molly.com
Wednesday 7 June 2006
How We Begin
Okay, how do we begin to make the Web do what it was always meant to do at its spiritual best?
I think about Jeffrey Veen’s oft-used example “Have Hay Need Hay” in which he describes the ease of use of a site that has only two links.
One is for those who have hay. The other is for those who need it.
That’s the Web in my mind. That’s the Web I’ve been working for over 13 years. What do you have? What do you need?
So here’s my starting list.
- Have food, need food
- Have clean water, need clean water
- Have shelter, need shelter
How do we begin to make the global world a reality? We on the Web have the best resources to do so. What do you have to give? What do you need that someone can provide?
Let’s begin. Got ideas?
Filed under: faith(less), society
Posted by: Molly | 19:47 | Comments (25)
Need an understanding ear
Got an understanding ear
Have poems.
Need poems.
o i could be so norty with this one… i’ll have to shut up. Interesting question.
i’m not sure 2 link sites would be as popular as they sound though…
Pick one problem. Solve it. Say, “Next!”
Repeat daily.
We all have more than one thing, idea, action that we can provide to another human.
How about this: smile and wave at someone. Most people need that every day.
Unfortunately, the people who need the most help probably don’t have internet access. I think Kiva is a great example of what can be done, but naturally there is much more progress to be made. It will just take some people “on the ground” to organize things and get help to the right people.
Well I think ebay was a sort of open-marketplace precisely for that idea, as far as physical things go. It may not be as open to that particular “idea” of say, have ____, need ____; but it definitely does indirectly address that issue.
Oh yeah, the website Veen was talking about was http://www.fsa.usda.gov/haynet/
As far as websites with intangible information, I’m not sure that model would work if the actual website or business model wasn’t opened to that particular way of portraying, or even doing, things in the first place.
Take a restaraunt website, for instance; you wouldn’t say “have food,” because then that would mean you are no longer an immediate potential customer, thereby a useless statement to put on the website if their direct goal is to coax consumers into wanting & therefore buying more of your product or service. Even if you coax the restaraunt into going along with that idea, i’m not sure that would apeal to many consumers, other than people with really bad eyesight or someone who is impatient to the fanatical level. I think some people might see it as a humorous superficial idea in that particular scenario. But then again, who am I to speak for others?
If I were to open the floodgates to possibility & let-loose, i’d probably yearn for a website that I can go to, much like ebay, only for anything; with the ease of Google. In fact, Google Local was a good example, but that’s only for “need ____,” not “have ____.” http://local.google.com
For instance, I can go to Google Local and type in “bangor maine pizza,” and have it pull up all the pizza places in that area, showing a list & map. If I typed that into Google itself, the 2nd listing is a myspace page, …how weird, lol – http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-14,GGGL:en&q=bangor+maine+pizza
oh wow, that’s even stranger… When I clicked on that last link, myspace didn’t show up, …but if you then click Search, again, it’ll be the 2nd listing. Strange, seems like a Google algorithm bug; lol! see if this works better http://www.google.com/search?q=bangor+maine+pizza
I did a few more searches, here’s some good examples:
http://www.lulu.com
Browse, Publish
http://www.ebay.com
Buy, Sell
http://www.digg.com
Digg for stories
Submit a new story
…though, just what is Digg Spy? @_@
http://www.researchzilla.com
Learn, Contribute
Discover, Interact
http://upcoming.org
Poor example, but if this could be tied in with an all encompasing search (like Google Local), it’d be fantastic; …however, Upcoming.org is owned by a Google Competitor, Yahoo; so I don’t know if mashup is possible…
Find Community, Start Community
Find Events, Start Event
Find Events, Host Event
Personal ads were always my favorite and especially the honest ones. It was always that simple to me, so:
I want: Someone to laugh and cry with, and just hold. A small rural farm and house where I can feel home. A decent-payed job in software or with kids.
I offer: My sincerest self, my time and my soul. My knowledge in making a fool of myself, visual software design and being an asshole for no good reason at all.
Feel free to send any reply whatsoever to daniel@iamtroubletoo.com
Oh. And thanks for the ad space, Molly!
I also need to find out some good simple resources to learning PHP from scratch (like a book, examples or a full-fledged tutorial), but this can’t be the right place for that..
Jesse said:
“I think Kiva is a great example of what can be done, but naturally there is much more progress to be made.”
Freecycle (http://freecycle.org/) is another example of an organization of trying to help people get what they need.
I’ve often heard people say there is enough of everything (food, water, shelter and such) for everyone on this earth…there is just a distribution problem.
Have rights, needs rights
Have disposable income, need disposable income
Have electricity, need electricity
Have a computer, need a computer
I can’t get my head around how we, the privileged few in this world who can actually afford to access the internet squabble over the dumbest things and can’t get our sh*t together enough to agree on a few simple standards. You want to talk accessibility, let’s focus on getting the world’s majority access to computers and the ‘net even before we worry about building pages that are readable.
Access to the ‘net is sacrificed on the altar of the almighty buck by multinationals who are more concerned with milking the rich than providing access to the poor. In that scenario, standards come second, maybe third, or thirtieth in the list of priorities. And by the way, net neutrality? The major telcos own the web and the minute they decide to stop carrying our traffic on their fiber “accessibility” will have a brand new meaning.
