Include it all. Filter it afterward.

Include it all.
Filter it afterward.

Mark Baker
Analecta Communications Inc.

David Weinberger
“We seem to be making a cultural
choice---with our new infrastructure's
thumb heavily on the scale---to prefer
to start with abundance rather than
curation. Include it all. Filter it
afterward. Even then, the filters do
not remove anything; they filter
forward, not out.”
To Big to Know
Copyright Analecta Communications Inc. 2012 2

Too Big to Know
"Traditional knowledge seemed like true
content handed to us by competent
experts. Networked knowledge seems
like the work of humans who never
quite get anything right."

David Weinberger
summing up Too Big to Know


Knowledge developed in private
 From 1836 to 1859, Darwin worked in
private and alone before finally
publishing.


Open Notebook Science


Climategate
“the climategate furore has
galvanised the scientific
information community to
make data more open,
transparent and accessible
than ever” --
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Data+without+the+doubts%3A+the+climat
egate+furore+has+galvanised+the...-a0257556897


Networked facts
“The new default is: If you are
going to cite the data, you might
as well link to it. Networked facts
point to where they came from
and, sometimes, where they lead
to.”
To Big to Know


Something that we do together
“Links are the visible manifestation of
the author giving up any claim to
completeness or even sufficiency; links
invite the reader to browse the network
in which the work is enmeshed, and
acknowledgement that thinking is
something that we do together.”
Too Big to Know


Abundance
"We seem to be making a
cultural choice---with our new
infrastructure's thumb heavily
on the scale---to prefer to
start with abundance rather
than curation. Include it all.
Filter it afterward.”

Scarcity
 We grew up in a culture of
information scarcity.
 Though we didn’t think so at the
time.

Image courtesy of dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Not shaped like books

“To think that knowledge
itself is shaped like
books is to marvel that a
rock fits so well in its
hole in the ground.”
Too Big to Know

Selective publication


Rare and gem-like

“Because of the economics
of paper, facts were
relatively rare and gem-like
because there wasn‟t room
for a whole lot of them.”
Too Big to Know


Time consuming to get


Hard to search


Hard to link


Nailed down
“Paper-based citations are like
nails: If you wonder why the
author made a particular
claim, you can see that it‟s
nailed down by a footnote.”
Too Big To Know


Commitment
 Getting books is expensive. You are
committed to the ones you have.

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


Trust

Copyright Analecta Communications Inc. 2012
19

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionutS / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Distrust

“Distrust is an expensive vice”
Too Big to Know


Authors
 Authors provided an aggregation of
the information and a conclusion.
 Authors did the hard work of
knowledge making.
 The publisher did the hard work of
vetting.
 You paid them to do it for you
because it was hard to do yourself.

The Web: Information is cheap
 Abundance
 Comprehensive publication
 Easy to get
 Easy to search
 No investment in the content
 No motive to trust
 Cheap content = access to diversity
 Nicholas Carr not withstanding.

Experience vs. credentials

“Now the technology lets
you find experienced
people as easily as
credentialed ones.”
Too Big To Know

The virtue of diversity
“The best problem solvers tend to be
similar; therefore, a collection of the
best problem solvers performs little
better than any one of them
individually. A collection of random, but
intelligent, problem solvers tends to be
diverse. This diversity allows them to be
collectively better.”
Too Big to Know

What are we paying for
 The conclusion?
 The validation?
 The stopping point?
 The aggregation of content?


Include it all
 Our idea of knowledge has changed
 Everything is a debate
 We don‟t want the filter
 We don‟t trust the filter
 We want the data
 We want the experienced as well as
the credentialed
 And now it‟s cheap!

Filter it afterward
 We can aggregate it for ourselves
 We can filter it for ourselves
 And with our friends
 Pinterest
 Reddit
 Twitter
 Etc.


