What happens when you take dynamics from one medium and apply it to another? (And other random questions.)

Even before my McLuhan post a few days ago I had been thinking a lot about the idea of hacking a written medium: Essentially using it in different and news ways that it might not have been originally intended.

In the link to my recent Boards Magazine article I mentioned , “Also, I started the article with this, ‘If you don’t feel like reading this article here are the talking points.’ Which made me laugh, but also it was kind of my way to hack a printed article. (As a side note, I’ve been noticing that when I write I use a lot more parentheses than ever before, especially in print. I kind of think this is in place of hyperlinks.)” Essentially it was an attempt (not necessarily a good one) to apply the dynamics of one medium to another (just as I mentioned using parentheses a lot more lately, which seem like the closest thing writing has to a hyperlink).

Anyway, the comments to the McLuhan post made me think more about it (if you haven’t read them, I highly recommend it , as Adam , Charles and Barbara’s comments are all deserving of a post on their own). The first paragraph of Adam’s comment actually sent me reeling. (And on how many other sites do comments come in paragraphs? You guys are all so awesome.)

I’ve long maintained that communication online is ‘talking’ not writing. As you’ve explained, It’s the real-timeness coupled with multimedia-ness that makes it accoustic in nature. Some may think that typed words means writing, but if you were to have a conversation of tapped dots and dashes (morse), or gestured shapes and motions (sign language) you would summarize that experience as having just ‘talked’ to someone not ‘written’ to someone (though you have indeed just ‘written’ information onto a medium even if it were only air). The real-timeness, the wideness of bandwidth to stimulate multiple senses, that’s what makes it talking regardless of the tool being used.

Which got me thinking about what other ways I could mess around with the medium. For awhile I’ve been toying with the idea of doing email back and forth entries (of which I hope to have the first, I conversation with Johnny Vulkan, up soonish). In addition I’ve been thinking about questions and answers. But that seemed too straightforward, so I just thought I’d generally ask you all, what’s on your mind? What have you been thinking about? What should we talk about?

No idea if this will work. Also, if you’d like slightly more tough brief (as we learned from Brian Eno, limitations are helpful ), I’m going out to Montana in a few weeks to talk to a class about technology, media and the internet. What should I talk about? I figure I’ll go back through the archives to get a sense of what I’ve been thinking about, but I also thought it was worthwhile to open up the question.

So yeah, that’s about it. Not a ton of rhyme or reason here, so feel free to talk about whatever you’d like in the comments.

Matt almost perfectly sums up my relationship with Google reader : “Here’s what I’ve come to realize about myself: I fully accept that there’s not a particular link in that ridiculous heap that will change my life. It’s been a while since I worried about missing a single killer post or app or XKCD or whatever; if it’s valuable enough, it’ll find me, I got it.”

Later on he also wonders something I’ve been asking myself (and some reader folks) since I got started: “Google, I want you to give me a button labeled ‘Compress into diamonds.’ When I click that button, spin your little algorithmic wheels and turn my reader into a personalized Memeorandum. Show me the most linked-to items in the bunch, and show me which of my feeds are linking to them. And take it a step further. You’ve got all that trends data that reflects the items I’m reading. Underneath the hood might very well be data about the links I click on in those posts. Use that information about me to compress my unread items into diamonds I will find uniquely wonderful.”

Google Reader is already turning into an awesome personal search engine, why shouldn’t it also act as your personal memeorandum ? (And if it doesn’t, I’ve been thinking for a long time this is a really good idea for a startup.)

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This is brutal in a sort of hilarious way: IRS Topic 357: Tax Information for Parents of Kidnapped Children . Just in case you thought the IRS was heartless, the topic concludes, “This tax treatment will cease to apply as of your first tax year beginning after the calendar year in which either there is a determination that the child is dead or the child would have reached age 18, whichever occurs first.”

via Marginal Revolution

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