Slashdot Mirror
Tim Berners-Lee: Stop Foaming At the Mouth, Twitter
nk497 writes "Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web, has challenged users to improve social networks. He describes Twitter users as 'foaming at the mouth' and unwilling to retweet any update that wasn't offering an extreme opinion. 'How do you design a form of Twitter, how do you change the retweet system, so that Twitter will end up gathering a body of reasoned debate?' he asked. He noted that Facebook-style networks kept users within their existing friend groups, and didn't 'stretch' them to meet new people. Berners-Lee asked how can we 'make use of the web so it connects people together and breaks down barriers more than it builds them up.' Any ideas?"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In my opinion, Facebook lost a lot of appeal when it opted to become network-transparent as opposed to a way to meet people who shared similar interests at your university / hometown. The selling point of Facebook over say, Myspace, was that Facebook was geared towards meeting new people at your school (and later in your city) who had similar interests. I met some of my best friends from the university through finding people with shared interests on Facebook six years ago. With my natural introversion, who knows if we would have ever met otherwise. That has been lost as Facebook expanded...now you will find people with similar interests ALL OVER THE WORLD and since there's virtually no chance that you'll ever meet any of these people, there's no reason to reach out to them. Thus it has become a tool for connecting to your own already existing friends-network as opposed to expanding it.
Even the movie pointed it out: the selling point over Friendster/Myspace was that it was based around your local network. That was thrown out the door a long time ago.
The World is Yours.
Isn't nearly as easy to do as it is to say. The human race has sought out barriers to erect for as long as humans have been around. Even when people can't see one another physically, they will still seek out people with similar ideas and personality characteristics. You can force them into a large group of vary dissimilar people and in the end you'll find that group will still tend to segregate on some metric you didn't consider before.
I'm not endorsing that kind of action, but it is how we behave as a species.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Twitter is exactly what you make of it, for those who choose to follow you.
It is exactly not a means for you to procure a distribution network for your opinions, with followers acting as distribution nodes at your behest.
It isn't commanded, it is purely social. Those who wish to retweet your words will do so.
And there are no barriers that you do not introduce yourself. If someone you want to follow is there, you can follow them, even @-reply to them and, if the probabilities and their opinion are willing, get a reply or a retweet from them. (All the better if you aren't begging openly to be retweeted.)
Strong opinions affect a larger number of people. Weak or obvious ones don't induce the need to act. Sounds perfectly social to me.
In other words, if you want the news media, you know where to find it, and how it works.
The character limit certainly hinders long, well-thought-out responses. However, I posit that the real problem is social rather than technological. In the US, at least, we as a society have become much more divisive, and no amount of technology is going to reflect differently.
Don't like it? Don't read it. No one is forcing little Timmy to read it. I've never had a twitter account or Facebook account and don't intend to. Of course, we could just "pass legislation" so that people can't say things we don't like. I'd rather just not click the fucking things personally.
Users will always self-select to what interests them: we can't, and shouldn't, stop that. But taking the example of political news, what we can do with a reasoned comment system like /. is create some semblance of debate -- imperfect and problematic -- but far superior to what we currently see on news websites. The NY Times has done a decent job of this actually. Not a system as good as /., where users have a bit more investment in sticking around and not trolling since modding is done by the community and sticks with you, as opposed to the invisible hand system of the NY Times.
With respect to TBL, he seems to be suggesting censorship. Twitter is designed to allow users to spew whatever arises in their minds, and to retransmit the ideas of others that you believe others should see. Who decides what's "reasoned debate" when it comes down to it?
It's been shown that human nature gravitates towards sensationalism. The craziest of rumors always travel the fastest and the furthest. The free speech model of Twitter, for better or for worse, only amplifies this tendency by making so much easier for it to happen.
Give everyone a soap box, and you get a lot of noise pollution.
In the US, at least, we as a society have become much more divisive, and no amount of technology is going to reflect differently.
