Geoffrey Bilder

I was relatively late in learning of the term “backchannel”. It describes a phenomena that I have been fumbling to explain to people as being *one* of several reasons for them to use instant messaging (IM) as a regular tool in the office.

Backchannel

I was recently asked by somebody to speculate about generalizable application features that might help researchers in their work. I responded to them directly, but thought it might be worth repeating part of my response here. Since the early 1990s I’ve wished that the OS (any OS) would support a “Paste &amp;

Paste &amp; Cite

I made several predictions in this interview, and it's interesting to see which ones played out.

I was invited to speak at an internal Wiley-Blackwell seminar. Before the seminar, they interviewed me for their
<em>
 Publishing News
</em>
. I can’t find a copy of the interview online anymore, so I have reproduced it below. I made several predictions in this interview, and it’s interesting to see which ones played out.

Your starter for ten

In Part I, I described two graphs that I think help explain much IT dysfunction.

Two graphs that explain most IT dysfunction (Part II)

About   Below is an adaptation of a paper on “AI” that I wrote for the Crossref board for our meeting in November 2023. A few board members encouraged me to post the update, but we never got around to it.  I don’t work for Crossref anymore, but I thought it would still be worth sharing this if only to go on the record about my views on AI and machine learning at the time. Looking it over in June 2024, I don’t think I’d change much.

On AI

Jon Udell and Ross Mayfield have are talking about the use of social software and trust-circles as tools to find relevant and authoritative content on the web. Sounds familiar. I’ve long thought trust circles (amongst other trust metrics) are key to addressing the “Internet Trust Anti-Pattern“.  It may sound incredibly un-hip and reactionary, but to hell with the wisdom of crowds.

Brain Subscription And Trust Circles

I was recently pondering the characteristics of so-called “cult fiction” and was trying to remember how it was that I learned about certain cult authors back before this thing called the Internet existed. How did I learn about Vonnegut, Pynchon, Roth? As I dredged through my memories I realized that I most probably ran across these authors whilst using an early analog social bookmarking system- the library checkout card.

Early Social Bookmarking

The “My Rating” feature on iTunes has always felt a little clumsy. First of all, I hardly ever listen to music on iTunes itself- I listen to most of my music on my iPod. Secondly, I don’t want to have to *do* anything convoluted or extra in order to register that I like or dislike a song.

User Behavior As A Music Rating Cue

The following, from Jorge Luis Borges, reminds me of some software projects I’ve seen…  “.. In that Empire, the Art of Cartography reached such Perfection that the map of one Province alone took up the whole of a City, and the map of the empire, the whole of a Province.

Jorge Luis Borges on Software Architecture

Inspired by reading about other people’s blogging weaknesses, I’ve decided to finally get this one off the back burner and post it. I’m pretty sure that this isn’t original, but I started thinking about this way back in 1996 (pre-social-bookmarking) and I’ve lost my pointer to whatever influenced it. Anybody who can set me straight- I’d appreciate it.  So here goes.

Two graphs that explain most IT dysfunction (Part I)

As of today (2024-12-02), it has been 1000 days since Crossref updated its [POSI](https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/) self-assessment. That translates to almost 2 years and 9 months.

COI   I was one of the co-authors of the original Principles of Open Schlarly Infrastructure. I also once worked for Crossref- during which time I wrote their first two POSI self-assesments. 1000 Days and counting   As of today (2024-12-02), it has been 1000 days since Crossref updated its POSI self-assessment. That translates to almost 2 years and 9 months. It’s not the worst of the POSI Posse in this respect.

1000 days since Crossref updated its POSI self-assesment

Will implementing a good information architecture destroy your Alexa rating? Mike Davidson has done a brief analysis of MySpace which basically shows that “Page Views” could be the new “Line Count” in stupid metrics.

The F-Word

In a Guardian article dated Saturday July 8 2006, Pico Iyer talks about how Google and other search engines have distorted the literary interview. He describes how interviewers prepare themselves by researching their subjects online and how search results tend to artificially highlight and emphasize interesting, but effectively trivial information about the interviewee.

Van Morrison, Crank and Google Scholar

Abulafia   Way back in 1990, when I worked at Brown University, I wrote a hypertext application for the Macintosh called “Abulafia.” (named after the computer in Umberto Eco’s book, Foucault’s Pendulum. Recently I found some old Zip disks onto which I archived my Brown work when I left the university in 1995. I asked a hardware magpie friend of mine if he had a way of reading old 100MB Zip cartridges and he did.

Abulafia

I am afraid that the Wikipedia is a classic case of what I’ve come to term “the internet trust anti-patttern”. It goes something like this: A communication/collaboration system is started by self-selecting core group of high-trust technologists (or specialists of some sort). Said system is touted as authority-less, non-hierarchical, etc. But this is not true (see 1). The general population starts using the system.

The Internet Trust Anti-Pattern

The other day I was talking to a former colleague and I was trying to explain how I have gradually switched to using an assortment of social content tools as my primary mechanism for finding relevant and authoritative information on the web. With these tools, I can subscribe to an assortment of RSS feeds produced by people who I trust and think of as authorities in their respective subjects.

I want to subscribe to your brain

Imagine pair programming with an eccentric software developer…  OK, good point—  I mean more eccentric than usual. …anyway— they have fantastic long-term memory, but terrible short-term memory. They are polite to the point of obsequiousness. They can type thousands of words per second and they like to make fifty unrelated code changes at once.

Louche Cannon