Insurance company TV commercial aside, these days you don't hear many people saying, "I know it’s true. I saw it on the Internet."
We all know how absurd that assertion is, but many of us still get taken in, accepting and even spreading claims we see via our own blogs or social media profiles. After all, the huge stream of information pouring over the web makes it difficult to distinguish the wheat from the chaff.
That’s a problem Hypothes.is intends to solve. It's also a problem others have unsuccessfully addressed in the past.
Dan Whaley, an entrepreneur and software coder who in 1995 founded Internet Travel Network (ITN.com) -- later renamed GetThere -- conceived of Hypothes.is as the antidote to the spread of substandard information. Its basis: Crowdsourced annotation that would overlay web content, "including news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and regulation." The annotation system is based on the Open Annotation Collaboration’s work, a system introduced on April 9, 2013, at Stanford University.
Dan Whaley spoke about building a peer-review layer for the whole web, during a meeting in San Francisco (Source: Hypothes.is)
One day after the annotation system launched, the I Annotate conference kicked off in San Francisco. What emerged from the event, hosted by Hypothes.is, is evidence that demonstrates we have the technological advances necessary to contribute to a more intelligent Internet.
The availability and promise of networked technologies means we shouldn't only refactor but rather re-imagine how we do science, write journalism, draft laws, and knit together a global community of informed world citizens. As former Grateful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation John Perry Barlow said on the second day’s keynote: "Mankind needs metabolic ecosystems of meaning -- i.e., that we must build responsive online environments where engagement, identity, and reputation can help sort out responsible reasoning from idle chatter and demagoguery."
Hypothes.is is not the first to attempt to build a system of annotation on the web. Others, like Third Voice, tried to allow virtual sticky notes to appear on sites -- but failed. Opposition to the service was strong, and hundreds of web hosts protested what they regarded as "web graffiti" in a "Say No to TV" campaign. Fleck, which is still around, abandoned its aspirations to come up with a similar system in 2006. However, as Gigaom observed, these earlier attempts did not have anything "like the Open Annotation Collaboration, which is no guarantee of success, just an indication of plausibility."
Third Voice ran into a backlash -- and eventually shut down -- after websites protested its annotation software via a "Say No to TV" campaign that went viral
(Source: Angel Fire)
In a recent blog, Whaley explained why the time is ripe for such a system: Given the improvement of browser functionality and the general maturation of the web, we can now realize "the potential of interoperability, of openness. We can create a parallel web that is a conversation about the world as it found through the web."
That kind of conversation can help people focus on what’s important. A scientist at I Annotate said that 150 to 250 new articles on biomedicine come out each week. It’s impossible to read them all, and annotation can let researchers know which ones are worth the time.
While advanced technology is what enables this kind of collaboration and capacity, Whaley’s model is decidedly low-tech: The printed page of the Talmud. In presentations to the Science Online Bay Area (SOBA) Innovations in Academic Publishing and Peer Review last fall, he showed how the Talmudic layout consists of the original text in the center surrounded by annotated commentary. This arrangement is paradigmatic "of a work where the dialog around the meaning and relevance of a passage creates the value for that passage in and of itself," Whalen said at the time.
Hypothes.is was also inspired by modern day Iceland. On its FAQ page, it explains its name is a play on the word hypothesis; in a domain hack, it ends with the Internet code for Iceland, a nation the company admires for its “forward-looking” Modern Media Initiative and its consideration of a crowdsourced constitution (an experiment that ended in March with less than stellar results).
The failure of crowdsourcing in Iceland may give some people pause about its power to bring about a sea change on the web. Will crowdsourcing empower Hypothes.is to succeed where others have failed? Or will website operators rise again?
It took me a little by surprise that the Icelandic project didn't progress as expected. I thought the Icelandic crowdsourced constitution was just on hold.
@mhhfive well, if nonprofit status makes a difference, Hypothes.is does have that going for it. In fact, that is one of the points, the New York Times article I cited pointed out: "One thing Hypothes.is has going for it is that it is a nonprofit organization. "If you want to create a conversation layer over the entire Web, you can't own it," Mr. Whaley said. "People won't trust it."
There have been countless online sites that have tried to create order from the chaos of information overload on the internet... and somehow wikipedia has stood its ground while others fade away as spammy content farms or obscure hobbyist sites.
Wikipedia's "success" is based on its noble goals and non-profit status... profit-making organizations simply cannot sustain the effort and are open to far too much backlash -- and no one wants to contribute free work to a for-profit entity without something in return (unless those contribuitions are trivial or even sub-conscious). There has to be some collective value that benefits individuals as well... Even Redditors get some online respect.
I don't think this is a challenge technologically, but more a social-engineering problem of how to create a large scale onlne culture that is able to do useful things.
A famous one is Richard Stallman's Emacs of course, but for those with an IQ less than 390, there are many others. Typical features include "killfiles" a place to block posters (for very bad trolls). But you can also score posts and authors.
Over time in each newsgroup you participate in you can find the people who you trust, respect and agree to disagree with.
Like many things that got swept away in the http/web tsunami, the basic concepts remain in bolderized form, in places like Reddit, or as you are describing, are making their way back to the general social media as people see their necessity and become more content literate.
@Kim I like the way you put that, "Yes, it's a useful tool for looking up uncontroversial facts--but underneath the bland surface lurks a manic army of (mainly male, mainly nerdish) fanatical "editors" pushing their own points of view, and refusing to acknowledge alternative opinions, let alone actual expertise."
What I find most troubling about wikipedia is that it often is the very first hit for a search, which make it look like the primary authority on the topic. In fact, though, much of the information on it depends on second-hand information. One of my own personal blog posts is given as the footnote for some family information on Susan Cain. In the post, I offer my own research in combination with what she wrote about her grandfather to offer his name. But I never got to verify that 100% and never thought anyone would rely on my own little exercise to make the statement absolute.
@Mitch only once. I now looked to check on it. My review has been filtered out, which is very odd because it was true and the owner even posted a reply to it. One of the positive reviews remain up, and another negative review was posted after mine. This is the gist of what I wrote:
I can't say what the pizza tastes like, but I can tell you that they have no clue about customer service. Today I tried to call in an order. The phone was busy, busy, busy. Finally, a woman picked up the phone but refused to take the order, telling me to call back in 10 minutes. I tried. It was busy, busy, busy, busy, then ringing with no one to pick up, then busy, busy. Finally, after I don't know how many tries, a woman picked up the phone, and I finally gave in my order to be ready with more than 45 minutes to spare. She took down my name and phone number. But when my husband went to pick it up at the time, they had nothing ready and no record of the order. They said it would be another 20 minutes until pizza would be ready. I told my husband not to wait.
The negative review that is currently up is very similar. So why they should find his more credible than mine, I have no idea. This is what he wrote:
I needed a couple of pies for my daughter's birthday. I owned a business for 20 years locally and learned how important customer service is. I was happy to see you were busy. After waiting on line for 15 minutes the server apologized to me explaining that there are no deliveries today. Undaunted, I said no problem, I'll take your number and call in an order later. I called in my order only to be told "I'm sorry sir but we are not taking phone orders". If you're busy then staff appropriately.Obviously, I took my business elsewhere.
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