{"id":437,"date":"2005-09-21T19:38:54","date_gmt":"2005-09-21T19:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/437"},"modified":"2005-09-21T19:38:54","modified_gmt":"2005-09-21T19:38:54","slug":"wikipedia-the-physical-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/437","title":{"rendered":"Wikipedia the (physical) World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.semapedia.org\/\">Semapedia<\/a> is a project to annotate physical locations with 2D barcodes that link to <a href=\"http:\/\/wikipedia.org\/\">Wikipedia<\/a> articles. With the <a href=\"http:\/\/semacode.org\/\">Semacode<\/a> software running on your PDA\/cellphone, you scan a barcode and it&#8217;ll take you to the linked-to article. There&#8217;ve been a lot of attempts at this sort of physical annotation of the world, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldboard.org\/pub\/spohrer\/wbconcept\/default.html\">WorldBoard<\/a> being one of the earlier ones I remember.<\/p>\n<p>  <a href=\"http:\/\/docbug.com\/blog\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/docbug.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/legacy\/semapedia-bug.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"211\" width=\"150\" alt=\"semapedia-bug.gif\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>  <\/p>\n<p>I like the concept in theory, but I&#8217;m always disappointed by the quality and variability of the links. Do I really want a link about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/privacy\">privacy<\/a> just because I see a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.semapedia.org\/wordpress\/?p=17\">no-tresspassing sign<\/a>, or about the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hofburg\">Hofburg Imperial Palace<\/a> just because I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/semapedia.org\/learnmore\/index.php#explained\">standing there<\/a>? Perhaps, if I&#8217;m in the mood for ironic social commentary or I&#8217;m a tourist with an interest in architecture, but most people won&#8217;t be the right audience for any given link. One man&#8217;s art is another man&#8217;s graffiti, and the world-annotation systems I&#8217;ve seen are currently little more than virtual spray paint.<\/p>\n<p>The variability is the real key. If 90% of the tags I come across link to something interesting to me, I&#8217;ll probably follow every one I see. If only 50% link to something interesting, I might look at the human-readable title printed on the tag and then decide whether I think it likely that the article will be well-written and interest me. If 90% of the tags wind up being useless, I won&#8217;t even bother reading the title \u2014 and then it won&#8217;t matter that there are 10% that I would have enjoyed if I had bothered to look.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not totally pessimistic about this sort of technology though. With the right combination of filtering (to make tags I don&#8217;t care about completely invisible), subtlety (to make the tags I <i>might<\/i> care about still be unobtrusive in case I don&#8217;t want to be bothered) and community support (to insure relevance to me and to bond me to my community regardless of the link quality), I could see something like this finally taking off.<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/leitl.org\/\">Eugen Leitl<\/a> on the Wearables mailing list for the link!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.semapedia.org\/\">Semapedia<\/a> is a project to annotate physical locations with 2D barcodes that link to <a href=\"http:\/\/wikipedia.org\/\">Wikipedia<\/a> articles. With the <a href=\"http:\/\/semacode.org\/\">Semacode<\/a> software running on your PDA\/cellphone, you scan a barcode and it&#8217;ll take you to the linked-to article. There&#8217;ve been a lot of attempts at this sort of physical annotation of the world, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldboard.org\/pub\/spohrer\/wbconcept\/default.html\">WorldBoard<\/a> being one of the earlier ones I remember.<\/p>\n<p>  <a href=\"http:\/\/docbug.com\/blog\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/docbug.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/legacy\/semapedia-bug.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"211\" width=\"150\" alt=\"semapedia-bug.gif\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>  <\/p>\n<p>I like the concept in theory, but I&#8217;m always disappointed by the quality and variability of the links. Do I really want a link about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/privacy\">privacy<\/a> just because I see a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.semapedia.org\/wordpress\/?p=17\">no-tresspassing sign<\/a>, or about the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hofburg\">Hofburg Imperial Palace<\/a> just because I&#8217;m <a href=\"http:\/\/semapedia.org\/learnmore\/index.php#explained\">standing there<\/a>? Perhaps, if I&#8217;m in the mood for ironic social commentary or I&#8217;m a tourist with an interest in architecture, but most people won&#8217;t be the right audience for any given link. One man&#8217;s art is another man&#8217;s graffiti, and the world-annotation systems I&#8217;ve seen are currently little more than virtual spray paint.<\/p>\n<p>The variability is the real key. If 90% of the tags I come across link to something interesting to me, I&#8217;ll probably follow every one I see. If only 50% link to something interesting, I might look at the human-readable title printed on the tag and then decide whether I think it likely that the article will be well-written and interest me. If 90% of the tags wind up being useless, I won&#8217;t even bother reading the title \u2014 and then it won&#8217;t matter that there are 10% that I would have enjoyed if I had bothered to look.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not totally pessimistic about this sort of technology though. With the right combination of filtering (to make tags I don&#8217;t care about completely invisible), subtlety (to make the tags I <i>might<\/i> care about still be unobtrusive in case I don&#8217;t want to be bothered) and community support (to insure relevance to me and to bond me to my community regardless of the link quality), I could see something like this finally taking off.<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/leitl.org\/\">Eugen Leitl<\/a> on the Wearables mailing list for the link!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}