» The next big thing: User-contributed metadata ... and More...

Kind of a "roundup" post. 

• First, this user-contributed metadata business.  More the evolution of loyalty cards than of user-contributed media online, I think.  . The next big thing: User-contributed metadata | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com .  Will we see it go the other way -- with professionally published media voluntarily exchanged for metadata to support advertising?  This is certainly how print media is going.  The other day the WSJ reported that the Wall Street Journal is considering dropping their subscription fee. 
• So far people seem to be focusing on user-contributed metadata about people, but in a few cases about things, too (as Nova Spivack at Twine is).  Not that it matters, but I think I like this trend.  It takes us another step closer to that great coping mechanism and contributor to information overload: the virtual hive mind.  Just need to figure out how to create that callable interface between what each of us "knows". 

I also stumbled on something recently by Shriram Krishnamurthi, who wrote this in October 2005:

"Computer science is a liberal art. If we were redesigning the trivium
and quadrivium today, there is no question computer science—which embodies
a new epistemology—would be in the middle of the action. Make sure at least
part of your curriculum teaches it like it were one."

In the last couple weeks, Nicholas Negroponte from MIT Media Lab and $100 laptop fame was reported to be giving a talk on Computer Science as a Liberal Art.  And Alfred Thompson reports Bob Metcalfe making similar remarks. 

No doubt these folks are smarter than me, and even I've been saying this.   Here's a question: when do you call it a meme?  

Technorati tags: Computer Science as Liberal Art, user contributed metadata, cyborg

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2007
  Kind of a "roundup" post. First, this user-contributed metadata business. More the evolution

• Anonymous
  November 11, 2007
  I've been thinking about this whole "computer science is a liberal art" that I have commented