Fuck you, asshole, who the fuck are you to call us divisive?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We've heard this lament before: cable TV let the "PBS Liberals" and the "Fox Conservatives" go off in their cliques. Magazine subscriptions do the same thing, as does the telephone and postal mail. Sometimes I hear nostalgia for an earlier time when neighbors knew each other, and discussed the town's affairs in the barbershop and the coffee shop. The downside is that nobody could avoid the town nutcase, and anyone with an unusual opinion or lifestyle or medical condition was outside the mainstream enough to be relatively alone. The answer will not be found in technology itself, but in human motivations: what drives friendship, and common interests? Was there ever a time when politics and debate was conducted civilly?
Stop following the idiots on twitter and realize it's NOT a debate forum. It's identical to the most useless form of news: the soundbyte.
He who forgets will be destined to remember. - EV
I didn't know twitter was still (or ever really was) relevant outside of "new media" weenies with a perma-hardon for social media.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
it's nice for aggregation and specific but fast messages, but otherwise 180 characters doesn't make anything truly useful. Twitter going "Anti-spam" and preventing how fast people can post updates has fucked over that whole "specific but fast messages" part, as well as generally twitter being flooded with way more traffic than they can handle.
People don't want to be improved. Twitter embraces that. Facebook too.
Anyone interested in designing a peer-to-peer analogue of USENET News?
The character limit has nothing to do with it. We can't even get reasoned debate on Slashdot. Every time one "side" of the debate starts looking good, the other side just starts making things up so they don't "lose". People who agree with the "losing" side of the debate mod posts up based simply on whether they says what they agree with, not on the strength of the argument or evidence provided. We see it regularly with debates about patents, copyrights, and global warming. I think even debates about evolution here are modded more on whether they take a traditional scientific or religious approach, rather than the strength of the argument. When people have knee-jerk reactions, agreeing with and liking what they already believe and rejecting what they don't want to believe, you can't have reasoned debate.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I find that the biggest barrier to a reasoned debate is time rather than space, restrictive though it may be. Everything goes so fast that there is pressure to react sooner rather than later without allowing time for reflection. People then fall back on popular "truths" that can quickly be thrown out there. You can see this on Slashdot too where people pounce on articles to post the established group-think for a quick '+5' (as well as the ubiquitous "frist psots".) Those who come relatively late to the debate will find themselves ignored and drowned out by the deluge of mindless babble. That said it's not like Twitter was meant for actual debate but more for stream of consciousness ego stroking verbal diarrhea. In that respect it is quite successful.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Well, in terms of coining the phrase "World Wide Web", and actually creating http, he certainly had an impact.
Prior to him doing this, we had gopher, and ftp, and telnet, and usenet and what have you ... I suspect if you measure the total amount of traffic sent over this "rather sucky" protocol, it likely dwarfs most of the rest of the traffic on the internet by several orders of magnitude. It's hard to ignore how ubiquitous http is.
NCSA Mosaic changed the way everyone saw the internet almost within a year or two -- it went from being the "Internet" to being the WWW very quickly, and suddenly everybody knew what it was. I remember trying to describe the "internet" to people one month, and then having me tell me about the "web" the next (well, not literally, but damned close).
He also founded the W3C. He's much more the inventor of the world-wide web and a widespread hyper-linking technology that anybody else can claim to be. By one hell of a long distance.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
and Berners-Lee, bless him, is trotting out an archaic idealistic vision that has long since died
the debate, succinctly, is whether the Internet represents
1. a library of philosophers dedicated to erudite passionate commentary on important issues of the day, culminating in a second Enlightenment of intellectual endeavor
2. a bar at 3 AM, busy with drunks full of murderous rage and nonsensical babbling
look at comments on youtube, or under any political blog, or heck, look at encyclopedia dramatica or fark or 4chan: it is clear that Berners-Lee's image of the Internet died in September of 1993
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
there's nothing sadder than an old idealist, still believing in a utopian vision that died a long time ago, and will never exist
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With all due respect to the man, I think you're more in touch than he is. Twitter is not, and could never be, an appropriate platform for "reasoned debate". That would be contrary to its design, purpose and success.
He's right that Twitter is a shouting point for both banality and extreme statements. It abandons the middleground, because the middleground doesn't fit in 180 characters with a hashtag bandaid for the lack of design towards topics and focus. Nobody retweets reasoned, cautious and boring statements because there's no reason to on a platform that can't "do" conversations.
