Musings & Meanderings

As we continue to develop the electronically connected world of the future, it seems to me of benefit to also develop new ways of conceptualizing what cannot be seen and easily described. The technological revolution continues to deliver means and ‘places’ which are, to our previous understanding, ephemeral. This makes common planning and envisioning the most interesting, from my perspective, challenge and opportunity.

Our work and our relationships with one another are the context in which we describe things.

Most of us do not consider or analyze relationships as entire entities beyond the results and consequences of conducting them. When we do analyze them, it is generally in terms of a 2 way exchange, including shared or complementary benefits vs real and potential conflicts, both current and projected into the future.

The timeless stories of cultural and personal significance are also mostly expressed in a 2 dimensional way. The perfect success, partnership, friendship, or love. The classic conflicts: good vs evil, right vs wrong, man vs nature, personal redemption.

We adopt and repeat the truism that there are 2 sides to every story.

Based on several intense decades of business, as well as personal, experiences, I hold the view that seeing 3 sides, rather than 2, is a perspective that invariably offers solutions, ideas, and opportunities that many of us often overlook.

Developing the full panorama of this perspective leads naturally to a multi-dimensional view, and complex overlaps, but for the purpose of describing the idea in simple terms, I’m staying with 3, and calling almost every human relationship a triangle. In this post, I’m discussing only working, business-related, and commercial relationships, which tend to be less varied than personal ones, partly because of the societal expectation we have of one another to conform to common practice.

We transact with one another all the time, and view each transaction as a sharing, trade, or exchange between ourselves and another person. Each of us, though, is conducting 2 relationships, one with the other person, and the second with the medium or value component being shared or exchanged, bought or sold.

The first example, and easiest context, is a sale of goods.

Whatever I create, that which you will buy from me, is something that I have invested in. My investment is likely to be irrelevant to you, since your interest is in determining and agreeing with me on a value that is in line with your plans and desires for the usefulness and enjoyment of the product. Each of us has a different relationship to and view of the objects of our exchange. One of those differences is contextual, in that our approaches and destinations differ. If these approaches and destinations dovetail perfectly, then our transaction is likely to be highly satisfactory to both of us. When the paths of our intentions and goals diverge, however, we are more likely to have a transaction or relationship going sour.

Practical and successful experience in conflict resolution addresses the third side to the story. In a situation of conflict, you have 2 people (or companies, or groups, but invariably led by 2 individuals) with irreconcilable viewpoints. Trying to change either or both of those people is likely to be a frustrating and fruitless exercise. Instead we focus on the domain to which the contention(s) attach, and here we find an arrangement of objects and circumstances and context.

An early partner of mine sometimes conducted conflict resolution processes using common household objects. Wealthy, powerful, stubborn and enraged individuals would have to sit and watch as a sufficient number of objects were collected: a pencil holder, ashtrays, a table lighter, a can of Coke, a coffee mug, and so on. Each object would then be identified as a component relevant to the disputed circumstances, and then they would be arranged to signify context, with each player’s related assets being massed together, and fixed location objects identified by their surroundings. Objects specifically representing things under dispute would be identified and centrally placed. Then the resolution would unfold. An object under joint and disputed ownership would be moved away (sold) to a third party, for example, who would contribute 2 new objects in exchange, other objects would be moved strategically, representing the use of related assets to balance the outcome of the exercise in such a way as to end with each party seeing an improved picture of their own assets and position. Time and again I watched this process, often reminded of boys with playing pieces, transform a situation from one where both parties in the conflict went from being convinced that one of them had to be the loser, to each feeling like the winner because they perceived their own outcome was a substantial improvement on the status quo or the past. One of the components to the resolution might have been selling a 100 million dollar development property, which had previously seemed impossible due to a badly written partnership agreement, but when that property became a can of Coke and other things moved around in relationship to the change, the focus shifted to achieving the mutually beneficial new arrangement of objects that had been easily understood over the coffee table, and the solution would be smoothly implemented.

Resolving complex, messy conflicts is hard, but watching it being simplified through identifying and rearranging the objects, context, and circumstances, served as the genesis for my perspective on transactions and relationships. If seeing 3 sides could lead to sorting out very complicated conflicts that would otherwise have led to years of litigation, among other things, then seeing the 3 sides from the beginning could, and does, form the basis for stronger healthier relationships, as well as reducing the potential for future conflicts.

The better we understand each other’s perspective, the better transactions and relationships we can build. Understanding how our perspectives differ is as important as understanding where they converge, and a substantial portion of this is accessible from the 3rd side.

