Shiftspace commissions
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They are currently offering ten development grants of up to $2,000 to individuals and collectives using ShiftSpace as a platform to create new Spaces and Trails: "While the Internet’s design is widely understood to be open and distributed, control over how users interact online has given us largely centralized and closed systems. The web is undergoing a transformation whose promise is user empowerment - but who controls the terms of this new read / write web? The web has followed the physical movement of the city’s social center from the (public) town square to the (private) mall. ShiftSpace attempts to subvert this trend by providing a new public space on the web. By pressing the [Shift] + [Space] keys, a ShiftSpace user can invoke a new meta layer above any web page to browse and create additional interpretations, contextualizations and interventions - which are called “Shifts�. Users can choose between several authoring tools - called “Spaces� - that allow web users to annotate, modify and shift the content of a page and through ShiftSpace, share that shift with the rest of the web. “Trails� are maps of shifts (shiftspace content) that create meta-layer navigation across websites. These trails might be used as a platform for collaborative research, for curating net art exhibitions, or as a way to facilitate a context-based public debate." The ShiftSpace commissions program is a very interdisciplinary competition and the deadline to apply for both the Spaces and Trails categories is: February 25th, 2008 11:59pm EST. Related: Interview with Mushon Zer-Aviv. |
Ever since i've heard
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I'm not sure I see the potential in this.
This app is pretty much just a tool to annotate the web.
Web designers risk making their websites less universal by implimenting this technology, and frankly, everything that's possible with this technology is already possible using existing universal web coding standards.
If web designers arent going to use this technology, all that then leaves is users and user content. The major flaw in this is that if this technology becomes successful and widespread, 99% of the unrestricted content is going to be stuff you dont care about. take for example youtube's comment system: Can you imagine having that everywhere all over the internet? *shudders*
So, we've ruled out web masters/designers using it because its creates restrictions on users. And we've ruled out its usefulness as a widespead, unrestricted user-based tool because unrestricted content = SPAM. Whats left? A small group using it to annotate a website between themselves, but frankly, the need for that sort of niche technology is few and far between, and its easier just to set up a forum and talk about a website there.
Maybe Im wrong and Im not thinking outside the box enough.
well, youtube is a bad example, all the world's stupid commentors gather there in order to keep the rest of the internet a happy place :)
Yes, I think that proprietary stuff is bad, too. Especially because you could do it in a more compliant way.
My greatest wish tough is a meta-layer comment system for blogs, it's just bad to enlist the comments just like that under the post, stuff them away like newspapers do with their readers letters... And that meta-layer would allow to stick a comment were it belongs, if you make a funny pun about the headline, its not funny if you post it at the article's end... annotating the headline with the comment would be cool though. And in the same stroke it could get us rid of that thread-structure if a comment could visually link with the others...
And that is possible with today's web-technologies; it would require the agreement of the site-owner though, and maybe not everyone is open-minded enough to allow commentors (doesn't even have to be spam) to scribble all over the page (many don't even allow comments at all or censor them harshly if criticised... not good...)
Hi guys,
thanks for the interesting and sincere feedback. And thanks to Regine for the ongoing support.
I agree with Kumakouji and think these remarks are important and valid. We have no doubt we will have a spam challenge, and also agree that no borders (/restrictions) is not necessarily the way to develop good interaction. We already have a draft for a bottom-up model moderation system based on content's life-spans (rather than the binary worthy/not worthy). It is a new direction we're developing and will develop it with our community in our discussion list.
We invite you to join this discussion at community.ShiftSpace.org I am sure your input would be valuable.
ShiftSpace is a project that attempts to challenge interface, we share the concern about lawlessness in social environments, but do not take police and policing for granted. We do believe we can play nice in public space, and come up with rules together (rather than have them dictated by one-sided web interfaces). We hope you do too, we hope you would join our discussion list and even more, apply to our commissions program.
cheers,
Mushon
www.ShiftSpace.org