Filter it socially


Authority is shifting
“If our social networks are our
new filters, then authority is
shifting from experts in
faraway offices to the network
of people we know, like, and
respect.”
Too Big to Know

Websites are upside down

Image copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

Destination websites
 Aggregators: Facebook, Twitter,
Amazon
 Unfiltered aggregation and the tools to
create your own filters
 Monopolies: government
 Regular vendors: bank, etc
 Favorite authors (blogs, etc,)


Twitter
 Twitter exemplifies include it all, filter
it afterward
 Unfiltered tweet stream, to which you
can apply filters
 Or just dip in and rely on repetition to
surface relevance


Twitter vs. RSS
“On my smartphone, I used to
have Google Reader as one of
my four quicklinks on the
bottom toolbar. I recently
replaced it with Twitter Topic,
an app that shows all tweets
that meet a specific hashtag.”
Tom Johnson

LinkedIn
 LinkedIn contains massive amounts
of information from thousands of
users, and give you the tools to filter
what you see.


Dethroning the book
“Long-form writing is by no means
unnecessary or „dead.‟ But the fact
that it is improved by being placed
into the Net‟s web of connections
means it is being dethroned by that
web as the single best way to
assemble ideas.”

Too Big to Know

Content Strategy crossroads
 Try to reclaim the order and certainty
of the book world, or cooperate in the
linked ecology of the web with its
social approach to authority and its
fuzzy edges?


Raucous market of ideas
“Expertise preferred to speak in a
single voice. Books have authors and
editors who ensure the content is
self-consistent. … Networked
expertise is more like a raucous
market of ideas, knowledge, and
authority.”

Too Big to Know

Pick your battle
 Is it easier to win the battle against
the raucous market of ideas…
 or win your battles in the raucous
market of ideas?


Can you command the tide?


A network is of many minds
“Because the multitude of people on the
Internet are different in their interests
and abilities, a network of experts is of
many minds about just about
everything. The value of a network of
experts can be in opening thing up, not
simply in coming to unshakable
conclusions.”
Too Big to Know

What, therefore, must we do?
 Do we attempt to make our web
presence work like a book – to filter
for the reader and lead them to our
conclusion?
 Or do we acknowledge that that is not
what the reader wants, and that
there is no way to force them into
that mold?
 And if so, what then?

Living within a web
“Readers are being trained by
the linked Net to see any
piece that develops an idea as
living within a connected
traversable web.”
Too Big to Know


Embrace the network
“The best way to move
forward is to embrace the
peculiar properties of this
peculiar network.”
Too Big to Know


Every Page is Page One
 Every page is page one is a fact of
the web
 People come to pages via search and
links
 Every page they land on is their page
one
 The question is, does every page of
your content work as page one?

Include it all
 Contribute to the content that the
reader aggregates and filters for
themself
 Reader is more likely to visit one
page from 10 sites than ten pages
from your site
 Make each page worth including in
someone‟s selection


Filter is afterward
 Be easy to filter correctly.
 Clearly identify the subject and
context.
 Easy to consume as a unit.
 No point in being filtered in falsely.
Don‟t get a reputation as a waste of
time.


An EPPO topic
 Self-contained
 Establishes its context
 Conforms to a type
 Links richly


Self contained
 Works as the reader‟s first page
 No order dependency
 No assumption about how the reader
got here


Establish Context
 Establish the context in every topic
 Your website is not a context
 Context is not determined by topic‟s
place in your site hierarchy
 Next, previous, home, etc, do not
establish context
 Context means context in the world,
and context in the network of ideas


Conforms to type
 Many topic types are defined socially
 Recipes
 Car reviews
 API reference
 Types help the user orient themselves
 Types help the user trust
 Types help the user filter content in


Links
 Links are about more than SEO
 Links locate your topic in context
 Links let your topic stand alone
without repeating ancillary material
 Links guide readers to other topics
 Preferably on your site!
 Links let readers get to the right topic
without having to go back to Google

The Walled Garden?


The Bazaar?


 In the raucous market of ideas,
knowledge, and authority, Every Page is
Page One.
 Readers can come from anywhere. Is
your content ready to receive them?


Thank You
 Mark Baker
 Analecta Communications Inc.
 mbaker@analecta.com
 @mbakeranalecta
 analecta.com
 everypageispageone.com


Include it all. Filter it afterward.

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Include it all. Filter it afterward.