Con§tel: Sharing Marginalia

Título	Con§tel: Sharing Marginalia
Año	2006
Autor	Herbert Spencer
Editorial	herbertspencer.net
Ciudad	Pittsburgh
Palabras Clave	Con§tel, pueblo, palacios de la memoria, archivo colaborativo, registro colaborativo, colaboración, constel
Área de Investigación	Forma, Cultura y Tecnología
Línea	Forma y Expresión
URL	http://www.ead.pucv.cl/2006/con§tel-sharing-marginalia/
Carreras Relacionadas	Diseño Gráfico"Diseño Gráfico" is not in the list (Arquitectura, Diseño, Magíster, Otra) of allowed values for the "Carreras Relacionadas" property.

con§tel: an environment to support creativity through shared marginalia

Abstract

This paper examines the CON§TEL prototype, a web-based service that supports collective construction and dialogue within a community. This prototype explores the poetic and the dialectic relationship between reader and author mediated by a web system. This relationship takes place in a social environment where interaction design explores different ways of empowering readers —as scholars— by enabling significant collaboration.

The scholarly community formalizes its knowledge contributions through conventional text formats, such as academic papers; this standardized mediation works as a bricks for building on the top of others as a concrete manifestation of the interconnectedness of the knowledge, both within specific or multidisciplinary domains. Shared ideas and underlying relationships between texts and authors are formalized through citation and commentary; and by these means, academic papers are inscribed in a textual corpus.

Because knowledge is primarily shaped around domains or specific subject matters, we could think of all of its formal mediations as a collective attempt for creating a shared space for fixing memory. As a social construction, it aims for integrity and consistency defining shared pathways and lexicons, common fundaments and also new lines of exploration.

With this idea, I will examine other web-based systems that afford human metadata and encourage collaborative knowledge generation. This inquiry is focused in the system’s interaction design as how users are empowered for reflecting and responding over the given, what tools are available for the user’s understanding and what feedback users get as they modify and participate in new constructive ways.

Introduction

Nos parece que la condición humana es poéica, vale decir que por ella el hombre vive libremente y sin cesar en la vigilia y coraje de hacer mundo

The above statement, besides warning the reader about the nature of the upcoming text, it holds the vision by which CON§TEL was designed. We think of people as enablers of poetry, not in the sense of promoters of lyrical poetry, but rather as enablers of invention, pushing reality towards the unknown, questioning and redefining language, building on the shoulders of others and permanently reinventing the world: this is our broad poetic principle. From this vision, human beings are understood as complex individuals that are capable of transforming reality.

Then, our challenge as designers lies in our capacities for enabling meaningful and constructive interaction, were people can participate in the creation of a shared vision. This project is focused on the social space of written language but more precisely, in how the personal act of reading —and making meaning out of texts through annotation— can be transferred to the public realm, turning this private and asymmetric relationship between the author and the reader into a social dialogue of peers, reflecting individual contributions into a coherent and living corpus. We are also interested in how shared ideas constitute spontaneous social organizations around communities of practice, how the act of reading can be turned into a conversation and how this conversation can be the germ of an argument of innovation. CON§TEL formalizes these relationships and tries to outline this dynamic cycle with a simple set of operational rules; therefore, it is an attempt of formalizing the complexity of interactions around of social text that aims to define the fundaments for collaborative marginalia as an epistemological environment for creation.

The CON§TEL environment

CON§TEL is a web-based platform using three integrated components: a text editor, a set of annotation tools and a typographic map that functions as visual orienting reference for the overall interaction. Initially, this platform was meant to serve our own scholar community, in the e.[ad] School of Architecture and Design. This school is founded upon a particular vision that ties craftsmanship with poetry seeking to define our identity as americans (understanting America as the American continent and not as a single country). This vision holds the community together with a consistent uniqueness and provides a solid ground for dialogue. This vision is manifested and formalized in a collection of texts —the fundamentals— that have been written by the community members during these last fifty years. CON§TEL considers people as creative transforming agents, where the initial inquiry in the reading process is interpreted as a constructionist understanding of the narrative structures in the given textual universe. The reader always transforms what he reads by his mere understanding and reflecting. Interaction that affords formalizing these kinds of responses in a social environment would create a new manner of dialogue, mediated by the openness of knowledge.

