Collector or Digital Librarian?
Do you think more often of your date of birth or date of death?
Do you think of the start or the end?
Do you think of the project or the deadline?
Do you think of your journey or your legacy?
How much substance is there in your soul verses value in your impact on others?I imagine these are the differences between the Collector and the Digital Librarian. The collector seems to want to experience, to learn and also to share. The collector discovers, understands and reveals to others.
The digital librarian has no long term memory other than what is captured in the library. Where the collector lives for life’s expressive expanses, a digital librarian is designing for not-being-here-anymore. When a doctor says, as the end nears, “you should get your affairs in order…” it is gloomy, foreboding, and tragic to the collector. The Digital Librarian says, “That is all I ever do.”
It is not that the Digital Librarian does not want to live forever—in fact that may be the driving emotion—it is just the method to live forever is not corporal, it is informational. We fight mortality through trying to share, and share permanently.
In creating the Great 78 Project, I have wanted to keep the notes of what records were in whose collections. I believe this may be the most important thing—more important than the recordings—what records were together?
If we want to understand a time or a life, it is made up of those groupings. As a Digital Librarian I want to illuminate for others those lives, those perspectives — I want to not lose those past lives through reorganization. But I don’t think I will be the one to learn from these lives, those choices, those perspectives. It will be other people, or even machines that will learn from these assemblies.
Bill Dunn said in the mid 1980s, “The metadata is more important than the data itself.” Astonishing—how did he know? He came up with the term “metadata” with Mitch Kapor around that time.
Collections are metadata and metadata of great value if these reflect a life’s choices. Those life’s choices may be the most valuable part of the Great 78 collection.
As a Digital Librarian, I feel I should, I must preserve this, share this.
But it is not for me, it passes through me. I am a Digital Librarian, not a collector.
I hope I do a good job during my brief stay on this earth.
Brewster Kahle: what I think we’re missing out there are tools for context and citation
<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/AU79zwAvKa0″ frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>69:40necessarily know about so Wikipedia is69:45still primarily created by Western young69:49male contributors they tell the story of69:55you know the worst knowledge from an69:58extremely limited and privileged69:59standpoint there are ridiculous gaps in70:04this knowledge and then skews what a my70:07favorite example is that there are70:1020,000 articles on French Wikipedia70:13about individual asteroids but a70:15language like Hausa that is spoken by 3070:18million people in Central Africa doesn’t70:20have an entry on the universe so if you70:23think that the the sum of all knowledge70:26representing Wikipedia and you look at70:28where it comes from and who created it70:30it’s ridiculously skewed and slanted70:33towards the demographic of the70:35contributors the problem with that is70:37not just with Wikipedia Wikipedia not70:40many people they know but the contents70:43get translated into our70:45d/f via a project like dbpedia they’re70:49then propagated to the rest of the70:51internet and basically every single70:53linked data system they used today what70:57is like a search engine for music or70:59biomedical information gets its entities71:02gets is like a fundamental relations71:04from Wikipedia so biasing by us out the71:10fact that is a small population of71:12contributors that are creating data and71:16information that powers the entire71:18ecosystem that AI relies upon I think71:21the fundamental problem that we all71:22should be worried about I’ve been veryencouraged by watching some of thestudies of how people use the web peopleare very particular and very peculiarnobody wakes up in the morning sayinghey I want to live a biased life or heyI really want to go to the biased andunfair news channel what I think we’remissing out there are tools for contextand citation we’ve made it hard forpeople to actually know what the hellthey’re looking at that we’ve made it sothat it’s really difficult to go andunderstand is this some babble that justhas been bouncing around for a long timeand long discredited or is this umsomething that actually is real and Ihave trusted sources behind itso I’m encouraged by people want to haveaccess to this stuff the InternetArchive gets three four or five millionpeople a day coming and using its72:24service as best we can tell it’s about72:26the three hundredth most popular is is72:29about the first the fifth most popular72:31okay I’m a little envious um but it does72:34indicate that there’s a lot of interest72:37in finding deeper information than it’s72:41casually available so people want it72:44that’s the good news72:46now we need to build some of the tools I72:48would suggest for citation for context72:51and embed it and that’s what this whole72:53conference is about I’m really glad to72:55be here72:57sorry one last note on context I think72:59you’ve gotten to the heart of a really73:01really big problem which we missed out73:02on the entire problem of knowledge73:05production is about context not just73:07merely switching from one platform to73:09another but you know to take a perhaps a73:12banal example at a researcher who read a73:17paper of a lab that performed a set of73:21experimental conditions that requires a73:24context change for if you are working on73:27a different organism if even if you’re73:29trying to validate and reproduce those73:30results that is a context change which73:32requires translations so big new big73:35problem we should definitely work on73:37this I think with that we will wrap it73:41up and just want to say thanks to the73:43panelists and for coming up here and73:45sharing73:47[Applause]
Money and Debt and Digital Contracts – Brewster Kahle at Devcon 5
The dreams of cryptocurrencies tend to focus on money and seem to avoid the topic, repercussions, and significance of debt. In fiat currencies, 95% of all money is matched with debt — in other words, debt creates 95% of all money. This talk aims to bring the impact of debt into the Ethereum conversation, specifically focusing on debt with interest. Let’s consider this side of crypto coins and Ethereum in particular since it provides the ability to encode obligations as contracts and therefore can encode debt obligations.