Re: KidCode: Next steps

At 1:27 AM 6/19/95, Darren New wrote:
>> Even better would be to be able to block just specific parts of documents.
>> What I have in mind goes beyond the blocking of adult information -
>> it should be possible to get tailored presentations where unwanted
>>information
>> is stripped, thus better serve the neds of the reader.
>
>Well, since a "document" is the smallest thing to transfer, you never
>really want "part of a document".  What you seem to want is to get
>different documents depending on your preferences.

I refer to document as what is transmitted from the author/content provider,
not what is viewed by the reader.  it is While the whole document might
be transmitted, you I would like to get a part of it depen

>Of course,
>advertisers *want* you to see their stuff, so they're unlikely to label
>it as "advertisement" or the home VCR manufacturers would already have
>invented a reliable commercial-zapper.

No, advertisers would probably not want to label interspersed commercial
as such. However, the flexibility of digital technology/networks and
associated social factors support the creation of a Web commercial-zapper.
My suggestion is that rating technology should be designed flexible
enough also to support zapping of commercials. Especially support
for rating separated from authors are interesting for this purpose,
as well as ways of coding content that facilitates automatic analysis
to classify the content of a document.

Traditional advertisers will of course do their best to get around, and
as this is a multi$$ business, we should expect them to have quite some
power to try to keep status quo. This suggest that any system that help
people to avoid ads must be designed flexible enough to adapt.

A commercial-based revenue model on the Web gives a reason for
content-providers to avoid doing any self-rating, as this might decrease
the number of people
actually seeing their ads. This might be particularly interesting applied
to "adult" content. The metaphor of local porn shops (Borenstein) might not
be very appliable when the "shops" are not a part of a community but exists
only to generate an optimal revenue from advertisement.

>If you're talking about KidCode and the ability to see different
>documents based on your age, it's not inconceivable that a URL of the
>form http://.../blah/KidCode.any/blah.html could be made with the
>understanding that a KidCode browser would fill in the age for "any" and
>get different documents as appropriate.

This would be a bad decision, as content providers might have a different
opinion about appropriated age than various people (in various cultures).

>This still wouldn't require any
>changes to servers (if you were willing to make a bunch of symlinks), but
>I think *this* is getting too complicated to implement quickly.

Implement the technology is in any case the easy part. When we know what we
want, implementing it is not a big deal. A number of social and political
decisions are made as such technology is implemented, or should preferable
be
made in advance and as the technology is implemented and we learn more
about its larger scale consequences. That something can be done doesn't
mean that it should be, everything is possible with digital technology
(well, almost ;-)

-- Terje <Norderhaug.CHI@xerox.com>
   <URL:http://www.ifi.uio.no/~terjen/>

Received on Monday, 19 June 1995 14:50:44 UTC