If you want to have reasoned debate... do it on a forum, or design something new and different that's meant for that. Because Twitter is not that, and users can't "improve" it to be that.
Actually, it's 140 characters.
And Twitter isn't about reasoned debate. Or any debate. Twitter is about self-promotion. Either of your personality or your business. The entire reason for Twitter to exist is attention-whoring. Even people who might have great content to provide include so much self-whoring *noise* to the signal that it's worthless. I've tried following people on Twitter (well, RSS feeds of their Twitter feeds, because I don't want to use Twitter, itself) and even the most interesting people have an intolerable noise level.
Social networks are all about self. All about attention whoring. All about providing an hourly update about your most inane thoughts or every single action you are taking during the day. Using social networking for reasoned debate or discussion is like using a screwdriver to hammer a nail. There are already avenues for debate and discussion and thought. They're in places like Slashdot (no, I didn't type that without chuckling -- I know, I know). They are not in places where you are having 140 character retorts between hundreds of people in a single feed and they are not in sites where a comment is nestled between someone's tarot reading above and pointless "Is it Friday yet?" update below.
Precisely. Twitter is not a tool for debate, reasoned or not. It is a tool for spew.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's an old internet tradition to take even mundane discussions, like your choice of editor, and turn them into a "holy war." This used to be done quite tongue-in-cheek but they've turned into actual holy wars by kids with a poor grasp of irony and even poorer reasoning skills. You can't debate with a religious fundamentalist who already knows The Truth.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Reasonable people tend to NOT FUCKING CARE about internet debate. Instead they concentrate on their lives.
they killed encyclopedia dramatica, 3 days ago
"oh internet"? wtf?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_Dramatica
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think it's quite reasonable to say that a "traditional scientific" approach is to have a strong argument. A "religious approach" is to use wishful thinking and emotions. A lot of people take that approach even outside of religion, so I guess it should just be called the "human approach".
When you try to have any "reasoned debate" with anyone who isn't actually looking for a logical discussion and is just pushing an agenda that they want to be true.. well, there's just no point really. You might as well be talking to a wall.
which is totally what she said
We can't even get reasoned debate on Slashdot.
I think we can.
In my experience, the moderation system works quite well. I also like that there's no option to delete anyone's comments from the discussion.
You may be confusing the fact that you see comments that you disagree with, or comments that you find outright irrational, with the idea that you have to agree with those comments. On the contrary; you're free to read them, laugh, and disregard them completely.
If seemingly irrational comments get modded to +5, feel free to chime in to differ.
Breakfast served all day!
Studies show that certainty is an emotion. Emotions are not arrived at through logical processes. People are not certain of what they know because it makes sense, they are certain of what they know because it feels good. Intellectual debate isn't intellectual. It is the same thing chimpanzees do, flinging poop at other chimps they don't like, only we use words.
And obviously, when I say "people" bunratty, I don't mean you or I. I mean those other buffoons, over there. No, not you either, you look smart enough. You know. The ones who disagree with us. Those guys are like chimps flinging poo.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You can see this on Slashdot too where people pounce on articles to post the established group-think for a quick '+5'
Really? And here I thought posts kvetching about how anybody who agrees with prevailing opinion is just practicing groupthink was an ideal example of Slashdot groupthink.
Breakfast served all day!
yep - perfect example of this divisive partisan rambling.
The character limit has quite a bit to do with it. Twitter by design can never be anything more than a bumper sticker fight. If you want a respectful and thoughtful debate, well, honestly one of the few I can even think of is that between Robert Nozick and John Rawls, and that was conducted with entire books.
