Comments on: Network vs. Machine

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:44:21 +0000

@cole – I commented on your blog. it appeared to have failed (I sent you an email with details) but the comment eventually showed up. bizarre…

@alec – agreed. most (all?) of the activity on the Network is about People, not Content.

By: Alec Couros

Alec Couros — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:12:10 +0000

In asking ‘the network’ a question, I believe people are not always simply looking for ‘the answer’. In some cases, there may be more to gain from personal responses than the results found through sterile web searches.

By: Cole

Cole — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:44:10 +0000

So here is the real question (or should I ask Google) how in the hell did all my comments get set to closed? And then when I fixed that, a check box in my WP settings was set to “users must be logged in to comment” … I didn’t do that stuff. Hacked? Any help … and D’Arcy … can you try to leave a comment for me? It is working on my end and I need your help!

By: dnorman

dnorman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:01:20 +0000

Doh! Alan, that was the last straw for Mollom. It’s been doing really well against spam, but if it gets in the way of real people, it’s gone. Back to Akismet for a bit…

I get curious sometimes – I’ll be talking with someone and they’ll be lamenting that they can’t find something. So I hit command+k, type a few keys, hit return, and almost every time have the answer within a few seconds…

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:55:53 +0000

FRAG! For you being a captcha hater, Mollum SUX big wazoo. That one took 6 attempts, even tried the audio. I doubt if I have enough energy to try again.

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:54:24 +0000

It\’s a dessert and a floor wax, use \’em both as been suggested. But the Apostrophied Author as a point I wonder about when people email me (and a lot of times people in the ed tech field) about a piece of information where the way I find the answer is the way I wish they should do themselves- a crafted google query.

Solving a tech error is a bit more specific than asking for the best restaurants- one is obviously more open to subjective-ness.

Someone today DM-ed me because a twitter link did not work. Heck, how do you think I got the link in the first place? In Google. It seems some obvious people that Google is the Info Reflex, yet glaringly it is not exercised.

In the end, where the answer comes from is not as important as getting an answer. Interestingly, I am ending up often these days in Yahoo Answers from a Google search.

By: Dean Shareski

Dean Shareski — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:14:46 +0000

Interesting question.

As Cole states, concepts of trust come to mind as well as peer review. I believe one response to whether you google or not is the type of information you’re looking for. For example, I recently twittered for “best restaurants in Regina.” I got responses from 2 locals with some details. Much better than google. However I have seen a number of examples of laziness.

In Cole’s case, perhaps there were multiple approaches and users would know if there were any caveats or other insights.

Still, this is a good reminder.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:44:39 +0000

I’ll posit that the advantage of going straight to one’s social network is that the social network is able to interpret the search query much better than a search engine. Whereas followers on Twitter can infer the actual issue needing addressed from even a terse, vague entry, it sometimes takes several tries to determine the best way to write a particular search string to garner the information you’re actually looking for (even though Google has surprised me on many occasions!). When posting a query on Twitter, you’re more or less assured that the response(s) received will be few, but likely will be helpful; a Google search may reveal hundreds or thousands of responses, but require some time to sort through and find the ones that are most helpful.

That said, I’m quite good at Google searches, often obtaining answers faster than I can when asking people who are otherwise experts in the respective area In need assistance. As stated before, I believe it just depends on how “Google-literate” one is.

By: Chris L

Chris L — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:30:56 +0000

Now you can delete my post, because you said it all much more pithily: “the interactions with the people in the Network aren’t as much about problem solving as they are about presence and connectedness” Google skills are easy to learn– the social skills to grow, maintain, and be a productive part of a social network aren’t!

By: Chris L

Chris L — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:29:15 +0000

What’s weird to me is that querying one’s network and querying Google are listed her as distinctively different choices when they are essentially the same activity: queries of external resources that demand a properly phrased query to elicit results. An argument could be made, continuing along these lines of thinking, that the “best” solution would be to figure it out for oneself. Then a person is REALLY self sufficient Or we could make the parental argument like the one that used to be made of slide rules and then calculators…

But I actually agree with you for the most part. The two activities demand different use of similar skills. They are both important. And though both might give the same answer, what one gets out of that process might include more than just the direct answer, including the subtle satisfaction that Cole notes about participating in his network, the connections it might lead to, the artifact that is created that might help others, etc.