Writerly Web: Writing as an Open Web Interface (Mozilla Drumbeat)

Writerly web: Writing as an open web interface by @bact at Mozilla Drumbeat #NSC1

Open web should be a writerly web. Encourage expressions & interactions. Writing privilege to readers (p2p).

Writerly web has many aspects. “The author is dead.” Read/write web. User-generated. Remix.

Largest user-generated content: Text comments. Easy. Cheap. Potentially generative.

To express links, media, formatting: Everybody [btns] <mrkups/>-literate? Every devices <mrkups/>-friendly?

Writing is a very generative technology. Many of us know how to write. By looking how other people write.

Look @reply, RT, #hashtag. Free text alone, can do semantics. [[wikilink]], CamelCase, *bold*.

Filtering: #hashtag in blog’s title ? Auto-generated aggregated ‘planet.’ Openly deal with info overload.

rel="tag" and Microformats might work. But that’s a little more complicated. (And not, say, texting-friendly.)

Annotation: Free tagging is cool. But no room in UI like one’s for SMS. Tag feld?: Pixels, key presses, not inline.

Hyperlinks: I don’t know. Machine-aided? Convention? URL as a word: compact and meaningful.

Embed media: oEmbed Type vimeo.com/8033, got embedded. Machine-aided via API.

Styling: Inline formatting, Markdown. *bold* _underlined_ ==Head== :’( T-T ( っ・ ω ・ ) っ

Commands: “d username message.” Dream on: “This is me ++p :)” ‘++p’ will activate phone camera.

Human-to-machine ([[link]], oEmbed) Directive – less generative. Pre-programmed. Human adapted to machine.

Human-to-human (#tag, RT) Communicative – more generative. Collective convention. Machine adapted to human.

While man-machine texting is less generative, it still lowering the cost to participate. Accelerate a more generative web as well.

Word suggestions, T9, etc. Could aid directive texting as web interface. As they do with communicative texting.

No empirical evidence. Cognitive science. Behavioural Science. Experimenting it.

I'm too spoiled with command line? [yes/no] $ _ Ubiquity, Spotlight, Windows too.

Writing is transparent. Have the source (Gtalk, Wiki, Wave.) More readily to copy.

I start writing HTML by copying code. I start writing wiki by copying code. I start retweeting by copying code.

Generation J: Journalism programs have new media covered http://bit.ly/4t5f4s v:@paulbradshaw cc:@theniw

Proposing. Rejecting. Failing. Accepting. Goes norm. Use less cognitive energy. And that’s even more generative.

Voice- & motion-based interfaces. Diffcult to copy/reproduce/regenerate. Keypad still the cheapest & most accessible.

Love to see people investigate further on writing UI :)

Campaign for Open Writerly Web. Semantic URL, oEmbed, common wiki/markdown format, etc.

@bact Arthit Suriyawongkul Pedestrian-in-Residence opendream.co.th

by Arthit Suriyawongkul on Dec 15, 2009