StigmergicWeb

Thomas Hawk, writer of the uber-great FlickrNation blog, puts it all in a nutshell - You’ve Got to Fight, For Your Right… to Take Photos of Your Own Kid at a Public Ice Skating Rink?

The sheer irony of a public skating rink disallowing photography in a public place while the push is on by governments of every level to cram cameras into every public place makes my bones ache. We are being asked to give up our rights to interact in public places based on a perceived threat that is undoubtedly far less than it is represented in the media. What’s next - we’ll need government approval to look and listen as we walk on a sidewalk?

OK - enough ranting. I’ll return back to my regular edu-geeking. Or maybe I’ll keep ranting. Yesterday, Stephen (announcing his official return from hiatus) said:

…we do not need great leaders. There will be no revolution, no rennaissance, until we change ourselves, until we ourselves become the embodiment of the caring and compassionate society we want to create. How hard that is! I return from my time away more aware than ever of how fallible, how ordinary, how human I am. Oh my yes, I have my apologies to give and my amends to make. Still, no matter how hard it is, we need to believe in ourselves, to believe we can make a difference, to believe we matter, to believe we can live freely. This, above all, must be our legacy.

Maybe what we need is a little more ranting, a little more critical dialogue, and a little less willingness to pass off the stuff we don’t like as someone else’s problem.

Here’s today’s daily synchronicity, initiated by reading D’Arcy Norman’s post on the preponderance of podcast directories:

So, now that the iTunes Podcast Directory is out, it seems like there are waaaay too many podcast directories out there (iPodder.org, Podcasting.com, Podcast.net, PodcastDirectory.com, PodcastAlley.com, Podcasting News Directory, iPodderX, Podcast411 Directory, and many, many, many more).

In my comment to his post, I noted that there is an advantage in having a multiplicity of podcast directories, which is that the increase in number of directories creates a possibility of the establishment of some sort of social network to act as a reference or recommendation system for podcasts.

Just moments ago, I came across Chris Anderson’s posting in The Long Tail, positing that there can be two kinds of filters in a media environment. (The Long Tail: “Pre-filters” vs. “Post-filters”). Pre-filters operate before things get to market, while post-filters operate after things are on the market. Blogs, playlists, and Google are all good examples of post-filters, and they can be contrasted with their pre-filter equivalents of editors, A & R departments, and Britannica.

The difference between these two kinds of filters has to do, in my understanding, with scarcity. If the commodity described in the filter or the filter itself is rare, it will be a pre-filter. Someone of special training provides the filtering for us - think of movie reviews done by film critics who have studied film studies and can explain the virtue of a film to us. In this case, both the film and the knowledge of the film critic represent scarcity. When movies are a common commodity, costing less than $10, and almost everyone has been able to watch many films multiple times, it makes know sense to appoint someone to describe the film to us - we are capable of doing so ourselves.

Our scarcest resource now, however, would be time. I might be physically capable of watching Groundhog Day a dozen times and arriving at conclusions about the Buddhist elements in the film (go look - they’re there), but I don’t have time to do so (too busy blogging, for one thing). Luckily for me, there are enough other people who have the time to do so. Likewise, there are enough other people who are spending lots of time listening to podcasts and creating podcast directories for me, and based on my trust relationship with these people, I will be able to compute a pretty good list of podcasts that I should like. So, in response, at long last, to D’Arcy’s query “Is the ipodder.org directory still relevant?”, I would say it is more relevant than ever. It is no longer, however, authoritative, but that is to be celebrated, not regretted.