Elliptic Blog

Kids Health Galaxy

Yay!!! A site I worked on for over a year as Information Architect and Usability Coordinator has been graced with a Webby nomination in the Family/Parenting category:

http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10

Kids Health Galaxy
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
http://www.kidshealthgalaxy.com

Makes me extremely happy and am very lucky to work with a great bunch of people on it.

By the way, do an erratic blogger a favor and vote for this puppy in the People's Voice Awards section?

http://peoplesvoice.webbyawards.com/

Much obliged!

The House Next Door

A great friend of mine has kicked off his own blog.

The House Next Door

He is a film and television critic for the NY Press and the New Jersey Star-Ledger. More importantly, he can write about any topic with a clear voice and mind.

This may be enough of a catalyst to get me kick-started with Elliptic again.

Don't call it a comeback...

Well,

I have not followed through on my promise to revive this place, but it is time to make ammends. The blog has been a bit barren these past few months because I have been pulled in by some other interests -- some worthwhile, some not so much.

Information Architecture Summit 2005
I attended this summit in Montreal recently. The bulk of the presentations were, either, focused on covering some of the fundamentals that I already had a strong background in or served to confirm that some of my undertakings at the hospital are in the right path.  There were, however, three excellent sessions:

Sorting out Social Classification
A traditional task for people working in any mode of content cataloguing, indexing and retrieval involves creating a categorization scheme and labels designed to assist the task of finding the relevant content as quickly as possible. This involved the usage of controlled vocabularies and hierarchical structures that, either, relied on existing standards or were created to address internal needs (taxonomies).

As the amount and availability of content (especially digital content) has increased dramatically, the job of cataloguing, indexing and retrieving has increased in complexity. In addition to this, a wider range of people now have the tools to search for content readily available. This has spawned the creation of tools allowing anyone to tag, label and organize content they find with their own vocabulary and organization scheme. In essence, these tools allow people to create their own "folksonomies" in order to catalog, index and retrieve according to their own individual needs.

The current debate in the field has to do with the expected tension that ensues -- identifying what is gained when you allow organic classification and tagging of content and what is lost when you allow too much of this organic growth to occur without appropriate control. The field is trying to find the appropriate balance.

For an example of an application allowing its users to tag, index and categorize freely, take a look at Flickr.

Content Packaging and Metadata: A Change in the Approach to Content Production
This presentation by the BBC gave us a preview of how the application of metadata on digital television and radio programming will alter the ways we interact with such multimedia programming. In essence, the BBC is working to create a granular metadata system that would allow users greater control over the choice and access of programming.

If you are not too crazy about a certain television program that includes several narrative threads within it but are intrigued by one of those threads, you could, under this proposed system, search and isolate the characters and narrative threads you are interested in and simply access those. So, if you hate Saturday Night Live, for instance, but have a predilection for Will Ferrell characters, you could simply separate the wheat from the chaff and extract what you need, on-demand. TiVo on crack.

Traversing the Corporate Web: IA and Taxonomy at IBM
The rare thing: a presentation that demonstrates how the relatively academic concepts of a controlled vocabulary, taxonomy and metadata have been applied and produced tangible results for a sizeable group of users. The panel was not stingy or reticent showing details of their implementation -- a rare peek behind the curtain. You can find this presentation at Subway Love.

What does a gaggle of information architects look like? A sampling can be seen here.

World of Warcraft
It seems that there is one game every year that sticks its hooks into me and won't let go until it drains out of my system. This year's winner is World of Warcraft. If you play this game, why don't you drop by, say "hi" and try an intervention?

Character:  Morrissey
Race:  Night Elf
Class: Druid
Level: 57
Guild: Gnomeland Security
Server: Eonar

Help me....

Will the 2004 Presidential Debates have any impact?

It is stunning to me how easy it is to convince a significant number of U.S. citizens that George W. Bush's following traits:

• Cursory and inarticulate understanding of issues
• Simplistic presentation of "good" vs. "evil"
• Continual shifting of purported justifications for pre-emptive war
• Disengagement from global cooperation

are actually examples of:

• Humble and folksy character
• Strength and determination to combat threats
• "Multi-pronged" strategy toward Iraq
• Placement of national security above weaker, global diplomacy

While, at the same time, convincing them that some of John Kerry's vital strengths:

• Thorough and articulate understanding of issues
• Recognition of complexity
• Ability to alter one's views when new information warrants it
• Desire to incorporate global alliances into decision-making

are actually examples of:

• Paralyzing indecisiveness
• Inability to be forceful when confronting threats
• Flip-Flopping
• Allowing U.S. policy to be dictated by foreign influences

This is why, despite Kerry's clear superiority in debates and policy discussions, I am pessimistic about the ultimate impact of these high-visibility outings. This dynamic reminds me of several instances in "office politics" where reasoned and well-spoken analyses get trumped by a need to be efficient and a misunderstanding of the analyses. It seems that just as many corporate organizations need to flatten and simplify decision-making for the sake of efficiency, the electorate is also opting for that model.

