What Steven got right

Metafilters: bloggers. New form of filter that allows for different sensibilities, critical views, editorial views. “Meta-journalism”

What Steven missed

Interface ecosystems. It’s now easy to think of the world in terms as modules. Don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. You deal with this problem, I’ll deal with that one. Easier to stitch together innovations. Created a great, densely-connected ecosystem. Captures information very efficiently. We’ve lost control of our pages in a good way.

Things Steven half understood, but now are better understood

Interfaces are in the strange zone between medium and message. What is the impact of this new medium? It’s hard to determine what the impact is.

The Hive Mind

Sacred space of the individual vs. the “electronic anthill”

The blog is the most personal form of mass communication ever invented.

The Long Tail/Triumph of the Niche

Even though there’s the long tail, the web is still dominated by hits.

The most filtered AND the least filtered conversations. On one hand, there is conversation, on the other spam.

Interfaces are different than other mediums. Television is inflexible, vs. the web. You Tube vs. HDTV. The web is a shape-shifting form of media. Great possibility for innovation and exploration. Everything is up for grabs. We can see this in the evolution of metaphors about the internet: library, highway, series of tubes, a city.

Design for Serendipity

The importance of chance and discovery. Little noise, but not too much. Joy of a city is walking down the street and finding something by exploration. We’ve lost some of this.

Design for Clusters

Like-minded people forming communities. Specialized areas in a bottom-up structure.

Design for Visible Trails/Adaptive Paths

You see where people’s going. You see activity on the street.

Design for Connection to Real Cities

Enables cities to function better. More things to discover in a city. Things can be organized by real space.

Interfaces are central to all the things we’re talking about. Mainstream culture now accepts that Google and such are changing society. Innovations all happen with interfaces. It’s not just bloggers, but those who create the software for blogging. People who create the things that allow the open medium of the internet to happen have a great role to play in society.