Re: A Less Ephemeral Web

Many of these ideas are counterproductive to a free life of the mind, 
and will only further siloed herd thinking. The greatest improvement I 
can imagine to the web is if tomorrow there were no more "you might also 
like..." links, replaced with "get out of your rut!" links backed by 
either a random pick or gentle (and transparent) algorithm pointing in 
opposed directions from where the user inclines.

Using web resources to augment free and deliberate self-directed inquiry 
is challenging, on several fronts. The solution is not to build easier 
louder echo chambers.

Regards,

--Paul

On 8/27/20 4:20 PM, Allison Varnell wrote:

>
> Adam(s),
>
> I like the idea of a scrapbook and or some sort of visual display 
> board show schema notated objects. For example, it could save webpages 
> ad thumbnails and also put auto-tags the items so that they could be 
> reviewed by topic.
>
> I like the idea of integrating it with a user???s calendar and location. 
> This way user???s could have a daily, weekly, monthly ???summary??? of what 
> items they saved or viewed. This would also allow them to search their 
> ???ideaboard??? or ???schema space??? by date or location. I know I often try 
> to find items I saved and my memory ties them to my spatial and/or 
> temporal setting. It would also allow users to uncover and recognize 
> patterns in their behavior.
>
> I think offering daily and/or event based reminders is helpful in 
> having a person reflect (and thus put into their memory). ??Perhaps 
> having a morning and nightly summary where the user is able to provide 
> their own input to further customize their experience would??be 
> helpful. It would give ownership to the user???s and also help the 
> machine learning process. It makes a user feel like they are bettering 
> themselves and contributing to the greater good.
>
> I also think finding ways to automate repetitive tasks would be 
> helpful. I know I receive Siri Suggestions for actions that I did not 
> even realize had a pattern.
>
> I think using a custom search function by scheme is incredibly useful 
> too. I know I often use cutom google searches using schemas to find 
> the exact items I am looking for. I also combine these with automation 
> tasks to simplify my life. For example, I often receive promotional 
> and/or security (2fa) messages from companies, which I add to my 
> contacts. However, when I look at my message inbox, I hate seeing 
> empty profile photos. So I have a shortcut that looks for contacts 
> with no picture and then takes the Company names and performs a custom 
> google search query using the image - logo schema.
>
> I think having voice assistants and incorporating music is important 
> in this endeavor too. I have found that it feels like AI can read my 
> mind and help me to reflect on ways to improve by the songs that play 
> in my car and my house. ??Combine that with cymatics and I would be in 
> heaven (or at least feel connected to the world and to the technology).
>
> So when is the next conference? I want to learn more, and I would love 
> to share my experience/input.
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Allison Varnell
>
> sent with ??? from my ??? iPhone
>
>
>>
>> On Aug 27, 2020, at 4:02 PM, adasal <adam.saltiel@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ???
>> I think this is relevant.
>> Last year (it seems such a long time ago) I organised a conference on 
>> AI and psychotherapy.
>> And yes, I did manage to find quite a few speakers able to talk to 
>> the topic.
>> But as I was writing up the material for the website someone who is 
>> the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the charity associated with 
>> this pointed out that they, according to their charitable purposes, 
>> could not be political.
>> So we weren't - I think.
>> But this begs the question: what does it mean to be political?
>> Or not to be political for that matter?
>> How do you assess "right-leaning" or "left-leaning". Who??or what 
>> makes that assessment?
>> It is not possible to rely on logic for this as logic is not??parti 
>> pris, so it may not lean either way in an argument that is a question 
>> of opinion. Logic cannot "know" where to draw the boundary between 
>> not the outer boundary of such an assessment.
>> We decide, possibly in the light of logic, logic does not decide for us.
>> I think that a lot of the appeal of the current arrangement of biased 
>> algorithms??is that it happens under the surface, mimicking the way we 
>> do not want to think things through.
>> What is it in what you suggest that will encourage people to think 
>> things through and help them with that process?
>> (Scrapbooks of articles plugged into a classifier could be an 
>> interesting diversion, but I don't think it will get us very far.)
>>
>> Adam
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 6:26 PM, Adam Sobieski adamsobieski@hotmail.com 
>> <mailto:adamsobieski@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     Web users could press or click on a Web browser button to save,
>>     note or scrapbook webpages and/or Web-schema-annotated objects in
>>     them, storing them for later use. This storage could be organized
>>     into folders and Web schema could be of use for sorting webpages
>>     and/or objects into these folders. For example, a NewsArticle
>>     schema could indicate that, when saved, noted or scrapbooked, Web
>>     content could be organized into a folder called ???News Articles???.
>>
>>     Webpages and/or objects in them could be stored on users??? local
>>     devices or stored on cloud-based storage such as Microsoft
>>     OneDrive or Google Drive. This could be configurable for end users.
>>
>>     Cloud-based storage and extensible architectures could facilitate
>>     the development of apps, plugins and services to analyze the
>>     contents of collections of stored webpages to provide features
>>     for end users. Some specific examples of analytical services in
>>     the news space include: (1) notifying users of the distribution
>>     of the sources of their collected articles, (2) notifying users
>>     whether their collected articles contain misinformation or
>>     disinformation, (3) notifying users whether their collected
>>     articles are ???left-leaning??? or ???right-leaning???, (4) indicating to
>>     users the distribution of topics in their collected articles, (5)
>>     indicating to users sentiment analysis upon their collected
>>     articles, (6) indicating to users the comprehensiveness of their
>>     news search and gathering processes for a given topic, and (7)
>>     providing other features made possible by other AI and natural
>>     language processing tools.
>>
>>     Multiple means of navigating collections of stored webpages
>>     and/or objects can be envisioned. Users could utilize a
>>     calendar-based widget to navigate collections of webpages or
>>     objects. Users could also navigate via a folders-based user
>>     experience.
>>
>>     Multiple means of searching collections of stored webpages and/or
>>     objects can be envisioned, for example searching for content by
>>     text strings or keywords.
>>
>>     Thank you. I hope that these ideas are of some interest to you.
>>
>>     Best regards,
>>
>>     Adam Sobieski
>>