Despite having been a compulsive blog reader and RSS addict for years, I only recently came to appreciate the power of social bookmarking. I understood that such sites let me access my bookmarks from any computer, but since I’ve always been a laptop user and most of my bookmarks are tracked in my Google Reader, I never really saw the need.
Discovering Howard Rheingold’s public library on Diigo changed that.
I mean, Google Reader’s suggestions are nice and stumbleupon has been a good friend for boredom-alleviation since I entered college, but neither one offers me the ability to dive through tags that only bring up articles other people have found interesting. I wouldn’t go so far as to deem Howard my social bookmarking soulmate, but he’s definitely going to become a source me to find out what’s happening in new media – more of a teacher than compatriot (but maybe I’m biased by his profile picture).
His bookmarks seem to almost exclusively relate to new applications of media technology (granted that’s not a very exclusive category given the breadth of the internet). His most common topics, though, seem to relate to educational uses of media and cooperation and to smartmobs and Twitter in particular. This is fascinating to me because not only does it suggest a focus on the possibility for learning that comes with new technology, but also how it can be applied to create change. His frequency of using a “smartmobs” tag in particular suggests this– though he uses the tag very liberally, largely in place of a the general tag, “activism” (and probably because he literally wrote the book on smartmobs and wants to increase the circulation of said term). Though generally his tagging is pretty descriptive, involving one or two themes (such as education), tactics (such as smartmobs), and platforms (Twitter, mobile_devices, etc).
Even though he rarely comments on the posts he tags, his description is almost always useful because it tends to be the most salient aspect of the article, which not only hints that he actually read what he’s bookmarking, but it also makes his library useful in itself because I can really easily tell if I want to read the article based on both style and substance in a way that may actually be more useful than any description he could write (and given that he tends to bookmark multiple pages a day, this practice also seems intelligent as a form of time management – he’s bookmarked 7334 pages since February 19, 2009, meaning he’s bookmarked an average of more than 11 pages per day, which is damn impressive).
Given how much he bookmarks and how much his tags overlap with my own, it’s really anything but shocking that I found Howard’s Diigo profile. In particular, though, my recent thoughts about mapping led me to find his profile. After all, hundreds of people tag things with “media” or “activism,” but how many people are going to have a bunch of tags for “mapping”? And that tag led me to something I doubt I would have found otherwise: Mapnik.
Mapnik was recently profiled on MediaShift Idea Lab as “The Coolest Mapping Software You’ve Never Heard Of,” which immediately caught my attention amongst Howard’s bookmarks. As you can see in my most recent post, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about mapping and alternative ways to map areas, so seeing a tool that “provides the framework for styling map data and then rendering new maps based on those styles” is incredible – especially since the article talks about how another program, TileMill, is making it easier to use. It’s such a nifty little mapping tool set that I’m even putting it onto one of my coveted sticky notes on my desktop to check up on from time to time and to explore more fully out once I have free time to flex my creative tools again – so I think Howard may have not done this tool service in his tagging given it only got one for “mapping.”
Diving into Howard’s library after my initial contact with his profile, I found a wealth of other gems that I may never have noticed otherwise. Despite my love for keeping up with developments in mobile media, for example, I had never heard of a website called textually.org – which is “all about texting, SMS and MMS.” But seeing an article about cellphone usage revealing disease outbreaks tagged not only intrigued me and led me to the site. Even if the article itself is ultimately a bit expected (Well obviously “Students who came down with a fever or full-blown flu tended to move around less and make fewer calls late at night and early in the morning” – though a daily check identifying victims correctly 90% of the time is impressive), the site itself has a wealth of fascinating articles and has since been added to my RSS feed.
One thing I found that was far more hidden in Howard’s library is Truthy, which is a system launched by Indiana University to “analyze and visualize the diffusion of information on Twitter” – meaning meme tracking, astroturf detection, and general misinformation monitoring. Even though the site is a bit on the weak side in terms of accessibility and organization, a lot of digging on the site yields some interesting information. If I were to start exploring again, I’d go to the About page, then the Gallery to familiarize yourself with the meme visualization techniques they use, and then consider exploring the Memes section. Even though the applications of such a tool are somewhat limited, it’s definitely something to think about.
As I’ve said in probably every post so far, I love reading. And so for anyone reading this (which must mean you love reading, since this blog is pretty well hidden and only contains fairly lengthy posts that almost entirely lack truly novel content), Howard’s bookmarks are a wealth of information. He seems to keep his fingers on the pulse of a view strains of new media uses, many of which involve media for creating better civic engagement – whether that means for education, organizing, analysis, or any number of other things. I’ll certainly be keeping up with what he posts, and I’d advise anyone interested in new media to do the same since he draws from such a wealth of sources and tags so consistently (though in reflection I am less sure he actually does all of his own posting or if some of it is done by people who write for the blog the smartmops blog).
Update: Diigo frustrates me because when I get to a webpage via someone else’s bookmark it becomes difficult to actually find the link to give other people to show them the page. Poor functionality, Diigo. Poor functionality.
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