An architect who designs a building for you, the client, brings personal history, knowledge and skill to the process. He does his best to apply as much as he can glean or discern of the building you’re hoping for and of the ways you imagine it being inhabited and used, but his relationship to the process and the product remains completely different from your relationship to it. A professional such as a lawyer, accountant, or media consultant, providing a non-tangible service and work product, has, similarly, to balance his relationship to his product with his client’s relationship to it. The same holds true for those designing consumer goods and services, whether practical, decorative or entertaining.

Good partnerships are formed on the same basis, with a preponderance of common goals being the best basis on which to build.

Looking at the internet and the web, where relatively little has yet been developed that is community and consumer centered rather than enterprise or academia targeted, I believe that it is this third view, where interests intersect both in synergy and conflict, that is as yet no more than a barely explored new world.

I’m stepping back, for the moment, from the ongoing analyses of taxonomical vs ontological structures (for example), to concentrate on what works and what doesn’t. Further, I speak, as always, from my belief that open/free are not only compatible with commercial viability, but further, that what we should wish to survive and evolve long term requires a marriage of the two.

To explain what I’m seeing, I’ll posit that one of the most vigorous successes on the web to date is still eBay. The site may be tired, with many segments in serious decline, and they may, perhaps, have wandered off base from a business growth perspective, yet the dynamic architecture has no equal or better after an entire decade. I have stated, in talking to web developers, that eBay has superior search, and been told that, of course they do since they’ve millions of dollars to spend on it. This is really an irrelevant fact out of context, since the company in question has some 11,000 employees and a dynamic database of tens of millions of pages today.

The size of the operation may require a sizable investment in maintaining and improving search performance and database management, but I believe that the original information architecture of eBay remains the primary basis for its success. If you’ve never analyzed the site or actively sold there, check out the all categories page, which can be found on the Site Map, which is accessible from any and every location. As recently as 2-3 years ago, all categories were listed (as links) on this one page, with no requirement to drill down further, and without those rather unfriendly search options on top.

Every item you will find in every category there was placed by an individual user. The number of categories has expanded dramatically over the years in direct (more or less) response to user demand, and the company has frequently worked with community groups in specialized collectibles fields towards more effective categorization.

The database structure is strictly hierarchical, with sellers and collectors using the equivalent of tags in listing titles. In practice, a buyer/collector chooses a sub or sub-sub category to search in and usually enters one or more tag equivalent descriptive terms combined with at least one identifying noun. An example is ‘anthropomorphic salt & pepper’. Go ahead and search it and, yes, go figure, there is a strong constituency of avid collectors in this little kitsch niche.

Now, most eBay sellers are the furthest thing from techies or geeks, and I’d also guess that they run the gamut across average in terms of education, erudition, etc. Sure, there were highly motivated early adopters at the beginning, and the profile altered as the constituencies grew, but the important point here is that a typical non-techie user is perfectly capable of navigating hundreds of categories and sub categories and choosing the appropriate ones in order to correctly list the items she’s cleaning out of her closet (to make room for new things, of course). She further goes on to easily use ‘tag equivalents’ to communicate and connect …by putting words such as Pink Cashmere Sweater in her title.

The basic concept of classification is easily grasped by grade schoolers, and indeed many of our children determine by themselves where to find a category they’re interested in, whether in a public library or in a department store, before formal schooling has even begun.

Why then, when we have hundreds of thousands of authoritative bloggers, website operators, etc., is there still so much difficulty connecting billions of pages of content to billions of users?

There is no centralization on the web, no way to collate the endlessly different data structures, written in many different languages, found via the internet. This is, in fact, a naturally resulting state of affairs representing the very basis of open enabling upon which has grown such a vast, multidisciplinary and interestingly vigorous network.

Our need and desire to navigate efficiently, to seek and find effectively, however, does not diminish as the internet expands, and as the web becomes more of a mess, but grows keener in response to both an increase in quality and the overload of quantity.

All of us, from bloggers to researchers to shoppers to the advanced users (who are more likely to be point and click developers rather than virtuoso codeslingers), want more than anything to find and, more recently, to be found. It is this last, the widespread desire to be found, that has taken us across an economic threshold into a realm where communal architecture, I believe, can become a reality.

There are tens of millions of users (at least), who now have a stake in terms of optimizing both a web presence and their computer time.

Up until now, serious search capability has been the mysterious province of wizards such as those at Google. Fairly common familiarity with metatags notwithstanding, the complexity of search algorithms, secretive and constantly changing in a battle against those who would take advantage of and abuse our attention, has made SEO a highly specialized and full time endeavor. Unfortunately, the other side of that coin is that finding what we seek can require almost as much specialized knowledge and experience as it takes to be found.

