A few days ago I wrote a post about how I found Gyorgy Faludy‘s Learn By Heart This Poem Of Mine. I’d been looking for the poem for a very long time, without knowing author, title or first line. Yet it happened. Because of the blogosphere.

Now I want to be able to do something else. This is very very provisional. Somewhere in my head, I place this poem in the same treasured collection as WB Yeats‘ An Irish Airman Foresees His Death and Dylan Thomas’s And Death Shall Have No Dominion. Something to do with the lilts and cadences and metre and scansion and hauntingness and je-ne-sais-quoi. It doesn’t matter whether I am right or wrong in this grouping, that’s a very personal thing. What matters is whether we can use the power of many and group selection and wisdom of crowds and collaborative filtering to come up with something like this. if you liked poems A and B then you are likely to like poem C.

Sounds easy, but I haven’t seen anything that does that. Is it because there’s no market? Maybe there are too few dinosaurs like me who like poetry. Is it because it already exists, but I haven’t seen it? Possibly. Someone out there will correct me.

Or maybe it’s because this is not easy. Collaborative filtering is possible when there is a clear and deep and liquid market where transactions are done, so that access/acquisition of items can be represented in a correlated manner. People who did this also did this. Is it possible when there is no central market? Collaborative filtering is possible when the items are homogeneous in nature. Are poems sufficiently homogeneous? Is homogeneity a necessary condition?

Can I create one, just using names and titles and links? And a folksonomic description basis? With not a dram of DRM in sight?

Just wondering. Any ideas out there?

Just an experiment. Dave La Morte asks if we can find the Homer Price live action video he saw while at grammar school. Most of the “usual suspects” show everything that is Homer Price and VHS as “out of print”.

I have found something that may work, but I can’t tell because I’ve never seen any Homer Price stories on video. The best I’ve been able to come up with is this place, with an eye-watering price tag; it can also be found here and here. It is also available in a number of libraries, such as this one in Colonie.

Any better offers? Dave, is it what you were looking for?

After nearly ten years at Dresdner Kleinwort, I shall be leaving the bank at
the end of this week. It’s been a wonderful time: I’ve had the opportunity
to work with many truly talented people, been given the freedom to
experiment with real innovation in technology and its application,
experienced being part of a close and resilient culture over a decade of
tumult and change. But now it’s time to move on. My thanks to all concerned.

I’ve never worked for a competitor in my life, either by accident or design.
That trend serendipitously continues, and from 1st October I am taking over
as CIO, Global Services, BT.

My best wishes to all at Dresdner Kleinwort, especially to those who have
worked with me, supported me and encouraged me. You know who you are.

Here’s a story by Mark Frauenfelder showing how he found a set of books he was looking for via his blog. Once again it is a case of the conversational richness that a blog community represents, how natural-language amorphous requests and queries resolve themselves beautifully “given enough eyeballs”.

Of course I appreciate the skill, talent and expertise of professionals in libraries, bookshops, archives and what-have-you. Of course I appreciate the intellectual horsepower and creativity of search tools and techniques.

But I also appreciate the collective power of community in resolving the more amorphous and “provisional” queries that we have. The provisional aspect of blogs extends beyond statements and views and reaches into questions and searches and finds.

If anyone else has stories to tell about the sheer joy of using community to find things and solve problems, please do share them. I think it’s worth collecting and documenting on an opensource basis.

The British Library launched a new IP manifesto sometime Monday at a “fringe” event forming part of the annual Labour Party conference in the UK. You can also find further information on all this via this story on BBC News.

Here’s an extract from the IP manifesto:

As the Library prepares for legal deposit of digital
items we are discovering that DRMs can pose a real,
technical threat to our ability to conserve and give
access to the nation’s creative output now and in
the future. Contracts can also prevent users’
legitimate access to databases. In fact, twenty eight
out of thirty licences offered to the British Library
and selected randomly were found to be more
restrictive than rights that currently exist within
copyright law. It is of concern that, unchecked, this
trend will drastically undermine public access, thus
significantly undermining the strength and vitality
of our creative and education sectors.
â–  DRMs are given close to total legal protection
within the UK, with no practical processes allowing
for legal circumvention in the interests of disabled
access, long-term preservation or where the DRM
prevents fair-dealing use.
â–  DRMs do not have to expire, and can effectively
prevent the work entering into the public domain at
the expiry of the copyright period.
â–  Licences, rather than contracts of sale, are emerging
as the key transaction method in the digital
environment. The majority of these licences deliver
lower-level access and copying rights than are
available under existing copyright law.
We recommend that contract and DRMs /TPMs
are not allowed to undermine the longstanding
limitations and exceptions such as fair dealing in
UK law.
Fair dealing access and library privilege should
apply to the digital world as is the case in the
analogue one.
A book or its digital copy are both equally valid
and relevant research items yet there are different
opinions on the applicability of fair dealing.
Without clarity, access to material by researchers
and the public could be eroded as a price is
increasingly attached to more and more granular
levels of knowledge.

I think it’s a step in the right direction, but my concerns continue. It is good to know that new and better tools are coming along, that libraries and archivists are getting more and more engaged, but I do not see enough understanding of the mashup culture, of co-creation and of the way Generation M thinks.