Extending Memory on the Web via Human-Centric Knowledge Exchange Network. Presented at W3C Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business, 7-8 August 2013, San Francisco, USA

1. Memory Connected
Extending Memory on the Web
via Human-Centric Knowledge Exchange Network
Jie Bao and Li Ding
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Memory Connected
Presented at W3C Workshop on Social Standards: The Future of Business, 7-8 August 2013, San Francisco, USA

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Where is my data?
• I’m locked in a garden
• Ownership?
• Needs for open exchange
• I don’t use a garden
• Prefer not: security, cost
• Needed, but no service
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person A Person B
Silo Y
Silo X
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/socialweb/XGR-socialweb-20101206/

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Human-Centric Design – Three principles
Human readable knowledge
Tangible rewards and cost reduction
Bottom-up growth scales
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Human Centric Design – Principle 1
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Human readable knowledge
• To extend human’s memory, not only store, but also recall
• To facilitate human communication
Communicate

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Human readable knowledge: Design Issues
• For developers
• Readable code and data (e.g. JSON, python)
• Reusable code and data (e.g. snippet, modules)
• For users
• Readable data (e.g. visual vs. raw text)
• Explorable data (e.g. faceted browsing)
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“programs must be written for people to
read, and only incidentally for machines
to execute” (Abelson and Sussman , 1984)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/front/node3.html

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Human Centric Design – Principle 2
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Tangible rewards and cost reduction
• To obtain instant rewards and feedbacks
• To enable cheap start
Books
take months
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130M/ so far
(est. by Google)
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/you-can-count-number-of-books-in-world.html (2010)
http://en.wordpress.com/stats/ (2013)
https://blog.twitter.com/2011/numbers (2012)
Blog Posts
take days
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47M/month
@wordpress
Tweets
take minutes
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140M/day
@twitter

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Tangible rewards and cost reduction: Design Issues
• For developers
• Ownership of code and data, e.g. fork vs. branch
• Keep it simple, e.g. RESTful vs. SOAP
• For users
• Social/cognitive rewards often work better than money.
e.g. stackoverflow vs. google answer
• Expect immediate response from system, e.g. wikipedia,
electronic spreadsheet
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Human Centric Design – Principle 3
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Bottom-up growth scales
• Top-down: consensus may take years, by experts
• Bottom-up: shared and evolving, by users

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Bottom-up growth: Design Issues
• For developers
• Leverage well-adopted technologies, e.g. json, csv,
• Data can have mixed representations
• Live schema from live data
• Coding in evolving, agile, mashup fashion
• For users
• Publish data now, refine it on demand
• My data first
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Use-case Study
• Support mailing list users
• Daily routine: improve signal/noise ratio
• Conversation: need timely response
• Topic: find relevant discussions for a topic
• Contact: trust in unfamiliar contact, activity stream
• Support team common knowledge
• Shared understanding: reduce unnecessary cost in
consensus making
• Is consensus just the project manager’s view?
• Group memory and knowledge transfer: versatile
search/navigation tools to recall team knowledge
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Vision: Knowledge Exchange Network
• Extended Memory: capture and organize
• Connected Memory: exchange
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person A
Person B
person C
Broker X
Broker Z
Broker Y
Questions and Comments?