All annotations and marginalia that were earlier performed over these texts as a form of individual study, where now meant to participate of a common digital environment. The hypothesis behind this initiative was the belief that this new kind of social annotation would produce a representative and coherent figure that could reflect the current zeitgeist of the community in relation to the original founding vision. In this sense, CON§TEL is built over a paradox: how can people be contemplative witnesses of their own simultaneously performed action? This question addresses an identity issue; the user will find himself in relationships with others mediated by the textual corpus —over which he has a new power— reinforcing the image of a communal body. This paradoxical situation is also made possible because of the internal circularity of the annotation act; the system will provide immediate feedback to the annotator in a way the their contribution is displayed in relationship with the existing corpus.

A Space for Languaging

ahora está el lugar para poetrí­as ni hipnotizantes ni
consoladores
poetrí­as que transforman cada momento al tacto
en nuevos momentos de nuevas poetrí­as

What is peculiar to us human beings is that we exist as such in language, the living operation space of all our interactions. We exist in the flow of living together in the recursive coordinations of behaviors that language holds inside as meaning. Language coordinates all consensual behaviors in all our specific and different kinds of human activities, concrete or abstract, manipulative or imagined, practical or theoretical; they occur as domains of consensual coordinations of doings in the different domains that arise in our living in language. So, languaging is our manner of existence as human beings.

Before language, the first human beings begun to live by coordinating their behaviors through their consensual and innate sharing of emotions. This primarily layer of coordination is the foundational basis for language. So language was naturally established as a linking space/form between personal emotion and social response: in this realm conversation arises. From this standpoint, we could define Culture as all the closed network of conversations together.

Language, then frames our thinking and shapes our interactions. We need to be aware of the plastic nature of it so that we are not imprisoned but, on the contrary, liberated by the possibilities that it allows us to accomplish.

Our challenge is to be constantly pushing forward the consensual space of conventional language so that new interactions are made possible.

Language as Foundation

su tierra así­ transida
¿no expondrá en la carne
un ritmo
que mueva a lenguaje
porque sin lenguaje
todas las rutas hacia nuestra intimidad
aunque se adueñen
deforman y engañan?

Social communities exist in the sharing act of communication itself, in the ways of preserving and renewing their own memory, in the ways of storing and protecting their cultural heritage —as in their particular traditions and costumes— as well as their rules and places for depositing new contributions to their knowledge. But maybe the most distinctive attribute of communities would be the ability for inventing new and particular lexicons.

Language offers its plastic power for inventing new words, new common places, new definitions and ideas embodied in new expressions. Some of these could be mere jargon or technical minutia, but others could be real verbal necessities fulfilling the need for new vocabularies in the community’s ever-growing lexicon. These new words inaugurate new vertices to be explored; they expand knowledge pushing it into new frontiers.

In this case, CON§TEL had to define the initial set of conditions in terms of a collection of classic readings or —fundamental stones for the memory palace— for a given community. This set of readings is relatively small in number but, given the nature and complexity of them, they hold original statements and principles from where newer knowledge can be built from, or be in reference with: new words are inserted in this constellation of texts as new stars that draw new figures with the older drawing.

When we talk today about academic communities, the attention towards the present of their knowledge gravitates much more than any other concern. The idea of having a centralized space for this purpose could appear as an answer to this —necessity of the latest—. Every contribution is made standing over the shoulders of others; everyone is concerned of not being redundant with something already mentioned. This memory palace could melt the differences between foundation and innovation, between production and reception, between the teacher and the student, between the author and the reader. I’m thinking in a reader that meets people within his reading, shares his own disquisitions with his community in a way that his own word —in a prior moment, intimate— now turns refulgent, and in this way he shares the founding lexis of this neo-alphabetized community. That’s why besides the intrinsic and particular textual dimensions implied in this creative reading process, we should reinvent the ways for marking, annotating, entitling and making new connections; also the way in which we could navigate within this environment —universe of words— and how the reader by means of this visualization could be placed at and in a knowledge that wants to be understood, shared and transmitted.

