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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

by nbrier on Apr 15, 2009

2,032 views

On Saturday, April 11 I gave a talk at the University of Montana about technology, the web and the future of media. These are the slides.

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I have a website called NoahBrier.com
I work for The Barbarian Group.
We’re best known for making a thing called Subservient Chicken for Burger King.
Since I was here last I’ve been making lots of stuff on the internet. Like Brand Tags.
And MyFirstTweet
Before I get too deep into theoretical stuff I want to talk about making stuff on the web. Back in March of last year I taught myself PHP & mySQL. Throw in HTML/CSS (which I knew) and you pretty much have everything you need to make a fully functional web tool.
Before I get too deep into why those specifics, though, let me explain how websites work (since I'm guessing some of you don't know this). Most people think of web pages as these hard coded things, like pages in a magazine or something.
However, many of the webpages you look at are not created until the moment you look at the site. Brand Tags, for instance, really only consists of about a dozen files. Even though there are 800 brands in the system, all the tag clouds are generated by the same few lines of code which queries the database and returns the formatted results. [http://www.noahbrier.com/archives/2008/11/the_many_skins_of_web_data.php]
Essentially it works something like this: Your mysql database (which looks a lot like a big old excel spreadsheet) stores all sorts of data in it.
Then, using PHP (which basically processes things on the server side before you can see them in your browser), you take a look at the URL (at least in the case of brand tags) and you say, okay, this user wants to see brand 214. So now you know what page they're on.
From there, you send a message to your database (via PHP) saying give me all the tags for brand 214. Which it does like a good little minion. Then you run through a whole bunch of stuff (this is where the magic happens, the \"algorithm\") and parse all that data down into something you can work with. Finally, you pass that data as HTML, which you make pretty using CSS.
Voila, you have a webpage, built on the fly, just for you! (Most pages on the web work roughly this way, though there's lots of caching and other stuff that happens as well.) It's kind of like the web's equivalent to just-in-time production.
Well, the web is kind of like a giant lab. It's a perfect place to do experiments. Where else can you see how millions of people react to something instantly?
Avoid value judgements about new channels. Instead think about why people use it, how it’s different.
Try to understand why people are using it. Who they are? What it means.
Consider the metaphor
Diversify

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet Presentation Transcript

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE INTERNET A presentation by Noah Brier University of Montana April 11. 2009
(PHP + MYSQL) + (HTML + CSS)
THE WEB IS NOT LIKE A MAGAZINE
http://brandtags.net/browse.php? id=760
1 2 3 REQUEST PARSE FORMAT MYSQL PHP HTML/CSS
BUILT ON THE FLY
SO WHAT?
THE WEB IS LIKE A GIANT LAB
GO PLAY AND DO EXPERIMENTS
1
AVOID VALUE JUDGEMENTS
INSTEAD TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHY
2
quot;OUR MEDIA ARE OUR METAPHORS. OUR METAPHORS CREATE THE CONTENT OF CULTURE.quot; NEIL POSTMAN
“Yet the Net is not a physical thing. It has no ﬁrst costs. Its core protocols are barely encumbered by the concept of ownership.” DOC SEARLS
3
DIVERSIFY! SMALL. CHEAP. EASY.
“CENTRAL TO THE DESIGN OF BETAWORKS IS THE ASSUMPTION THAT COMPANIES BUILDING SERVICES WITH A COMMON THEME CAN AND SHOULD PROFIT FROM INCLUSION IN A PLATFORM OR NETWORK OF LOOSELY COUPLED BITS AND DRIVING CONTEXT AND MEANING ACROSS THESE SITES IS VALUABLE.” SMALL. CHEAP. EASY.
4
BRAND IS A MARKET INEFFICIENCY CAPITALIZE ON IT.
5
THERE ARE NO RULES TO THE MARKET ANYMORE
458,000
6 7 8 9
$ A FEW THINGS THE HAVE COME FROM MY BLOG 1. MET MY FIANCE 2. GOT AN AWESOME JOB 3. BUILT A SUCCESSFUL SITE 4. COME TO MONTANA 3 TIMES 5. MET LOTS OF GOOD FRIENDS
6
OPEN BEATS CLOSED
API APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE
HUH? BASICALLY IT’S A WAY FOR 2 COMPUTERS TO TALK TO EACH OTHER
USER SAYS HEY, I WANT MY FIRST TWEET! HERE’S MY USERNAME
MFT SAYS HEY TWITTER, CAN I GET HEYITSNOAH’S FIRST TWEET (NOT EXACTLY, BUT CLOSE ENOUGH)
TWITTER SAYS NO PROBLEM (AS LONG AS THE USER IS PUBLIC). MFT DISPLAYS IT. EVERYONE LIVES HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
WHY? DOES IT MATTER?
OTHER PEOPLE SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS AND BUILD YOUR AUDIENCE

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet

by nbrier on Apr 15, 2009

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Internet Presentation Transcript