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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hello Burak:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Yes it is far more complex. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The list you offer... I'd call all of them data
points. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>To me it doesn't turn into information until it is
gathered across data points and summarized, massaged, rearranged, or manipulated
in a way to make data points into meaningful chunks of information.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The prices people paid for computers were data
points. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>High, low and Closing prices were information.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It turns to information when a reader/consumer does
not have to consume ALL the data points to come to the same conclusion...
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I provide value when I aggregate a pile of data and
crunch it in some manner to produce a summary... a conclusion... then I have
added value.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>reading between the lines, I think what is so
disturbing to us no-a-days is that every little data point... has become someone
else's raw material. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>If I have a web site with my original content and
my links and my insights, feedburner and Google and everyone else uses my work
to create their pages which they present to others. My work is consumed
and regurgitates without any benefit to me. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I think all of your examples fall in this
category, Your links, your opinions, your words and yet they have become
cannon fodder for search engines, web crawlers and more who use your work to
their advantage. None of us own any of our own stuff when everyone ahs the
right to copy it, link to it, point to it... regurgitate it, chew on it...
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I want useful data, summarized into useful
conclusions and presented in clear statements. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>* A link in Delicious.</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>* A tag describing a picture in Flickr. </DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>* A comment reacting to a YouTube video.</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>* A story in Digg.</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>* Some text describing how I am connected to my friends in Facebook
(same college, same company, met in such club etc).</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>The problems of capital are deeply examined in the history, so I don't
feel like talking about it at all. I can only say that I don't appreciate
giant things. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>particularly since so many of the giant things
are just huge repositories of links to small things. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Notice how much of what you describe is not being
summaried ina useful way in a giant service. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Google doesn't tell you sumamry conclusions... It
is just a huge index... </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The most interestign thing from them is Google
Trends where they tell us what WE have been asking about. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It is like a snap shot of the world's query du
jour... what are we interested in knowing!!!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is summary information, not raw data.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>"View Source" menu item was the key feature put into the browsers by the
pioneers of the web (from Tim Berners-Lee's original browser to Marc
Anderseen's Mosaic)[*]. This openness feature, affording to look inside,
helped me learn HTML like many other kids in the world, which later changed my
life.
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder>
<DIV>
<DIV>Today I think what we need is something as simple as this: "View
Data". </DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Yes, I also learned HTML by going to pages I
liked in the early 1990's, viewing source and copying the forms and
structures I liked. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My first page (still available at <A
href="http://www.dr-dream.com">www.dr-dream.com</A>) is painfully
pedestrian.It was created with a word processor using cut and paste to copy
HREF stuff. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And I agree with you. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I think all of us should be able to "View source.
View data." </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'd love to have some political polemics,
religious tracts and editorials show us the data upon which they based their
conclusions. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>One of the fundamental problems we face in this
era is that we are less able now to judge the quality of the material we
see. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I first noticed this in the beginning of the word
processor era. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>People could take stupid ideas and dress them up
in pretty fonts, on pages that were well formed and met the criteria for
"lookin' good" yet the ideas were still stupid. </FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2>In the past - editors would have culled through stupid ideas and
removed them from circulations before anyone put in the effort to make the
text **look good.** In the Word processor and DTP eras - anyone could turn
dumb ideas into good looking presentations. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This raises the bar for what is considered
excellent. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Same issue is facing us now as billions of web
sites present billions of ideas - most of them based on thin data or no data
or just someone's opinion or an incredibly trivial basis. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You no longer trust "amazing"photos because it is
so easy to Photoshop up a miracle image. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You no longer trust e-mail telling you an amazing
facts, (Like "ducks quack doesn't echo and no one knows why") because you have
had so much trash dumped into your inbox. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>You don't trust web sites because you question
where the raw data is coming from. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I no longer trust most of what is passed off as
social science because no matter how much you evaluate the data with
statistics, if the original questions were badly written no amount of
statistical evaluation is going to tell you anything useful. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Enough of that rant. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I don't trust big entities either</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>and I fear that even darling little companies
that are responsive and "good" grow up and become less and less responsive.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Google is gobbling up little innovative companies
- same with News corp and Yahoo. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is no different from general Motors buying
up ancient brand names and making them all fall under the GM umbrella.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Do they stifle the creativity when they get
big... seems so. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Alex Randall</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Professor of Communication</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>University of the Virgin Islands</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></DIV>
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