Social Networking Applications

Metadata creation on a broad level is a precondition for semantic-based information retrieval. In the Web medium metadata refers to the information that is laid on top of previous information. Today’s systems are progressively opening into the dynamics of social annotation and the general public getting more enthusiastic about their new potentials of influencing the web through their contributions.

But how could we construct new dynamic connections in contribution with others? Would we be willing to participate in a massive —and therefore, more anonymous— knowledge-sharing community?

To estimate the value of annotation or metadata the context of its creation always has to be considered. Otherwise metadata may be ambiguous, it may contradict other statements, it even may be wrong. The question is how individual metadata can be valuable for a broader audience while minimizing these problems.

Social networks could be one solution. If people with a shared understanding about a topic are brought together in a group, subjective information is more likely to be understood by other group members. The existence of a shared lexicon my open that possibility.

First of all, digital communities are very different from physical communities. Probably the emphasis for digital communities is upon the subject matter than rather a particular philosophy or methodology. Further more, in digital communities every social relation would be mediated by the subject matter, because every action would be pointing towards the original argument of engagement. In this way, the invention of new words would need to be much more concise and specific, tempering the voice to a much broader community, a global one.

A folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information or objects in digital environments for one’s own later retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment shared and open to others. The act of tagging is a very basic annotation, done with the intention of adding a personal handler to the new information. This could be seen as consuming information as well, if we believe information is commodity, but also it could be interpreted as the act of responding with your own voice as a conversation between reader and author around a specific body of knowledge.

The value of personal tagging in digital communities is about keeping independency between the person tagging; the object being tagged; and the tag being used on that particular object. If you know the tagged object and the tag word you can find other individuals who use the same tag on that object, which may lead —with a little more investigation— to somebody who has the same interest and vocabulary as you do. That person can become your filter for items on which they use that tag. You then know an individual and a tag combination to follow.

In a further step, you could define your specific people as your special filterers, either because you knew them previously or because you trust and respect their way of annotating; they could be widely recognized experts, influential leaders or just colleagues or peers, but the central scheme is that you could define your social folksonomic radius. Tags in this second layer —meta— organizes information from a Boolean perspective of overlapping hierarchies, where each concept defines it own “radius of influence”, allowing much more organic arrangements around single concepts (as the new atoms of the system) in contrast to classic hierarchical and categorical way of classification.

Annotation as a Dialectic Interaction

The learning process is deeply related to reading, in terms of getting informed in the first place about the existent knowledge, and then becoming aware of the different connections between underlying ideas. These connections are made in the same reading process as far as the reader has acquired certain background understanding. This kind of dialogue between reader and text occurs in the intimacy of the studying act and usually takes place as marginalia, or the annotations in the margins of the books. Here, the reader responds to the author in a parallel discourse that runs in this marginal white space of the page: by this act, the reader comprehends the typographic symbols by turning himself from passive reader into an active author that finds new connections and completes unfinished relations. This formal interaction embodies the internal process of the reader that generates a personal image or self-generated representation of the newly acquired knowledge.

Later, these personal annotations, now in the evolved shape of a model or diagram, will be presented for discussion in a larger group for seeking approval, validation, and as a way of contributing with a personal approach enriching the collective process of understanding.

Discreet units of meaning —concepts, headings or loose ideas— distinguished through annotation and arranged in personal diagrams act as interchangeable units within the group discussion. New boundary objects will be created from the merging of individual diagrams in a way the group is properly represented.

If we understand the dynamics of these discreet semantic units as a result of human interaction —through dialogue and conversation— we would be surprised to recognize unique characteristics. These kind of semantic units behave as autonomous entities, even though they depend on a medium for their concrete existence and material interchange (spoken words, the wall, a whiteboard or the Web); all the phenomena related to them depend on the way their autonomy is realized. Also, their autonomy is the result of their organization as systems in continuous self-production: ideas lead to new ideas, knowledge flourished from previous knowledge, the publication of a paper will lead to more papers, etc.