/end rant
hahah, June, you beat me to it. Good thing I refreshed the page…
A similar site, which takes into account those who don’t offer stuff for free on freecycle, is http://www.garbagescout.com …Though, that mashup is a terrible sight to see, lol.
I wonder, …if the poor people from third world countries, if given the choice between what Michael Shuman calls a LOIS model, or what he calls the current model (TINA), which one they’d chose.
LOIS=Local-Ownership-&-Import-Substitution. TINA=There-Is-No-Other-Way.
http://livingeconomies.org/aboutus/whoweare/abouttheboard/michaelshuman
Waiting for comment approval sucks
For instance, …there are former granaries in India that now export dog food & tulips to Europe. People are starving in India because they export those goods, because of the rules of global trade. The government of India wanted to dump almost sixty million tons of grain into the ocean because they were no longer allowed, due to international trade regulations, to sell that food at subsidized prices to the poor. Somebody sued the government over that and the Indian Supreme Court said they couldn’t dump the food into the ocean. So they’ve left all those tons of grain in warehouses to rot and be eaten by rats… People starve in East Africa while former grainaries export lima beans to the centers of the empire. People starve in South America while former subsistence-farms export coffee to the United States to fill Americans’ caffeine addiction. Need I say more?
That’s a good one: Have Internet, Need Internet. It’s such a paradox. I can hear trees falling in the forest everytime I read it.
@ Francis: I would say Have Truth, Need Truth, to use the Internet to spread information about what goes on in these countries, but thanks to Google, Yahoo, etc. you can’t use the Internet to spread the truth in countries where the government doesn’t allow it. Now that is a shame.
I’m with Nortyping on this….I’ve already bitten my tongue three times as I’ve come up with cheeky replies that would be inappropriate really.
And two link sites – that would be on the same level at those Flash Ads that keep buzzing in to my Yahoo Mail viewing area…only two links on those most of the time too. Anyway…that’s getting off-topic right?
How do we begin to make the global world a reality?
We start my by-passing those pesky censorship laws – freeing up the global communication, marketplace, and we make hardware/software more affordable for other countries.
What do you have to give?
Anyone involved enough with the web or/and web professional work – can provide their expertise and know-how….even if it’s not ‘cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, top of the field’ knowledge…it doesn’t matter – because it’ll still be extremely useful for non-web educated people out there…such as the larger community of people in nations where the net is more exclusive.
What do you need that someone can provide?
Me personally? …..Ouch – I think I’ve just bitten my tongue again!
Have Something to Say
Want Something to Read
Have some ideas, need more ideas
Have the beginning of an idea, have the end of an idea.
Have a friend
Need a friend
If I may be so arrogant as to quote Tim Berners-Lee:
“The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyse it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.”
(http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory)
To me this says that the web at its spiritual best (capitals are important here) is a means of bringing people closer together, be it a virtual marketplace (have/need hay), communities (have/need friends), libraries (have/need information), or anything else you can imagine (have/need infinitie possibilities).
So, to make it better, to get further down this path, it is important to figure out how to bring access to this virtual togetherness, this global connection engine, to more people across the globe. Only then will the World Wide Web truly be worldwide.
i’ve used the have hay/need hay example to some effect since WE05 (i give jeff the credit for finding it)… it’s working its way into the vernacular around here actually – someone made a reference along the lines of “hmm, i dunno, do we have hay or need hay?”
as for your original question….
have internet?
need internet?
(thinking of the questions posed in Doug Bowman’s Zooming Out From The Trenches)
or the way i think of accessibility:
have as good a chance as the next person?
need as good a chance as the next person?
particularly in terms of accessibility of learning materials (i work at a uni after all). the ultimate goal is that every student has an equal chance at working through the material and graduating, regardless of who they are.
Have an embarrasingly stupid head of state, need a… no, sorry, that one doesn’t work. Although there are quite a few countries out there (here !) that could do with somwhere to send theirs, maybe som kind of summer camp ?
I’m wondering, if an actual intelligent, caring person actually ever made it to the position of head of state, would they actually stay that way, or does the job itself come with a free lobotomy ? Some people have been enjoying “buy one get one free” offers again, haven’t they !
But to finish on a lighter note :
Have cool temperate climate ?
Need cool temperate climate (or ecologically freindly air conditioning) !
Yeaheheh:
Maybe we need to conduct a survey on some stinging questions about the way today’s civilization is set up, make it available online and in print pdf form.
Would anyone seriously vote yes on a survey question saying “do you support global climate change that will eventually cause oceans to acidify and boil?” lol.
Would anyone vote no on a survey that read “do you support a global-climate-friendly economy that will help reverse global climate change and help stop a future ecological meltdown of world-wide proportions?”
To at least get to the point where we can admit that there are problems, …then we can actually see the solutions already sitting on the shelf, as I do, and actually truly get excited about implementing the solutions we already have; rather than just sit by undemocratically complacent waiting for history to pass through us
have heart, need heart
have soul, need soul