We have online diaries and web-logs. Think of it, the moment-to-moment history of people with too much time on their hands is being recorded for all time... at last. No more will we wonder "what were the peasants thinking while the pedants penned their biased and self centered histories?"

There is one problem: how do you organize these works in some way that they are readable? Like a good novel, for example (with pictures) -- we need a organizing principle to group the texts.

So, first you make a spider that crawls these texts, there are a few major formats, so extracting dates and such should not be too hard. Next we'd need to establish the location of each piece of writing, this could be done by using one (or all) of the many "where is your blog/diary" type pages. Also, any locations mentioned in the entry that could be resolved to a single place could be referenced. Beyond time and location would be the third dimension: relation. Using info from databases like "blog tree" and some fancy stuff with key words the weblogs and diaries would be linked to each other by "relationships" these would come in various strengths and types.

Now that the index is done we have sprinkling of points across the globe, they shoot out at us as time advances. Some of the points move over the surface of the globe as they travel forward, between the points tiny threads stretch link and snap. Now I take a wand and wave it through this model in a big 3d sloping curve. Up comes a story: images captured by the spider come along too. This is a story that travels through space time and relationships, but never with more than one degree of separation.

Now we have a exciting way to read the new collective history!

(note, the links that I talk about are both between individual entries and whole web logs. You have no control over what links are chosen for your log (that's part of the fun) I know that live journal and everything2 come close, but not close enough (no spider, no free form wand-driven interface)
-- futurebird, Dec 10 2002

everything2 http://everything2.com
[futurebird, Oct 05 2004]

diaryland http://diaryland.com
[futurebird, Oct 05 2004]

blog tree http://www.blogtree.com
[futurebird, Oct 05 2004]

Visual Thesaurus http://www.visualthesaurus.com/index.jsp
pizzaman's link (see the bit marked add link below the idea, pizzaman) [kropotkin, Oct 05 2004]

The essential part of a story is that it is told by a human. A good storyteller selects his/her material for relevance, narrative coherence and moral.

I fail to see how a botted history is going to make for good reading, however good the source diaries (and I agree with waugsqueke below in that regard, present company excepted, of course).

(To see what I mean, try reading one of those online encyclopedias with automated links, where every mention of a given word, clock say, is linked to the same piece, regardless of context or relevance.)
-- dalek, Dec 10 2002


But the link in this case would not just be by a single word-- but by time and space so.

Girl in new york writes about crush on cute boy on thursday at noon >>>>

Grrl in bronx writes about crushing cute boys on thursday 3:00pm >>>

A fellow in saratoga was crushing cans to save the environment thursday at midnight >>>

Early friday environmentalists protest in Okemo >>>

Friday at noon a student in Ontario is bored by a lecture on the history of civil disobence and protest....

...sounds like good reading to me...

(but then I read things like everything as if they were books...)
-- futurebird, Dec 10 2002


I think the web sadly fails to fulfil most of its possibilities for connection. I'm a big fan of the way everything2 lets you create paths between subjects. Also I like the way diary sites like diaryland (and I believe livejournal) let you find diaries by letting people specify their interests and location and suchlike, and by constructing diaryrings to link your diary to others. These turn the private experience of creating a diary into a communal one where you can create networks of shared experiences and interests.

I'm not so sure that geographical location is what makes a given diary interesting, but it would be fascinating to be able to find other online diarists who're doing similar things, and wildly different things; people who've just fallen in love or watch the same soap opera; people who visit the same websites and tend to write about the same topics.

I think this idea would be very interesting in the way it would throw up unexpected links between people. It could match your diary against someone who is obsessed with the same things as you.

I don't think it would be 3D though; multidimensional, creating a vast network able to be navigated through the different dimensions of age, tastes, experience, location, beliefs, religion, values. You could drift at random, constantly switching the axis along which you are navigating.
-- kropotkin, Dec 17 2002


I have seen something close to what you are describing and I thought it would be great to create a page similar to the link below for a diary of some sorts. This has to be the coolest web page ever please take a minute and let it load... :-] njoy

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/index.jsp
-- pizzaman, Feb 06 2003



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