The problem here is that these discreet units don’t mean the same thing to all the participants of the discussion; their significance is not supported by the same emotions or previous experiences. How could me step beyond mere labels and turn them into something unique and shared in the community?

Conversation functions here as a circular process of recursive iterations, gathering the multivocal units and fostering them in fixed representations —fixed by the medium and producing a boundary object— that initially work as crossroads for multiple interpretations but, through conversation, they start to become consensual references for collective orientation.

Thinking beyond tagging —as the empty label— demands a process, the dynamic act of conversation and through several iterations.

The major structural challenge would be making visible and legible all prior dispersed personal relationships between these semantic units. The map should be a consistent configuration that works as a central and truthful reference of the community’s present. Interaction design should be focused the subtle process of this reader —that without noticing— is turned into an author and witnesses how his small contribution slightly modifies the map. The map should place his contribution and validate him amongst his peers. In the same way, the system works for double purpose: for the internal community that builds from the inside and the external observers that would easily recognize in this configuration the main characteristics and hierarchies within the community.

Nevertheless, this cartographic-textual array implies certain conditions, like the declaration of a central theme, that is to say, the definition of a monolithic universe that traces its own —frontiers of concern— shaped by the own community of practice. I guess it would be inappropriate to try to arouse encyclopedic knowledge within this kind of organization: purity of ideas would blur away because of the scattering levels of meanings. Maybe relying on the auto organization capacity of the initial architecture would demand in a future phase the figure of an administrator or a palace custodian to keep semantic principles loyal to the original statements of the community.

The visual representation of this knowledge becomes of crucial importance; the spatial dimensions can provide us with the simultaneousness of visual narratives. But this mapping is not the result of a single author, nor the schematic view built from a single point of view but the rendering of an algorithm that strives to reflect truthfully the current state of the dialogue. This image works as a metacognitive tool that presents the actual state of the system, which is vital for providing with valuable contributions. Obviously, the difficulty here strives in designing the adequate point of view that offers the spectator enough distance to access the overall consistency of the interconnected whole. This is the invention of the space of action.

System description

El acto engendra la forma; como el trazo que, al ser puesto a la luz, orienta la normal indiferencia de las direcciones

Following the logic of game design, CON§TEL was modeled to operate over a specific field, with a given set of rules, specifying some constraints, providing the user with fruition and allowing the unexpected as the result of collective interaction. This space for marginalia follows the annotating traditions of the scholastic medieval monks, embodied in the three main labors of the scriptorium: the annotator, emendator and illuminator.

Twelfth century scholarship developed a highly sophisticated visual form in coherent page design, particularly in glossed bibles. Glosses promoted orderly access to complex information and provided tools for medieval scholars to organize, annotate, and cross-reference between different kinds (both textual and pictorial) of complex information working alone or in concert with others. They permitted different users to contribute new information over many years while keeping track of contributors. This was accomplished by the establishment of visual structures for organizing and arranging text and comments according to their informational roles in a visually elegant and comprehensible manner.

This environment, far from being a nostalgic representation of monastic behaviors, tries to setup the basis allowing these kind of collaborative interactions between different voices and elements over the text. In that sense, the system recognizes three different actions over the text:

1. Distinguishing key passages: The reader often highlights certain passages over the text assigning them higher relevance. By this action, we define the first textual entity of the system, the section [§]. By marking a section, the user adds it to his collection (like quotes of relevant ideas, central statements or definitions). He may use these argumental chunks later in the construction of his own texts.
2. Adding headings: The reader also responds to the text adding personal headings through it. Usually pointing towards specific sections, these headings constitute a particular kind of tag, more complex and unique. This way of reflecting over text facilitates high-level reading and also provides of a good way of organizing the textual corpus. The heading [a] serves for handling many sections across different sources and it’s the user’s tool for administration and classification. The spatial arrangement of these elements constitutes the visualization map.
3. Annotating: The user is also likely to engage in a deeper dialogue with the text through the insertion of notes [n]. These notes may vary from simple commentary to mayor arguments questioning or extending ideas.