As for group think, I can only offer the old platitude: be the change you want to see in the world. I won't positively mod stupidity even if its intent would be sympathetic to a position I hold. In fact, I get as much or more bothered by stupidity from "within" than "without" because I don't want some douche representing a good idea badly such that it turns people away.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Exactly what I was thinking. The small size of tweets naturally lend themselves to "extreme" opinions that can be distilled down to that length. A more thoughtful, reasoned opinion will naturally end up longer, and that is exactly what Twitter is not. Facebook, that's a legitimate criticism, I suppose. But then again, the reason people liked Facebook was simply for connecting with people they already knew. I don't think they're interested in simply messaging some random person online.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
Well certainly there's no way to force people to seek out reasoned debate or force everyone to be reasonable. And so you'll always find outlets for extreme opinions. But that's not a problem, as far as I can figure. People are silly, what's "extreme" is often subjective, and sometimes (rare though it may be) extreme opinions can be appropriate ones.
I guess my point is that places for reasonable people to debate any topic do exist. People have to seek them out voluntarily. That and... Twitter could never be one of those places.
So then the Democrats are good. Right?
You sir are just another in a long line of people looking out for their own self interest.
You have nothing to add to this debate other than finger pointing at one side.
If you can not see, you can not be shown.
On the other side of this teacher debate you might start to ask why it is that in states where the teachers are paid the most correlate well
with states that have the worst education?
I am not saying that teachers should not be paid a decent market wage.
I am saying that seniority instead of merit based firing decisions can not but fail to produce good education.
Even though that would be best for the districts, schools and the students it is not done.
Why?
Because the union must protect its current members.
Teachers may care about students or not. Depending on the teacher.
Unions do not though care one bit about the students.
Republicans want more laws and regulations creating monopolies for their corporate puppet masters.
Democrats want more laws and regulations protecting private and public sector unions.
Republicans want a bigger government to serve corporations.
Democrats want a bigger government to serve unions.
Democrats and Republicans want Big Government to control the people.
I want a small government controlled by the people.
You choose your side. I will choose mine.
You better though understand the intentions of not just the other side but yours as well.
Damn!
Over the twitter limit.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Have we really gotten *more* divisive though? I'd argue that there's always been some pretty harsh division going on, almost from the beginning. U.S. Senators and Congressmen used to actually threaten, and even literally cane each other bloody on the floor of their respective houses. Now that's what I call divisive and incendiary rhetoric.
Bank of the United States, impinging the honor of Andrew Jackson's wife, politicians fighting duels to the death, Civil War, Gold Standard, Silver Standard, Isolationism, Red Scares, segregation, affirmative action, abortion, Vietnam, etc. I mean really, what are we fighting over now... a budget deficit? This is a tempest in a teapot being blown on by a media that itself isn't even as biased as it used to be. This is banality at it's finest.
It IS important to get the deficit under control, and people are being pretty childish about it, but I am amused when we look back at our supposedly "non-divisive" past with nostalgia. I imagine Senator Charles Sumner would be amused with that idea, assuming his permanent headache did not make it difficult.
""Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks beat Sumner severely on the head before he could reach his feet, using a thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was knocked down and trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to strike Sumner until Sumner ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat the motionless Sumner until his cane broke at which point he left the chamber. Several other Senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who brandished a pistol and shouted, "Let them be!" Keitt was censured for his actions."
When people have knee-jerk reactions, agreeing with and liking what they already believe and rejecting what they don't want to believe, you can't have reasoned debate.
Glen Beck says differently, ASSHOLE!
Cynicism is vastly overrated. If people did not want to be better than they are they would not have invented gods in order to have something better to which to aspire.
Optimism is vastly unrealistic. Primitive humanity didn't invent gods for inspiration. They prayed repeatedly and fervently for food, shelter, and life after death. Gods are the ultimate expression of man's self-centered nature.
The problem is that both sides can be perfectly logical, but they start from different premises. That is where you run into trouble. If it has been stated that there is, for instance, a God who refuses to be tested, and that same God created everything and is all-powerful, there's nothing you can logically do to disprove that. Logic is just a system of determining the correctness of *argumentation*, not with the reality of resulting conclusions.
Using logic on most religions is pointless because a perfectly valid logic could be constructed with God as an axiom and omnipotence and omniscience trump any attempt to apply natural law if they are subordinate to their Creator.
A God who refuses to reveal himself consistently is, of course, non-falsifiable and therefore the concept of God is useless for making scientific predictions or theories.
On the other hand, just because it can't be falsified doesn't mean it's not true. The whole non-falsifiable label is merely a way of stating that scientific investigation on the nature of God is entirely impractical.
