1. - From Bit streams to Life Streams - ( Emerging paradigms in Web based computing ) Ajai Narendran Faculty, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore ( This presentation is prepared for the Space – The final Frontier workshop. Any one is free to use/ reuse the content mentioning the citied source )

2. “ Many of new media's important ideas and influences first appeared in unexpected contexts. Artists and writers have often presaged developments in new media that were invisible to the most esteemed technologists !” ( Source: The New Media Reader )

3. My arguement here would be the view that the next generation social computing / internet architecture will come from artists/ social scientists and media practitioners than just mathematicians/ scientists or technologists. But this is something that will require an entirely different, if not radically different, way of looking at things and doing things...the science of computing would reach out better as it practices the art of computing as well.

5. ... In short this will be a kind of idea mashup session , there many not be much of any concrete take home "knowledge packages" by the end of the session. But, sure enough there will be lot of triggering pulses and pointers that could possibly lead to developing some of the ideas presented here that could feed well into the making of next generation social computing.

7. ... the technology that created a breakthrough does not quite seem to reduce the complexity in weaving together and mining out relevant information, instead it is increasingly becoming all the more complex - and all the more dubious too as corporations like "google " have monopolised or have the key to disseminate information the way they like based on what they get to gain ( we will come to that later ).

9. We are now entering in to the core domain of content and form...but before that it is good to look how massive archives were built and maintained long long ago...it is worth looking at a video clip from Carl Sagan's Cosmos - this clip on the library of Alexandria has some key ideas that one could apply in the digital domain as well... the processes and practices may differ, but the sprit and attitude is quite commendable. i have a request here....as you watch the video if possible please note down in a piece of paper the key words that capture your imagination - words from the narration in the video clip. < Alexandria library video clip : 11 mnts >

27. How does Google search algorithm work :

28. This is in a nutshell how google started off...business models evolved ... Ad sense came in...key words began to get auctioned ... search results began to drift more towards the results they want to show you than results based on the content merit of the pages ... to such an extent that no outsider really knows what algorithm powers google engine . Now lets look into how search results could be manipulated no matter how you “optimise” your web content, and how search engines could categorise search results in a better way. < ibm omnifind demo > < clusty.com >

30. Here is an example of how search results could be redirected: Platform : IBM –Yahoo Omnifind Enterprise Search Developed by IBM and Yahoo to compete with the expensive Google Intranet search appliance. Built around “Lucene” search algorithm and this software is available free. In the above picture I just pointed, from my central control panel, the letters “asdf” to the search results on the word “play” .

32. This time I pointed the word “test” to a desired URL as the “featured” search result. No matter how meritorious / rich the content of a website is, the final search result could be manipulated by the ones who run the search engine. So it is clear – the whole idea of “the most popular” search items need not be the most meritorious ones. The less popular ones as judged by the prevalent search engines could as well be the relevant locations the search ought to have pointed to .

33. It has come to this : Internet search means “ Google” ! But are we assured of well organised search results ? A simple Google search yields a long list of search results, context-categories-subcategories – all mixed up. This is meant to be so because this is the maze that feeds the business model. Some years back there was a search engine called “Vivisimo” … now it is manifest as “Clusty/ Yippy” search engine … Let us look into what this search engine does.

35. A simple search on “Computers” yields the search with a Category listing on the left …most of these categories are expandable. This first level filtering really aids context-relevant extraction of information. The categories listed on the left are not general ones, it is generated based on the search word. Please have a look at the next image.

37. Clusty too must be having its own agendas…but sure, it points to possibilities that could be explored in “Shadow Search “ project. Clusters of search engine interfacing-interacting could deliver better results than just one search engine based on a fixed algorithm. Such clusters could possibly deploy ‘ Genetic algorithms ‘ .

40. THE SECOND COMING — A MANIFESTO By David Gelernter ( Source : http://edge.org ) Note : i have just selected a few of the 52 points Gelenter listed out in his essay “ The Second Coming – A Manifesto “ . Please go through the suggested reading material to explore these ideas deeper )

50. John Brockman - Artist/ curator and the founder of Edge foundation : He touches on the realm of what one could roughly call as &quot;distributed mind &quot; / “collective conscious” The anthropologist Gregory Bateson has characterized the post-Newtonian worldview as one of pattern, of order, of resonances in which the individual mind is a subsystem of a larger order. Mind is intrinsic to the messages carried by the pathways within the larger system and intrinsic also in the pathways themselves.

52. and here comes the mathematician Shannon again : &quot;The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior.“ ( Source: Communication for social change anthology: historical and contemporary readings By Alfonso Gumucio Dagron, Thomas Tufte )

54. Thank You ! - ajai narendran - [email_address]