Psybertron Asks

I’ve always used my site monitoring s/w “Site Meter” as a means of identifying cross-links, who’s looking at my site, in the sense of, where have they come from; other web-pages and institutions of interest. I’m rarely interested in spotting individuals physical locations or IP addresses, that would be sneaky, unless the link leads to further contact. The cross-linking of search hits provides me with valuable sources of new links on subjects common to my blog, however useful the hit has been to my visitor.

For a long time, most hits were just that: search engine hits, and if the user has not followed the link to more than one page, I really had no way of knowing if pages were really being looked at or not, unless people commented or corresponded.

Anyway some interesting stats (for me). I had’t really noticed, but compared to about a year ago (this is year 5) everything is about doubled. Averages are running at 60 hits a day, with over 2 page views per hit (120 page views per day) and each visit now over a minute, (and that’s averaged over the whole life !) so increasingly people are actually looking at my site content, not just having their search engine hit it. (That means the averages over 5 years are about twice those over 4. You do the maths for the 5th year. Must do some total stats over current periods, out of interest.)

Thanks folks.

Thanks to a search cross-hit, I picked up this link to Lynn Curry’s Onion Model on Learning Theories. You may know I often use the “onion” for my view that everything comes in layers (even layers), though I have to say when I think Onion I tend to think many layers – onion-skins.

Pirsig and Maslow scholars will understand how I was intrigued that Curry’s Onion involves four layers. Interesting, even though it doesn’t map directly.

Cringley has delayed his 2006 predictions to put up this thought on Google, given that they’ve made a splash at CES.

The key thing is that whatever Google does, it is enabling it to serve content targetted more granularly, and charge premium rates for that granular targetting. It already works with G-Mail, and other Google offerings. And, as IP and TV channels merge, this targetting will be sold into main media streams, not compete with them. targetted ads on your TV or future commercial media device. How granular can you get ? (Part of the capability to get close to doing this locally in real time is what is behind their massive distributed server containers reported earlier.)

Incidentally, Google’s beta-releasing of unannounced new products, and withdrawal if they fail, is visible as a designed strategy of “fast failures”, rather than over-hyped, disappointing late, white-elephant flops.

They aren’t afraid to try new things, and having tried them, also aren’t afraid to shut them down if they don’t seem to be working as intended. All of this is by design. Google has turned beta code into a weapon, creating “beta” programs that in the case of Gmail had more than three million testers signed-up before it went from beta to production. A beta test is a wonderful thing because it can be ended with a whimper but not with a lawsuit. Betas for Google are sometimes real statements of product direction and sometimes not, but Google competitors have no way of knowing which is which until they, too, have devoted resources to competing with something that may have no long-term existence.

As Cringley says, the speculation is not all his. Managed granularity has been an aspect of my info-modelling quest for the last few years.

Apparently,

Thanks to David Gurteen for the link.

Liked this quote.

Some visitors, hardened by years of dealing with double glazing salesmen and Seventh Day Adventists, can smell a sales pitch diluted down to one part in sixteen million.

If you have a short attention span feel free to cut the crap and click on the highlights button. [via Rivets]

Georganna, over at Writer’s Edge has prepared an e-Book “How to be a Succesful Writer“, the focus of which is how to get your writing succesfully published.

Only one chapter is about the writing itself, the majority is about the “business of writing”. Knowing how the business works is a part of that, but Georganna reminds us that deciding on your criteria for success is a key part of the process.

As a blogger, you may be happy that your words can see the light of day anyway, but are you really satisfied with that ? Do you aspire to see your book-length words in print ? Do you aspire to making a dent with your work, or a commercial success for your pains ? Don’t give up the day-job just yet, it’s a hit and miss business, but Georganna has collected some useful hints on how far down that road you can get, what publishers and agents actually do, how to deal with them, and a great collection of references (hyperlinks) to other sources of information and ideas. Oh and some great fun illustrations courtesy of WriteSideOut. What can I add ? If you’re going publishing, bring some of that humour with you.

Well actually, no we don’t not without some reason to do so.

