Comments on: Happy Birthday Nina Simon

By: Pete

Pete — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 01:50:15 +0000

OBJECT. A particular OBJECT.
Did… you read this article?

By: Writerguy

Writerguy — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 01:11:56 +0000

“I struggle to see what obtaining 1000 people’s thoughts on a particular object achieves.” Sounds to me like you are not asking the right questions. Ask a question that you don’t know the answer to – better yet, one that no one does. And don’t just collect thoughts – get them to build on each other, a la World Without Oil, Superstruct or Ruby’s Bequest. Get some collective intelligence going, and your struggle may be over!

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:13:55 +0000

I know it was glib, and I certainly wasn’t suggesting that the Powerhouse Museum was going to throw anything away, but I stand by my remark, even if it was ill-constructed. If a mass-participation project’s outcomes could be whittled down to the best-ten, then that means (truthfully or otherwise) that there was a lot of clutter, and most of your participants shouldn’t have bothered. I suppose what I was meaning to say that a top-ten results shouldn’t be possible.

I feel even this action goes against a 2.0 mindset as they still boil down to a singular curator’s whims. “Curators” in web 2.0 are the ones who are shifting through to find content they like. They don’t tend to alter the source of the content.

I suppose the other point I should have outright stated is I think there’s a danger of museums (or anything) getting worse with more users, when social microcosms form and act in very strange ways, like the “human flesh search engine”. How can museums get better with more users? By more users solving problems without creating more…

I thought I did come up with an example- Microtrustees. Look at UK football team Ebbsfleet United, “run” entirely by a subscription social network. The massive increase in income, support and participation in the “ownership” or something (they suggest team lineups) meant that Ebbsfleet won their first trophy.

How was your birthday? I saw the ziplines.

By: Nina Simon

Nina Simon — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:19:02 +0000

Thanks, Pete for your thoughtful and generous post. I take issue with only one bit (besides the fact that you didn’t solve my problem or give a smashing winner-take-all example) – the idea that if you only save the ten best you just need more interesting people. In all cases of cultural production (certainly art), you need lots of content, interesting and dull, to create the landscape and help you make value assessments. The trick isn’t to get the best people, it’s to create the environment most likely to encourage people to improve. That’s what I learned from long and torturous years at good, bad, and ugly slam poetry open mics.