So, I read this book over the weekend.
The Playful World: How Technology Is Transforming Our Imagination
by Mark Pesce
Read more about this title... I did it mostly because I've always been a little curious about Pesce. And the subject was right up my alley. It has seemed to me a reasonable hypothesis that it should be possible to draw parallels between a generation's youthful play, and the cultural forms they later bring into being. Pesce's personal site, and his professional site for that matter, are both worth a look. And the book was interesting. Mostly, however, for reasons that I don't think Pesce would be particularly happy about. The book was published in 2000, just before anybody really noticed blogs, for instance, and well before the "social". I suspect he'd write a much different book today. That's always the risk I suppose. Given the accelerating rate of change, it's more of a risk than ever before. The future happens -- like -- tomorrow. Anyway, it was still worth the read. I found this quote particularly noteworthy. "Our children will know how to make sense of the playful world, an important lesson they will be happy to share with us, if we are willing. Reversing the flow of history, if only momentarily, we will need to learn how to speak the language of this new world, its customs and its truths. It might be humbling (after all, they are our children), but in that humility is a great opportunity: we could resist, to be shoved aside by history, or we could choose another path, listen to our children intently, and let them teach us their secrets, their new philosophies, and for this, grow into a new understanding of the world we have made for ourselves." We could. But will we? Earlier generations have had shorter leaps to make, and failed to even acknowledge the gap. Of course our situation is a little different. We will live longer, and have to work longer. As change accelerates, generational gaps widen. How old can you be and still make the leap?
I continue to like this book. But it is sort of like hearing your own voice. I think what I need is something to balance this out. Below is an example. "Suggestions included: - Give users access to raw content such as interviews as a means of providing greater transparency and accountability.
- Provide tools and become a platform for user-generated rather than firm-generated content.
- Redisign all content to be a conversation rather than a corporate monologue.
- Treat advertising as content too.
- Use new distribution forms, including peer-to-peer networks.
- Adapt content forms and schedules to user demands.
Actions speak louder than words, however, and few of these ideas have been championed." That's because it's easier said than done. Existing processes, and the mind sets that made them, don't just take a bow and pass quietly out the back door. Anyway, six weeks till show time. In early April we release an improved version of Tagspace (no limits on what can be tagged) an explicit recognition system, and new beta versions of forums and the Microsoft corporate blogging platform. Just betas -- minimum viable releases and all that. But they're all integrated, and eventually every one of them will include a publicly available API (REST api's btw). By the fall we expand the capabilities of those services and add a few new interesting things. Central to the plan is community control, community energy, community direction, community creativity -- we're just here to deliver the platform that lets people be successful in whatever way they choose. Our services are designed to offer the possibility of unanticipated outcomes. No doubt, it's the best thing I've ever been a part of at Microsoft. But then the corporate machine grinds on, and we've been re-orged. Time will tell whether this will be a good thing for us and the latest generation of web2.0 services from Microsoft.com, a bad thing, or no thing at all. As a generally optimistic guy, I'm living the good thing bet. After all, this whole social network thing has gone from fringe to center stage in the few years that I've been involved. Jeez, there's even a book called "Wikinomics". Surely, surely, the cards are stacked in our favor. They just have to be.
People have said this is why the do what they do. I'm one of them. In case this doesn't show, follow the link. I'm having some config issues... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
It seems to me that every page on the web is, or will soon be, a "community" page. Faster even than I expected, the social, participatory, read-write web, world is emerging. Put another way, every publication is an invitation to a conversation. And I believe that is a good thing. I suspect it's also a major "duh" for many, and of course there are countless examples of it in action on the web today. Still, the majority of the web remains read-only and I believe the vast majority of people still view it that way. Closer to home, my personal reckoning suggests that a majority of Microsoft properties remain largely read only. Forums, blogs, newsgroups, Soapbox and the MSDN wiki are obvious exceptions -- and there are others. Pages like this one, I suspect, constitute the majority of pages on Microsoft.com. But even there, way down at the bottom, is an opportunity to engage: 
Not exactly a conversation -- but it's a start. What would I like to see? Well, to start with, I might like to see a list of the user applied tags associated with the page. They would link me to related information other customers thought was appropriate. I like that for another reason -- user applied tags tell me other people have taken this path before me. User applied tags are a testimonial of sorts. They reduce feelings of risk. I'd also like to see a list of the people blogging about this product, and the top "n" forum posts (both questions and answers). Add a "talk-behind" wiki page to every static page, and I think I'm satisfied for now (though an option for real-time chat with either an MS employee, or interested member of the community would be a nice addition). And all of this is assuming, of course, appropriate RSS support. The theme is apparent, let people feel the presence of others. Is that the obvious, clear, and correct direction I think it is, or is there disagreement? Should we keep separate read-only content, and read-write conversation? Assuming the trend is towards the former, that raises another question. If on every page we do all we can to let people feel the presence of others, do those "others" include the product team responsible for developing the product? Or should they enter the dialog elsewhere?
Of what? Of the notion that weak tie community of the online sort does constitute enough connection between people to activate the social aspects of your brain. If you're interested in more detail about the "social" aspects of the brain,Social Intelligence is a good introduction. My anecdote is simple. I take some pride in the fact that I think I have a reasonably effective work/life balance. I'm sure approaches vary, but mine works for me. For the last several weeks, however, I've been out of balance. Work made more demands than a balanced schedule would allow. No big deal really. It happens. But when it happens, something has to give. What gave, in this case, was the time I'd ordinarily spend in my RSS reader keeping up with the contributors there and the world that continuously unfolds therein. And I missed it. I missed it very much. Tuesday night I plugged back in, for just an hour. I couldn't believe what I'd missed. Perhaps worse, the efforts I was expending at work would have been both higher quality and perhaps even streamlined, had I not unplugged -- lesson learned. (That and the difference between a presentation and briefing -- but that's another story.) Stranger for me was this feeling that I missed the people. This is odd because I don't know these people in any ordinary sense, and I'm confident they don't know me in any sense at all -- with just a few exceptions. Hmmm. I suppose we can't dismiss the possibility that I'm suffering some sort of breakdown. In any event, I haven't checked in on anything recently contributed by Dana Boyd, but she might know if anyone has ever applied any scientific rigor to understanding the degree to which online "social" activity engages your brain physiology and how/if it compares to it's in-the-flesh counterpart. There must be something.
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