Religion does have something to say about ethics, however, and in that regard it has been confused with interference in science itself. What you actually do with the science you have done is very much the province of ethics and morality. Science is only authoritative in ethics when falsifiable theories are involved or when you specifically exclude anything else from your consideration.
Optimism inspires effort, movement, and change. Cynicism inspires fear, hopelessness, and stasis. Optimism may be unrealistic, but it is exactly that unrealistic belief in the possible that motivates people to find a way to make it possible. The only good cynic was Diogenes, and he wouldn't even recognize what his philosophy has become. Cynicism is the last refuge of the lazy and weak.
You both simplify religion down to a cardboard caricature of itself. It is neither all good nor all bad.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Exactly, "a God who refuses to be tested, and that same God created everything and is all-powerful", is based on wishful thinking. When this god also condemns billions to hell without having had a chance of even knowing about him, it seems to me that this god is very likely to be man-made, or just makes him not worth worshipping in the first place. Also if you believe in evolution, when do you start introducing souls into living beings? Is every single celled organism given its own place in heaven or hell? That kind of thing just makes me think that most - and maybe all - religion is bunk.
which is totally what she said
Optimism inspires effort, movement, and change. Cynicism inspires fear, hopelessness, and stasis. Optimism may be unrealistic, but it is exactly that unrealistic belief in the possible that motivates people to find a way to make it possible. The only good cynic was Diogenes, and he wouldn't even recognize what his philosophy has become. Cynicism is the last refuge of the lazy and weak.
You both simplify religion down to a cardboard caricature of itself. It is neither all good nor all bad.
I concede your point about my religion remark. My views on religion are significantly more complicated than what I communicated, but there is no way for you to gather that fact out of the three lines that I posted. However, just as I turned religion into a caricature of itself, so did you vastly oversimplify optimism and pessimism. For example, I can say this:
Optimism inspires laziness, complacency, and stasis. A pessimistic attitude drives increased preparation, the creation of backup plans, and fault-tolerant designs. Though a pessimist may focus on a small chance that something can go wrong, he is more likely to prepare for such a scenario than an optimist. Optimism is the last refuge of those unwilling to face negative possibilities.
Nobody can, or should, be entirely optimistic or pessimistic. A blind optimist will get burned; a blind pessimist will never try anything at all.
No, Slashdot is has liberals, conservatives, and an unusually large number of libertarians. I think you see that meme not because of any political leanings of the members here, but rather because many people here confuse cynicism with intelligent analysis.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Unions are simply a form of cartel, if you support antitrust regulation then you shouldn't support unregulated unions. Unions have done a lot for the worker in the past, but there are certain kinds of unions (ie SAG) that simply punish new entrants to the workforce and entrench their members position. It's also unacceptable to be forced into paying into a union by Govt. mandate.
Now, if Democrats and Republicans are both equally bought and paid for by corporate America, how come only Republicans are trying to gut the EPA, dismantle Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and kill collective bargaining? Those are all core pieces of the corporate agenda. Corporate America doesn't seem to be getting its money's worth from the Democrats.
For one, Republicans are much more openly pro-corporate, which allows them to do much more. Democrats can't get away with openly supporting many of those things without risking the alienation of at least some of their voter base. This doesn't mean that many Democatic politicians wouldn't give more to their campaign donors if they could get away with it. They're not equally bought and paid for by corporate America, but both Democrats and Republicans are paid for by corporate America.
The claim that Democrats and Republicans are the same is made only by conservatives because it's a response to allegations - made by liberals for obvious reasons - that Republicans are "bought and paid for" by the corporations.
The problem is that articles on /. are only discussed for a couple hours after they are posted. It is impossible to have a reasoned debate on a message board unless there is a sustained discussion lasting at a few days.
I am not saying that teachers should not be paid a decent market wage.
The "market wage" for a public institution or government employee is zero -- there is no competition.
Teachers should be paid whatever is necessary to maintain educated society -- what is actually above typical private school teacher's salary, as those schools do not maintain such society in US, either. Libertarian windbags, however, should be paid their "market wage".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.