: the buzz information collage
URL: www.gvu.gatech.edu/ii/buzz/
Description: A clunky downloadable interface that looks little more than an aggregator capable of putting aggregated feeds on a full page desktop – lack visual impact and is buggy. Need to have a closer look.
Name: Walk 2 Web
URL: http://walk2web.com/
Description: A link visualizer with bookmarking and active weighting based on a like/dislike interaction that allows you to stroll through the web.
Name: Chromogram/ HistoryFlow/ManyEyes/Book Voyager
URL: http://reserachweb.watson.ibm.com/visual/projects.html
Description: IBM’s research lab – I need to recheck these to see if the development block of last year have been cleared….
These examples are looking good Mat and I liked the comparison with the three different views in the Digg visualisation. I’m especially interested in what you have to say about Walk 2 Web as the relations of like/dislike interest me…because of course the whole problem with clusters, clouds etc as visual devices (even stacks) is the ‘bigger is better’ or the more popular the more views the more interaction etc…how then does one show the breakdown or decay of links over time?
I think like/dislike or some other simple dialogical and impulsive categorization is a good way to build usefully emergent topologies of information use. The problem of the ‘bigger is better’ is really indicative of a failure to account for this as an energetic and negentropic metaphor. Digg is the best possible example and the different ‘scales’ in these visualizations exemplify the dynamic that is constructed by the mediations of a focussed visuality that occurs on Diggs front page. There is a big point here that needs more work..but..if we think of this as a life-like system where energy is available for organization (not yet at entropy) and the emerging structures/negentropic centres/clusters are organized according to the intensive modulations of bodies according to that available energy then any *mediation* unbalances the negentropic stabilty across the system… In Diggs case this means that by creating a visual interface that exaggerates the ‘bigger is better’ in relation to the much greater and unseen complexity of the Digg ecology/network threatens or ‘artificially’ reinforces (and thus threatens) the ecological balance. In Diggs case the huge effect on hit rates for a successfully story making it to the front page injects more energy into the ecology (in terms of user activity) – so the focus provided by the front page magnifies the intensity with which those stories suck up energy as well….the effect is a feedback loop that effectively compromises the integrity of like/dislike topology. Of course in the long term this means that users start to play the game- and digg is a very good example again….this might play out as full scale revolt as was seen in last weeks HD DVD Hex code debacle or it might play out more subtley as users realizing that the labor/energy committed to submitting stories is only well spent if the submission is slanted to the Digg readership (tech for instance) – this obviously further erodes the negentropic/emergent potential of the Digg ecology.
The cure for this is to inject a degree of randomness into the interface. Last.fm achieves this well I think..The randomness is not a mediation but is an answer to the problem of the ‘frame’ or ‘scale’ in network visuality….It means that the ‘big’ is not always at the ‘front’ obfuscating my view of the ‘small’….the small might be given a presence – small nonetheless – but without a presence it is ‘no body at all’ (Massumi)…
Let me know if I make no sense and I will clarify.
All this is important for seeing beyond the dumb critique of collective intelligence v/ collective stupidity – all of which forgets the affective drive behind intelligence…..