Why is a large portion of the electorate swayed toward interpreting simplicity as forcefulness? Complexity as indecisiveness? Global dialogue as weakness? Obviously there is no quick answer, but I am certain that this kind of behavior is reinforced and nurtured by:

• A simple and patriotic approach to civics and U.S history in our educational system
• An insistence to study political science as if it were a type of marketing
• Mainstream media choosing to be a conduit for spin rather than also adopting an analytic approach
• An endorsement of simple analysis as folksy and a condemnation of complex analysis as elitist

This is why I have serious doubts that the debates will have a significant impact on opinion -- unless, of course, some major cosmetic gaffe occurs.

| Political Marketing in EllipticBlog |
| Alternative Political Parties in EllipticBlog |
| FactCheck.org - Annenberg Political Fact Check |
| "More spinned against than spinners" - The Guardian |
| "Tsunami" - Columbia Journalism Review |

Blogs and Sites

Some blogs and sites of note:

• Noam Chomsky's newly-begun blog: Turning the Tide.
• D. Keith Robinson's Asterisk*: a blog about web design and architecture.
• Adbusters' site: with a fun Flash guide to the media landscape.
• Donald Rumsfeld video at MoveOn.org.

Is WiFi / Bandwidth Property?

Mike Kuniavsky at Orange Cone has whipped up an interesting post on bandwidth, WiFi and the concepts of ownership and property.

People don't have a framework within which to evaluate the pros and cons of sharing bandwidth with strangers--what does it mean to me if someone uses some of the bits I'm paying for? So they retreat to a concept they understand, a mapping of their relationship to their property to their bandwidth. I'm not comfortable letting someone I don't know set up their lawn chair on my front lawn, even if it doesn't hurt me or my lawn, so why should I let them freeload on my bandwidth? Or, at least, that's how I feel the thinking goes.

Take a look, leave a comment -- I did.

Political Marketing

Reading Chomsky recently has solidifed some half-formed, dormant thoughts I've had about my experience with the political science curriculum during my college years. To give you some short-and-sweet background: I began as a pre-law / political science major (back in 1988), took a few Constitutional Law courses and realized that I was more interested in the philosophical underpinnings of laws. This led to some philosophy courses and onward to graduate school in philosophy.

In retrospect, it seems that what was stressed in many of my political science courses and readings was not a critical analysis of systems of governance but, rather, a pragmatic understanding of how to use the political systems in place in order to propel certain agendas. So, for example, instead of questioning the theoretical/philosophical underpinnings of certain Supreme Court decisions, we spent time understanding the backdoor maneuverings of interest groups, politicians and judges on the path toward a certain decision. We also spend time understanding (with an undercurrent of appreciation) how existing institutional structures were exploited and manipulated to shield public exposure of how decisions come to be made.

In essence, we learned how to operate politically within frameworks rather than discussing the merits of pre-existing frameworks. If this trend is true across our educational institutions, it is no wonder, then, that discussions of "politics" in this country have focused primarily on the methods frameworks are used rather than a sustained, critical analysis of the frameworks.

I know this is a bit anecdotal, but I often see analysts on television networks or in print evaluate the merits of political figures based on how effective they are in using systems in place to get ahead. Discussion tends to focus on whether political figures are succesful at fundraising, at disseminating the correct spin on issues or at making tactical moves that will promote his/her political survival. In other words, appreciation and merit are often tied to their marketing choices. More time and resources are spent discussing whether political figures are effective marketers rather than discussing foundational questions about the U.S. political system.

I grew up in Mexico in the 70s and 80s. What I remember most vividly about the political environment in that country was the robust critical analysis of issues and the ever-present voice of a myriad of parties: socialist, communist, catholic, agrarian, etc. When issues were discussed, the philosophical merits of the matter at hand were of primary importance while political marketing techniques were exposed as warnings to the public. Each political party was given 30 minutes or an hour, on radio and television to broadcast freely. Things have changed since then, Mexican politics are approaching the United States model.

I suppose that teaching effective political marketing has become essential since anyone with political ambition needs to play the game to get their agenda in play. Those that may have an authentic interest in questioning existing frameworks may just have to play the game in order to get something done -- well, maybe not Nader.

| Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting |
| Univ. of Mich. Course: Politics and the Media -- see notes for Sept. 22, 2003 in particular (PDFs) |