Friday December 17, 2021; 9:46 AM EST
- When many who are now gray started blogging, some of us were teased into thinking that 1) a new era of human literacy might be dawning where something a bit like a printing press was available on the screen in front of millions of people and 2) that this had a chance to be as transformative of human society (eventually) as movable type was five centuries before. Better show up for this party. #
- If you were at the party, you noticed that you could trade notes with people across town and in distant countries who cared about things you cared about, who knew things that could enrich your thinking. Though the screens were dim, the words fleeting, and the tone sometimes cruel, the promise still felt real.#
- But it was commonly observed that all this thinking and talking kept sliding down the screen into the archive. Not The Archive, just your archive and my archive and the next person's archive. Millions of nearly unconnected archives. The least promising way to organize once-promising, once-useful information. Something close to unreachable. And when domains lapsed and software tools died, actually unreachable.#
- I know I wrote something on my blog about stuff sliding down the screen once. I'll be damned if I can find it. (ha-ha) I could barely search my own archive, much less yours. But with Daytona that is changing.#
- Part 1. Rich search.#
- Yesterday I posted a short Twitter thread comparing the usefulness of 1) a Google search in the domain that includes Scripting News to 2) a Daytona OPML search for the last several years of the Scripting News blog. That simple thread showed two screen captures and concluded that a quality search tool returns entries that wrap the search term in a good amount of the context--the sentences, the paragraphs--from the source web page. #
- It's a simple principle. #
- If the context provided by a search item is skimpy, then you have to go to each web page to see if what you need is there. Often, you can't make a judgment about use from what you see on the Google search listing.#
- If the context provided by a search item is rich, you can think about the value of that item without taking a trip to the website. In a Daytona search of an OPML-based file or site, the work you want to do can begin immediately.#
- Search term returned richly wrapped in its context.* That promises to be a new standard in search quality, whether applied to one's own writing, collaborations among writers, or the wider web. #
- Lately I've been writing nearly every day in Drummer, which means in OPML-formatted files. Daytona searches OPML files and returns the search term in an entry rich in context. One problem solved, seemingly forever.#
- Now, about the work you or I want to do.#
- Part 2. Work flow. #
- Writing every day is a good thing--that's obviously true of all creative endeavors. Fluency grows, the judgments you make on the run improve, and you have a lot of material to use in longer projects.#
- Writing and posting in public invites others to participate, to share perspectives. The web is sometimes a brutal place, but there are regions of great generosity and playfulness, of gravity and commitment. Choose a good neighborhood and set up shop. Help make a better community that will help make you better.#
- And the best of that daily writing can be used in other formats, longer pieces, and for new audiences, especially if you've been writing about something off and on for a while. But only if you have a way to search and find things in the archive and if you have a work flow that builds on what search helps you find.#
- If, as I believe, for people writing in OPML formats, search has suddenly, in perhaps two weeks, become much richer, we're to be forgiven for not immediately seeing how to take full advantage of that.#
- I saw a Daytona search the other day for "Covid" on Scripting News. Several dozen hits appeared, in reverse chronological order. The tone of the earliest ones was ominous, and the concern evolved in later entries as the pandemic unfolded. It was obvious just glancing through that search that this was the raw material for a long article or short book on the experience of C-19 in one part of the U.S. If this was a story to tell roughly in chronological order, then begin by copy-and-pasting the entries into a new file--a bit time-consuming, yes--and start adding and revising.#
- But glancing also suggested an analytical organization. American leaders denied several aspects of the real situation before them, and American institutions like journalism functioned poorly. Let's say we thought America doesn't like to look very closely at reality. Let's say there are a few kinds of reality that we tend to ignore. Don't like science. Don't like experts. Don't like feeling weak as a nation rather than special. Don't like staying on topic and thinking things through. Etc. You could open a new file and a bit time-consumingly copy and paste each entry into the section most fitting (don't like science, for example) and then begin to expand and revise. You'd have an early draft of an article or a short book. You could choose a different analytical organization--such as a list of institutions that failed--and copy-and-paste the same entries into those categories. You'd have the rough draft of a different article, making a different point.#
- Except for the clerical work, it feels utopian to me as a solo writer. Are there implications still to unfold for people who collaborate? I imagine so.#
- _________#
- *That's how language works anyway. "I love you" is maddeningly vague without a rich and significant amount of context.#