Search as research

by Richard Reeve on August 13, 2009

in @CCSeed

The Dream Weaver - 0884
Image by webzer via Flickr
One of the fascinating aspects of all the content that is pouring into the web in the form of the statusphere is the level of personal information people share about themselves. I imagine the question that will be asked for the next decade is simply how to make use of it? Certainly businesses will try to optimize sales through customer profiling, but academics, including sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists have at their disposal a goldmine of information flowing all around them.
For example, a search in friendfeed on dream quickly produced these five dream samples:
Michelle Senderhauf Last night, I had a dream that I was trying to call 911, but my iPhone kept auto-correcting it to 852.
karsen Had a dream last night my family was vacationing in England. It was fun, but my crap fake British accent got me a couple looks from locals.
Rebecca Boston Last night I had a dream that a new virus called “love flu” made peeps who had it fall madly in love w/ peeps who have swine flu. It was LOL
MouseWait Oh I had a dream that you me and keerthi went to disneyland and you kept referring to your boyfriend as “The Professor”
Michelle Branch Been having a recurring dream where we cross the bay bridge in our bus and it’s covered in water. We’re actually gonna cross it today, eeek!
From the standpoint of Jungian psychology, each dream nugget is fascinating.  It provides a glimpse into the conscious standpoint of the dreamer, often times acting as a compensatory message to the conscious standpoint.  But dreams also provide insights into broader collective issues.  In tribal times these would be considered the “big dreams” that would impact the decision making process of the group.
You’ll note that these samples bring up a wide range of themes with either anxiety and acceptance being the background issue of concern.  The relationship to technology that gets portrayed by the iPhone clearly has collective ramifications, as does the “love flu.”  And as technology creates new tribal realities throughout the world, my sense is that the unconscious will respond to the technology in ways we cannot yet anticipate.
It’s interesting to think that thousands of these nuggets are being shared daily from all around the world providing an unfolding narrative of the way the world is dreaming.  It’s as if a dream tapestry is being woven into the statusphere.  The question is who will effectively learn to read it?
Blog Widget by LinkWithin
  • It's an interesting shift I hadn't been thinking about. At the earlier part of our transition from paper to telephone to digital historians and such were all fearing the loss of diaries and surviving errata that would be useful to understanding (giving us various acts of congress for preserving political discourse at least.) Now the problem is the reverse. Rather than the random surviving packet of letters or diary the thoughts of millions to sift through. I wonder if the relationships between the thoughtwriters becomes more important with this environment. A lone cry in a digital wilderness may be interesting only to the extent it is RT on Twitter? Makes me feel the need to be more interesting.
  • ...So it's come down to \"you haven't lived to you've been RT'd.\".


    Awsome content is no garuntee of great numbers, but within any given

    niche, I think its essential. It's clear that I craft recognition

    about my \"personal brand\" (kind of hate that term) just as much by

    sharing items from my reader as I do posting on this blog. But

    interaction does not tend to flow from the shared items.



    As for making use of all the information, my sense is I need a crash

    course in Yahoo Pipes
  • ted
    Intersting post, thanks!

    I for one am somewhat ambivalent about too much sharing on the web -- I still enjoy the bubble of my semi-solitude within my house walls, surrounded by family. I'm somewhat agog by what the younger generation will share, and I'm amazed at the ramifications of that nearly perpetual overshare for the future. Will the pendulum eventually swing back? Perhaps, as it often seems to do, and may need to.

    As for the volume of information it's overwhelming. you tweeted a link from your reader the other day -- I found that almost charming: an RSS feed reader. Mine sits neglected, laid aside for twitter and facebook and who knows what else, and what's next. I'm finding myself somewhat awash in a sea of information induced ennui. I yearn for books and relish my time with the physical newspaper. I love the connections I've made via twitter and the friendships that have evolved, but I'm adrift, and trying to filter the signal from the noise.
  • I'll be digging into book text more than digital text this fall, and
    the one thing that pops right up to the surface for me is that it is

    more stable. So it has been writ...and the authors attain a sanction

    which the flood of real time status can not quite provide, or has yet

    to.



    As for being adrift...about ten months ago I had the insight that

    getting out into the middle of the stream and being pulled by the

    current was the point.
  • ted
    I recall that insight, and it's good to hear from time to time -- to be reminded that it's OK to be pulled along, to let it happen. To borrow a hockey metaphor, maybe I need lighten the grip on the stick a bit, don't grab it too tight.

