had to pause at 1:22:15
cos needed silence
finished my walk
writing this standing on the treadmill tho, so which kinda feels like a star trek command station cos typing on an ipad cos on primal
Discussion
re: discovery
the discovery problem
decentralized vs centralization was the solution at the time
as in: why i paused the episode cos i wanted to think about it
"how do i find what i am looking for?"
why is that the only question
as in, wouldnt that be in tension with
"as author: i dont want to be found?"
as in, the presupposition that adding to the web means for everyone, does it? everyone wants to be discovered? does data have an inherent right to be discoverable? does information want to be found? what if i wanted to write in this super niche forum of only freaks, losers, and weirdos cos i trust us but i dont trust them out there?
so this led me to thinking about passwords and hashtags that are invisble
like could i ever be in a place where i wrote something. hashtagged it however i want. hashtag absurd or super ingroup but invisible
as in like: "blah blah blah blah. blah blah blah blah blah.
#onlypolkadotsarewelcomehere #sayfivetomeanfour
and no one can see them at all
you would have to randomly try absurd hashtags or id have to tell you for you to index my post in a search. none of the blah blahs get caught in the search like the search reads all my words as literally: blah blah.. no distinguishing.. no content .. no word searches work.. not ai readable
so on my end, as the author, im unlimited
i can add like 80 hashtags like white text on white background things
i can tell one person.. #2vs1892 and that pulls up two of my notes i hashed that way but they cant see any others i didnt hash like that
i can tell someone else search #yoliger and it brings up the fourteen posts i hashed that way
as a reader you cant see any of the hashtags at all. you just know typing in #2vs1892 brought up two notes
author sets discovery, allows discovery
rather than the most discovery possible is what all authors and all info wants for itself
cos yea that just isnt true
exploring discovery further:
"how do i find what im looking for?"
how do you know when you've found it
how do you know how to know what to look for?
sure how does top results influence sense of 'found'
first 3 pages of results
how does that shape sense of foundness
how does the look of a website, a trusted logo like britannica, a known ubiquitous source like wikipedia create the idea of found
shape what found is
influence what found means
what makes a sense of having finished having found it
the answer
the end of a wikipedia article?
a tiny rabbit hole hitting links until you reach a paywall you arent paying for? as in: call to action, go get your wallet, nah fuck that
idk, all of this is really interesting
re: discovery tho
cos i think we are getting way more poor, impoverished, losing skills at discovering
at all the methods and means of discovering decades ago
like idk man you gotta wander into that alley there is a tiny record shop down this little flight of stairs allegedly if it didnt go out of business
i got a paper map, i got a phonebook, i have gas in my car can afford some wrong turns, i can try asking a waitress at the local diner? i can try the gas station guys. can try the library, the town hall, shit the fire station those guys might be hanging out and chill and might know where this old abandoned mine shaft is
participating in the discovery proactively
the perseverance it takes
the care it takes
the footwork
the cost in gas
the courage
the sense of when to be relentless, when to back off, like yo those firefighters in this town were not chill and i think i alarmed them that was a bad call
all of this stuff is skills
how successful comes down to a lot of stuff
the topic, who you are, where you are at, how you go about it, what you are able to notice, allow yourself to stumble onto
all of this is learning, takes practice, is waymaking, seeps into every other aspect of one's life to enrich it
i know shit is dire, so i dont mean to be disrespectful re: this next suggestion
as if we can afford the luxury of whimsical shit
but maybe, re: bayo akomolafe and
'the times are urgent, let us slow down'
it is kinda cool for me to picture someone taking on a journalism project that is exclusively analog
like yea this is only footwork, interviews to cassette. paper records at townhalls and libraries
i know that is so hipster and so stupid
like so trust fund
but i also am so sure as an exercise it would yield actually important shit
maybe it is meant to be a journalism assignment college class idk
but like as a reactionary force to ai and nothing is real on the internet i guess
cant trust shit
i can so see a movement of like:
i trust these irl journalists who are going this old school.
when i see that name in that newspaper, i know in this article there isnt ai misinfo. human error mistake sure, that's human. but that guy literally spends most of the day at the library of congress and just hitting the pavement knocking on doors.