A friend of mine just launched Driving Votes, a site dedicated to getting people out to swing states in order to get non-voters registered to vote for 2004. Of course the goal is obvious: get Bush out in 2004.

[And if you want to laugh (since absurdity is another valid route to the current state of affairs), listen to Dick is a Killer]

I’ve always been a bit obsessed about the differences between New York and San Francisco. As such, i really enjoyed reading Auren’s reflections on the difference (even if he’s a Republican – ::wink::).

ROFL. Last night, a gang of us went karaoke singing. We didn’t stop singing after we left the room and by the time we hit Shibuya we had moved on to “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” songs. I’m just now going through a few blogs in my RSS and i almost died when i saw that Cory posted an electronic version of Constant Sorrow. (Caterina and John did a fantastic (drunken) rendition of this song in front of Hachiko.)

According to David, Eric Schmidt from Google said: “Social networks will get better as we figure out what problem they’re intended to solve.” In an attempt to learn from last week, i will try really hard to not take that literally and imagine that he meant to say that “social networking TOOLS will get better…”

But even still, there’s a bit of backwards logic here. Why are we asking: what can social networking tools solve? Why aren’t we asking: what problem do we have that social networks give us insight to? I remember when i first got involved in technology creation, there was always a technology-first, problem-second approach. A technology was created and then everyone was rushing around trying to put it to use. I find it very entertaining that social networks (which weren’t invented, but modeled) are being put to the same process.

The thing is that social network representations require nuance. We can either try to solve the nuances universally (not going to happen) or try to figure out what problems we’re trying to employ social networks in and figure out how to negotiate them there IN A CONTEXT. The latter is going to be far more successful. Haven’t we already learned that each YASNS models a different social network anyhow (and no, FOAF is not the answer here because the different models are often because people are segmenting their networks differently in order to represent different facets).

I don’t believe that social network tools will get better as we find our problems. I think that social networks will get embedded into tools simply because they help us solve specific problems. The focus won’t be on the network, but on the problem solving.

(::cringe:: I’m almost approaching activity theory here. Must stop.)

Clarification based on good question:

Q: What’s the diff? Either way you’re holding a hammer and looking for a nail, no?

A: The difference is key. When you are focused on building social networks just to build them, you make very different design decisions than when you are trying to design a tool the utilizes social networks as a concept employed to solve a task problem.

The difference has a lot to do with the amorphous discussion of what social network TOOLs are and what social networks are. They aren’t the same thing. RIght now, there’s no hammer. Just the shadow of a hammer, which doesn’t solve the same problems.

Furthermore, when you have a hammer, you try to find nails. You turn things that shouldn’t be nails into nails. This is a really really really bad thing when you’re dealing with people and their relationships. Instead of accidentally breaking the wooden post cause you thought it was a nail, you break people, their relationships, their trust and their willingness to participate.

I’m really glad that David noted how his name gets morphed by the Internet. I have a similar situation. My name does not have capital letters in it, but when people see me lower-casing things on the web, they assume i’m just being lazy or artistic or something. Folks think that they should be more proper when they address me. Yet, when i publish papers, people realize that i went through effort to get my name lower-cased and they recognize this is how my name is spelled. (That’s why there’s an h – it’s all balance.) So, yes, my lower-casing is not an accident.

[Of course, one friend loves to send me emails full of capital letters, to make certain that i have enough for when the apocolypse comes. He sends me D’s and B’s just in case i needed a few extra.]

OK. That is a fanstatically entertaining representation of the echo chamber. ::giggle::

Of course, someone pointed out to me that in both of my panels, the phrase “So, i have to disagree with X” was quite common. Still, i totally love this.

Giles Turnbull asked various people why they gave up blogs.

The various responses are fascinating… My favorite: “General sense of despair with: a) myself, b) the internet population in general.”

I have a little Mac and a really nice stereo with speakers. I keep meaning to buy long wires to connect the two so that i can spit out iTunes. But, is there any way to do this remotely in some fun configuration that i know nothing about? Like little Bluetooth devices that would make my stereo a wee bit smarter? Or?

OK… the Vaginamabutt is really really funny. Thank you BoingBoing.