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"Similar yet different"
02/06/2003 Entry
I am putting the final touches on a dissertation chapter these days. This one is called "The Changing Online Landscape: From Free-for-All to Commercial Gatekeeping". I finished a version for an edited volume recently (Community Practice in the Network Society: Local Action/Global Interaction edited by Peter Day and Doug Schuler) and am now expanding sections of it for the dissertation chapter.
In it, I trace the evolution of the most popular point-of-entry sites (mostly search engines and portals) and focus in particular on the increasing role of commercial considerations in how content is organized and presented online.
I was amused to come across the abstract of Esther Dyson's January 2003 Release 1.0 report on "The Search for Structure" because she seems to be addressing a very similar topic. The abstract starts with the following: "You can classify information-retrieval tools into two major categories: those that classify things into categories, in some kind of (hierarchical) directory structure, and those that don’t (using search and matching techniques instead)." This is incredibly similar to how I approach the topic. I guess perhaps that's not so shocking, it seems like a logical way to make sense of the online landscape. In any case, I thought it was interesting to see the similarity and the timing of it all.
The part that's different is what we focus on. Or so I'm assuming. I don't actually know what that report is about as it would require me to pay $80 which I won't do. But the following sentence alludes to the area of concern in the report: "Not surprisingly, much of the current activity concerns shopping and commerce...".
(Not?) Surprisingly, the focus of my dissertation chapter is not on shopping. Rather, I'm interested in exploring to what extent people may be able to find content most relevant to their queries especially in cases where such content is not backed by commercial interests.
So I guess the two writings are similar in that we're both thinking about commercial aspects, but whereas in her case commerce may be more of a dependent variable (what factors lead to optimized commerce/shopping experiences), in my case I look at commercial factors as an independent variable (how might commercial incentives influence what people are able to find online). Again, this is speculation, I haven't seen her report.
By the way, if you are interested in a pre-print copy of the book chapter, let me know by writing to papers -at- eszter -dot- com. I don't charge $80 (even though I actually do offer a list of strategies non-profits can use to optimize exposure without large expenditures).
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