things, places & events as actors
Common thinking says: The user is acting. The web serves a purpose. A
service is a tool. But daily experience shows a different pattern. It
rather seems as if the web activates the user and services say what to do.
We tried to follow that experience and developed a web-service regarding
supply not demand, following very much the lines of the French scientist
Bruno Latour and a recent School of Berlin Media Theory.
The web consists of objects (data) and links. The rest is a history of
overloading. Overloading objects with things, places, events or even
personas. Overloading links with functions and recursive operations like
collaborative filtering. The so called 'social' unfolds along the meshwork
of overloaded links. Objects of desire want to be created.
What are the consequences?
We consider objects as active entities, collecting and generating
information. We try to follow new links stretching in space and time,
adressing things, places and events. And we hope for the dimension of
time finally re-appearing after being excluded for so long.
Some of this philosophy we tried to transfer into the concept of a
social web-service. It is in alpha test mode right now, about to switch to beta very soon. We will exemplify our ideas with screenshots and demos.
