Comments on: Lifestreams

Lifestreams

DZack — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:32:32 -0800

David Gelernter, professor of computer science, painter, neoconservative columnist, and unabomber victim, on rethinking the internet. The structure called a cyberstream or lifestream is better suited to the Internet than a conventional website because it shows information-in-motion, a rushing flow of fresh information instead of a stagnant pool.

By: empath

empath — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 08:36:25 -0800

He's been saying this since 1997.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:02:19 -0800

The big Lifestreams paper is from 1996 and is a natural outgrowth of his work on Linda dating back to 1990. Old idea, but it seems more relevant than ever now. The key insight is that you should store all data now, in an unstructured way. Then you can use search and user interface tools later to make some sense out of that data, to render it in meaningful ways. In many ways Gelernter foresaw the rise of systems like Google, massive distributed computing platforms that could do meaningful computation on petabytes of source data in milliseconds. Gelernter deserves his reputation as a visionary.

By: Xoebe

Xoebe — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:13:23 -0800

It's time to start taking the Internet seriously.

By: bhnyc

bhnyc — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:28:21 -0800

The facebook wall seems to be close to what he's talking about. One of the many problems with the wall is there's no easy way to search. Yesterday I had to click "older posts" about 50 times to find something.

By: memebake

memebake — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:41:34 -0800

Rethink the internet? We haven't finished thinking it for the first time yet!

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:45:41 -0800

Woot! I'm already living in the now. Take that, yoga!

By: Xurando

Xurando — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:48:20 -0800

Doh! Where the frick has he been? The Medium is the Message.

By: game warden to the events rhino

game warden to the events rhino — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 11:31:31 -0800

It's so disorienting to me when rightwing people have perceptive and intelligent things to say about life and culture.

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:03:18 -0800

I'm starting to rethink this Internet thing, too.

By: infini

infini — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:25:58 -0800

*gazes at navel* *picks out mefi grey tshirt lint* *looks around* *begins reading article*

By: fcummins

fcummins — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:31:41 -0800

I think he is saying, we all just dinged!

By: mmagin

mmagin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:50:54 -0800

I'd like to see more software addressing the private side of the "lifestream" idea. Facebook et. al. are merely the "things I want to publish or share with a large set of people" part. And, personally, I don't want all this private stuff in someone else's hands who is just interested in using it to target ads better.

By: ArgentCorvid

ArgentCorvid — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:53:31 -0800

Just don't fall in to the Lifestream, you might lose your personality.

By: nicwolff

nicwolff — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:54:44 -0800

Oh, this is idiotic:

In the last paragraph I wrote "each Internet user"; but users of any computing system ought to have a simple, uniform operating system and interface. Users of the Internet still don't.

And his claim that the term "lifestreams" is now in the vernacular because a TechCrunch article used it last year (about Bebo, which AOL shut down this week) is about as dumb as his claim a few years back that "Bush-hatred is racist hatred." Taking it for granted that your pet user-interface idea is inevitably going to take over the world — not only becoming popular but replacing all other paradigms — when even after 15 years of you pimping it hard it has gotten no traction at all, is just more black-is-white neoconservative bullshit — or does he now agree that technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom?

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:04:28 -0800

Don't cross the lifestreams!

By: clarknova

clarknova — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:43:17 -0800

If a famous, psychopathic Luddite had struck at another another target, denying him the presumed moral high ground of presumed counterpoint to ideological pathology, would he be anything but another proto-fascist academic?

By: artof.mulata

artof.mulata — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:53:53 -0800

some people drink the koolaid. some people make the koolaid. some people do both. to wit, #25: there is no there there, buddy.

By: Nelson

Nelson — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:06:53 -0800

If a famous, psychopathic Luddite had struck at another another target How dare you say that? That's outrageous. I don't like Gelernter's politics any more than you do, but he's a damn interesting computer scientist. That's got nothing to do with having been a victim of a domestic terrorist. At least have the decency to criticize his scholarship on the basis of his computer science.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:35:30 -0800

it's time to think about the Internet instead of just letting it happen

*    Advised client to contact Internet for further  *
*    assistance; could not provide phone number      *
*                                                    *
*    Client not satisfied with resolution.           *

By: edgeways

edgeways — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:47:30 -0800

Xurando: I had serious moment of disorientation there because of your comment. I started reading this thread and before I got to your comment I got distracted and went looking for McLuhan's Laws of media as I just watched McLuhan's Wake last night. When I clicked back on the thread yours was the first comment I then read which promoted a... "What? Wait? What was I reading on Metafilter again?"