It is no surprise that I am an avid Internet user.
In an average day, I will spend eight hours staring at the contents displayed by an Internet browser.
If the Internet were an island, I would have traveled from coast to coast, north and south, and into the deep, dark depths of the flora.
I've seen a lot, but I'm just starting to notice connections to my project.
I'm no stranger to Internet memes, yet, when I looked at one recently, I became aware that the process of making a meme is similar to turning something useless into something valuable.
Take a look at this strange USPS PSA poster (the original is at the top) and then scroll down to view the alterations that have been made by contributors: http://i.imgur.com/pmvpJ.jpg.
I don't imagine it would be a stretch to call this type of remix to be an improvement from the original.
The original image is worthless by itself and wouldn't have much practical use if placed on walls as the message is rather odd.
Through remixing, the original becomes relevant and a meme is born.
Trash to treasure.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
In an attempt to organize this massive project of combating Internet trash, I'll take this time to establish the players and their roles in this environment.
Myself:
It is my goal to propose and/or implement a method of reducing the amount of spam and similar forms of unwanted content on the Internet and increasing the amount of quality communication and information.
I am the one to keep the gears of this "drivel 2 civil" machine well-lubricated and moving.
Internet:
The Internet shall not only be the foundation for my work, but will also act as a forum for aggregating users and content.
I don't want to be alone in this fight, so the Internet is crucial to connecting me to others who share my goal, gathering data for research purposes, and collecting content for experimenting.
Spammers:
They are the enemy now, but perhaps they will become (unknowing) allies later on.
It would be great to turn spam into "ham" and make the Internet a better place.
Users:
This is a broad term, but users can be broken up into a few distinguishable groups.
The first are friends who want to help in my efforts.
The next are those who, more or less, post useless/purposeless content which will act as fodder to be transformed into something that contributes positively to others, the Internet, and the world.
The last are those who are, for the most part, neutral and either already post "good" content or will have no active role in turning the drivel into civil.
Myself:
It is my goal to propose and/or implement a method of reducing the amount of spam and similar forms of unwanted content on the Internet and increasing the amount of quality communication and information.
I am the one to keep the gears of this "drivel 2 civil" machine well-lubricated and moving.
Internet:
The Internet shall not only be the foundation for my work, but will also act as a forum for aggregating users and content.
I don't want to be alone in this fight, so the Internet is crucial to connecting me to others who share my goal, gathering data for research purposes, and collecting content for experimenting.
Spammers:
They are the enemy now, but perhaps they will become (unknowing) allies later on.
It would be great to turn spam into "ham" and make the Internet a better place.
Users:
This is a broad term, but users can be broken up into a few distinguishable groups.
The first are friends who want to help in my efforts.
The next are those who, more or less, post useless/purposeless content which will act as fodder to be transformed into something that contributes positively to others, the Internet, and the world.
The last are those who are, for the most part, neutral and either already post "good" content or will have no active role in turning the drivel into civil.
Hidden Wisdom
A while back, I came across an XKCD comic:
Of course this is meant as a joke, but what if we take a look at it seriously.
Depending on the source, anywhere from 75% to 95% of e-mail is spam.
On blogs, like Wordpress, comment spam is also extremely high.
We can all agree that spam is annoying, distracting, and detrimental to the quality of the Internet.
Captchas were introduced first by PayPal and then made popular by Google to not only cut down on spam, but to also do some good at the same time.
Google's reCAPTCHA both verifies users as human and helps determine the difficult to understand words used in scanned books for the Google Books project.
A brilliant example of turning trash to treasure.
Now that bots are beginning to be programmed to find out ways to get around captchas, we need to reevaluate current methods of keeping out the junk.
What if XKCD's joke came true?
What if there was a way to simply make unwanted and potentially dangerous spam indistinguishable from and equally as valuable as human messages?
Granted, "valuable" comments, e-mails, posts, etc. are subjective, but at least they are not massively distributed or have an ulterior motive, usually for commercial gain.
It would truly be a magnificent feat if all spam was converted somehow to "constructive and helpful comments."
Doing so would be a major cleanup effort and preventative measure to keep online communication useful and relevant.
Of course this is meant as a joke, but what if we take a look at it seriously.
Depending on the source, anywhere from 75% to 95% of e-mail is spam.
On blogs, like Wordpress, comment spam is also extremely high.
We can all agree that spam is annoying, distracting, and detrimental to the quality of the Internet.
Captchas were introduced first by PayPal and then made popular by Google to not only cut down on spam, but to also do some good at the same time.
Google's reCAPTCHA both verifies users as human and helps determine the difficult to understand words used in scanned books for the Google Books project.
A brilliant example of turning trash to treasure.
Now that bots are beginning to be programmed to find out ways to get around captchas, we need to reevaluate current methods of keeping out the junk.
What if XKCD's joke came true?
What if there was a way to simply make unwanted and potentially dangerous spam indistinguishable from and equally as valuable as human messages?
Granted, "valuable" comments, e-mails, posts, etc. are subjective, but at least they are not massively distributed or have an ulterior motive, usually for commercial gain.
It would truly be a magnificent feat if all spam was converted somehow to "constructive and helpful comments."
Doing so would be a major cleanup effort and preventative measure to keep online communication useful and relevant.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)