Media Futures, Part 2/5: ALGORITHM

An Algorithm is a set of instructions or procedures for solving a problem.

In the same way that computer scientists 50 years ago focused on the single problem of designing a general purpose computer, there is a similar focus in 2005 among leading Internet service architects:  creating a social media computer that leverages user generated content to automate the production of commercial content.  In so far as this represents the important problem that the best and brightest of us are looking to solve, then to an extent it is a race for the best algorithm. 

From PageRank to PeopleRank

Hovering over this endeavor is the shadow of the last great algorithm, namely Google search engine.  At its core, Google is PageRank (which nominally cites both one of its founders Larry Page and its subject of operation, Web pages):

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives;  it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important.”"

In this case, (1) the input for the algorithm is the population of web pages, (2) the instructions rank them in value based on their link structure, and (3) the output is the list of links that you see when you search for something.

Now transpose people for web pages, and you see how the race for the next great search algorithm has less to do with organizing static HTML content than with coordinating the constantly changing expressions of millions of distributed people.  For an interesting perspective, see my fellow entrepreneur Mark Pincus's riff on the PeopleWeb.  Many Internet businesses have tried to direct user behavior into certain architectures of participation.  Services such as Friendster, Orkut, and even Pincus's own Tribe, presume to address all of a person's social communication needs in one place.  All of these services, however, are now rapidly trying to reinvent themselves to stay relevant to a community that refuses to be intermediated by somebody else's system. 

The services that seem to do the best job at enabling users to communicate on their own terms are those that manage to find a middle ground between the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethos that is beginning to pervade the web and the need for structure to guide constructive interactions (ie the reason by Wikipedia succeeds and most other Wikis fail).  LinkedIn, with its two million profiles of professional affiliations, provides the tools for interesting social media production, even if the site itself limits one's imagination (open up the API please).  The reason behind the annoying digerati blogfest on folksonomies (myself included) stems from the simple but mildly heretical notion that users, given decent primary (meta)data, might actually be able to create their own systems that scale.  Clay Shirky (lighting designer for the Wooster Group, CTO of SiteSpecific, advisor to Flickr, current leading pundit for the digerati at shirky.com) captures the anxiety perfectly in his title to last week's panel at ETech:  "Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess".  The question is, then, whether a PeopleRank algorithm that uses community driven tags as its input, could do to About.com, Gawker Media, and Weblogs what Google did to Alta Vista, namely deliver a superior end-user experience that requires only incremental server bandwidth to scale. 

Comments

[mark pincus]

seth, check out tribe's open profile launching in april to see what we think will be a key enabler of the peopleweb. we'll let you integrate content from many sources and data types - blogs, rss feeds, amazon wish lists, photo albums. people's profiles will become portable as will be there various data stores. no more disonnected data silos. no more lock in.

[N.S..]

Amazing insights.

[James Riley]

Seth

All weekend I was meeting with a colleague working on a new music project online and I kept talking about “internet alchemy”. Jonas just told me about your blog today and I see your headline title.

I wanted to share with you details on my first art project (sculpture) which was all about alchemy on the “Vas Hermeticum” (sacred vessel). I had a wood-burning stove, ground the metal and painted the interior with swirling metallic automotive paints that didn’t rust. I fashioned a circular hole at the bottom to match the top opening (which was the instructions on how to build a sacred vessel from the original Egyptian text on the Vas Hermeticum by the Egyptian God Thoth. Using forton, a material similar to plaster but impermeable to water, I cast several students hands in the class. First I would paint their hands with bee’s wax, wait for the wax to try and pure liquid forton into the mold. I asked each person to consider different hand gestures for principles in relationships: love, forgiveness, empathy, etc. The castings, with fingerprints and all were then cast into an organic branch with each hand being like a leaf which rose from the bottom of the inside of the stove. They all were left hands except a pair of child’s hands at the top which opened above to top circular opening. In the child’s hands was a triangular shaped stone – the philosopher’s stone. The bottom opening had a plexiglass plate over it which allowed for the piece to be filled with water. A small tube was inserted which bubbled the water around the hands and a halogen light shone in from the bottom. This art piece was created in 1996 and was displayed during Voltaire’s 300th year anniversary celebration at the French Cultural Centre in Canada. Viewers climbed a ladder to look into the piece to see the hands “gifting” them with the stone.

One of the most interesting things about the whole process was this phrase which I have tried to honor through my days in business: “The truly adept alchemist purges all desire to want to turn the lead into gold, to turn the lead into gold.” The other salient fact I learned through my research was that alchemy was less about the transmutation of metals, and more about the meaning given behind transformation. Alchemy was popular at the time of the black plague and thatch-roofed cottages which often burned down killing many according to Religion and the Decline of Magic. Thus, people were looking for deeper meaning, and a “magical” way of releasing them from their situation.

Best
James Riley