Been through the cycle of debate with the family recently about business travel …. I’m in the oil, gas & energy business, I travel a lot, air-travel is very energy intensive, the global energy business is approaching crises in consumption and supply security, why do I travel when there are so many means of remote communication, why is working from home not the same as going into the office, etc ….

Day to day workplace communications are of course largely social; probably less than 20% is actually (directly) business related, but that 20% is close to useless without the relationships established by the 80% social interaction. Once relationships are established, then of course, the value of the remote communications increases, but the social loss remains real.

With business relationships, the situation is even more acute. Without prior day to day social interaction with your human supplier / customer, a contract to supply complex goods and services, one which relies on exchange of information during the supply process, has almost no chance of being viable without face-to-face establishment of understanding and trust. (Interesting documentary on a new Silicon Valley boom last night, where new business prospectuses are traded with venture capitalists, none of which could happen without face to face meetings at Buck’s Coffee Shop.)

Mark Federman answers the question here “Is Information Really Power“. Well of course, not without trust. The downside, the hygiene factor is real, lack of information can represent a lack of power, but the upside is not so clear cut. The value of any information needs trust in its credibility, the quality of content or intent or both. This is also my agenda – how can information content be treated as objectively meaningful without trust in the less objective / more subjective quality of communication intent.

Oh well, after raising ID-Creationism yet again, I may as well put up this ironic Doonesbury link. [via McLuhan’s Next Message]. You have to smile.

Mark Federman’s piece is about the necessity of irony, or Menippean Satire in particular, after Menippus the Cynic philosopher documented by Marcus Aurelius. Read Mark’s “Fifth Law of Media“.

You may have noticed that I’m an atheist, by any understanding I have of the term, but that I frequently link to Rev Sam Norton over at his Elizaphanian blog.

I’ve frequently posted on the abomination that is “Intelligent Design Creationism” IDC and variations on that theme, most recently here and here, but just see IDC or Creationism here, here, here, here, here, and so on.

Sam posts an interesting piece “God is not a Pixel” warning that theistic descriptions of scientific causality, are themselves a blasphemy and mis-appropriation of theistic religious language and belief, and he has no time for IDC. His metaphor (somewhat reductionist from a scientific perspective) is god in the whole picture, not just, or as well as, in the the individual pixels. You can see my thinking out loud from the scientific perspective in the comment thread, but there is much parallel with a holistic view of the wonder that is “nature”. Worth a read for any logical positive scientist who finds IDC utter rubbish believed only by evil idiots with more power than sense, and in doing so tends to tar all theists with the same brush.

Sam pointed me at Chris Locke’s Mystic Bourgeoisie last year (I have a link in the side-bar). I was originally turned onto Chris Locke and his fellow collaborators at The Cluetrain Mainfesto back in the dot-com-bubble-burst days. My favourite then and since …

“We can’t go on together, with suspicious minds.”
Elvis. The Cluetrain Manifesto

If you think about it, it’s my manifesto too. How do we know what people mean ? How do two parties either side of any relationship get a common understanding. Without that some misunderstanding is always suspected, but when does that matter ? Etc.

Mystic Bougeoisie pokes fun at much “New-Age” writing and ideas, but apart from being amusing I still haven’t actually got a handle on where Locke stands on these subjects. Nor have I found any way to comment on his blogs or communicate with him (help anyone ?)

Anyway he has coined “New-Age++” for modern, dare I say “holistic”, interpreters of erstwhile New-Agey concepts. Still can’t tell if he’s just taking the piss, or taking the piss whilst being sympathetic, but this collection of questions and reference materials is an interesting read. Apart from the “quantum physics” angle he doesn’t bring it completely into new-scientific realms, so the selection is partial or skewed from my perspective. Despite Dawkins pooh-poohing “the great convergence” too, I’m seriously thinking I need to write something in support of this idea.

Obviously, like the caricatures on Locke’s page, I’m far too clever to be taken in by the mystical attraction of the new-age stuff – my position is reasoned, intelligent, and based on sound scientific and epistemic fundamentals, naturally. 🙂 An interesting and provocative Catch-22. Infuriating not to be able to communicate with the guy.

[Post Note – Chris Locke has corresponded in the comment thread below.]