    One of the things that I do love about the whole information world is the ability to tap into what I've taken to calling the universal mind. In terms of that sanction, that stability that you reference I find myself creating user groups of the first people whom I first started to follow on Twitter -- and with whom I first felt the potential connection and fun of this medium -- and focusing on their words and interacting with them more. I'm working to reengage in a smaller more intimate way, while still riding the rolling sea of the universal brain.

    So glad that I swung by Richard! Thank you!
  • Love the hockey stick analogy, never heard that one before. Yes, it's
    bit of knowing how to let the game come to you and to be a master of

    the flow. I'd also add that it takes and understyanding of the ebb

    and flow of attention. While it might be easy to generate attention

    posting a video of a squirrel opening a ketchup bottle, the question

    that's more important: what kind of attention matters?
  • ted
    and with that insightful comment you have brought focus! it's about attention -- I'm less concerned with attracting it. I'm more concerned with maintaining it and being focused myself in order to let the game come to me as you so aptly put it. Be ready for that nugget or kernel of information that can spark a dialogue or a meaningful interaction.
  • Crafting meaningful interactions, and here I'd add my two cents that
    these need to be about more than just the new tech and social media

    itself, is \"the\" challenge for all of us.



    It's why I try new things all the time, to see what might be more

    effective. It's funny, I had just become convinced that friendfeed

    was the best platform even though the current conversation there is

    tech-centric, and facebook bought them out. So again, it comes down to

    people interacting in the digital marketplace regardless of the

    platform, but here with sense being that of the Athenian agora...
  • ted
    Yes, agreed about having the conversation being more than about tech and social media. Love the idea of the agora, and months ago, in the dark of Jauary nights it was that idea, and its potential about which I was most excited.

    You and I had an exchange during the winter in which we talked about the social media world as the rebirth of the late-night-dorm-bull- sessions -- that are fairly absent in our current lives (at least in mine, these days!) -- so, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell on this, the over-hyped 40th anniversary of Woodstock "I've got to get back to the agora...." and start swapping ideas about "stuff."
  • Just came across this post and I think it speaks to what we are talking about... http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2009/05/13/699/
  • Just came across this post and I think it speaks to what we are talking about... http://www.borthwick.com/weblog/2009/05/13/699/
  • ted
    Just saw the link at the end of our string and am reading it now. I'm riffing on your post and this exchange in a post of my own. This is a fascinating piece. Thanks!
  • Great,
    I'll be over to check it out.
  • I thought about this the other day. I have been blogging my life experience in the past year..as an inspirational journey. I was writing & didn't know to who I was writing to. It was about finding my voice in the blogosphere and statusphere. That part has been great: my own self expression.

    Recently, I am sensing a deeper collective connection, as you say, a collective dream...as if all that writing in millions of blogs...with millions of aspirations & hearts desires...is weaving together this collective dream.. The blogging/status platform is providing a space to make that collective dream real...etching it in space...and hopefully mirrored back to many individuals. Hopefully we can absorb the best that is out there, and filter out anything that is less than a greater dream for humanity. I really believe our hearts have an intense yearning for this right now.
  • The collective compulsion and the way the Psyche has siezed onto this
    is in my mind something way beyond any one of us...but as in each

    generation, the artists and visionaries will eventually give us a

    vision of the wider implications...
  • Richard:

    This is such an interesting aspect of the *virtual reality* (oxymoronic, I know) that we are all a part of now...each one of us contibuting our thread (s) for the weaving into this enormous tapestry.

    That we can absorb and study instantaneously may be the very extinction we impose upon it.
  • If I follow, the instant search thing leading to potential extinction
    means it may threaten the spontaneity of our activity. My sense is currently many contribute rather blind to the public nature of our sharing. But over time I
    think it will modulate. Did you mean extinction in a different way?
  • The exticntion is the instantaneous release/share and concurrent absorption and because of the barrage and bombastic rate information is spewed, it is almost impossible to comb through endless virual archives because we are constantly being fed in an endless moment.

    I agree with Ted, I rather enjoy the feel/scent of an old book...
  • Hey Henie, It is absolutly impossible sift through it all aleady which
    makes the need to formulate effective searches even more important.
    If we "master" search, then we can become confident that the results
    returning to us are the story. If we do not master search, then the
    results returned to us become the story...
blog comments powered by Disqus