As a blogger (for example), even if I knew not a single character of basic html, I could still define or select categories and topic tags for my posts far beyond the maddeningly elementary list offered by almost every online blog directory. On most of these lists, one chooses between a handful of categories such as technology, business, academic, women’s issues, etc. As a reader of blogs, I would welcome not only more subcategories within which to search, but also further options such as the ability to search in more than one sub-category at once.

It’s time for a collaborative search engine, and likely a related series. I can easily contribute either a for or non profit business plan and plenty of preliminary ideas for development, but I’m not a coder, and my business interests are tech supported rather than tech based. Are there open source community leaders already at work on such collaborative concepts?

More importantly, how can tech and non-tech online communities intersect more fully towards revealing and achieving this elusive level of connectivity?

I wonder, also, whether further enabling a billion users, eventually, is a sexy enough idea to engage the brainpower that could accomplish it. Although the long term project potential could be both deeply satisfying and related opportunities dazzling, it holds little likelihood of instant gratification.

The competing motivators are strong. Media and money are creating hothouse environments for coders building components such as recommendation engines. Biomedical and nanotech projects lever billions of dollars often sweetened by fantastical premises that capture the science fiction fed imagination. The brilliant coders I have met or observed may not be primarily swayed by dollars, but little can compete with the opportunity to live in that intensely paced environment where non-tech issues are almost non-existent. The more such environments flourish, the less likely it is that the internet will remain a mostly public domain.

The biggest obstacle I see to implementing collaborative organization and search is the simplicity of the primary foundation required. On the surface, the structures would appear rudimentary, and the problem solving of the most annoying variety to elite coders, the variety supplied by civilians. Despite the illusion of simplicity, the successful reality requires brilliant design, in order to achieve stability and flexibility at the same time. I’d also expect it to demand evolution to the sophistication of a multi dimensional structure in the longer term.

The obstacles and de-motivators all beg the question that many believe already answered, or at least inevitably pre-destined. The question of who will exploit, control and benefit most from the internet and our use of it.

The 5 things meme going around during the past few months has been entertaining, and some of the posts really wonderful. As parlor games go, it’s a cute add-on to the blogosphere, but also got me thinking about how little I feel I know about many of my favorite bloggers. Here are 5 things that I’ve learned about others through long term forum
interaction over the internet. Will blogging eventually morph in a way that will make it possible to ‘get to know’ others to the same extent here?

1. Where is your sense of humor?
• Is it relegated to a ’sub-folder of your personal os’, opened formally for sharing in safe and familiar relationships only, or are you open to banter and repartee wherever and whenever a connection clicks?
2. Do you basically like people?
• Not a question of whether you’re shy or gregarious, but rather whether you’re friendly. Are you genuinely interested in others without pre-judgment, or do you actively limit yourself to interacting with people in your own predetermined categories?
3. Do emotions scare you?
• Whether you are male or female, and the bearing that has on our different ways of seeing and expressing emotion, doesn’t matter here. Do you have to feel really safe to be comfortable with getting a hug? Have you ever given a virtual hug to a stranger?
4. Are you open-minded?
• Are new ideas and points of view something you develop personally and privately? Do those closest to you mostly agree with you on everything substantive?
5. Are you brave?
• Brave doesn’t mean stupid or self-destructive or disrespectful. It does mean you’ll venture into uncharted waters for a good reason. Do you stand up for what you believe in, for yourself or for others, when it matters?

Maybe blogging is a place in which people feel safe precisely because they don’t have to reveal such things?

My December was not a festive one, bringing, as it did, a new personal challenge. The posts I made since December 8th, one of which referred to the fact that I have not been able to walk since that day, were deleted, unfortunately, and the comments are not retrievable, although I do have the post texts on file. I won’t repost them here, but am keeping them for the archives of the new planned weblog, which has been relegated, together with several other non-essential projects, to a lower priority level for now.

So the old year ended with change for me. Will I walk again in 2007? This time around, a regular wheelchair doesn’t suffice, and the challenge is rather more complex medically. If application and determination will prevail once more, then walking will be one of my accomplishments in the year today begun.

Meanwhile, the unanticipated loss of physical activity has already delivered a gift, in the form of unexpected and welcome space for new thought.

New challenges. Better laid plans. Puzzles to solve and solutions to be found. The development of new and different perspectives. These I have always held as ingredients of the elixir of life.

Every ending is also a beginning.

May the coming year unfold pathways to new joy, happiness, and success in all our lives.

*****

”Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.”
Leonardo da Vinci