Posts on Louche Cannon

AI Like It's 1930

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

AI Like It's 1930

Epistemic Slot Machines

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Epistemic Slot Machines

Bots Behaving Badly

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Bots Behaving Badly

Tomorrow's ScholComm Headlines: Predictions from 2023

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow's ScholComm Headlines: Predictions from 2023

Comments on Proposed POSI 2.0 Revisions

Wed, 05 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Comments on Proposed POSI 2.0 Revisions

The Developer Experience in Early 2025

Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Developer Experience in Early 2025

Crossref updates its POSI self-assessment after 1,005 days

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

POSI updated after 1,005 days

1000 days since Crossref updated its POSI self-assesment

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

POSI not updated for 1000 days

The Principles of Fauxpen Scholarly Infrastructure

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Force11 has posted a video of the presentation I gave at Force24.

I discuss POSI’s limitations and the risks associated with the self-auditing culture that has developed around them. I also talk about recent developments in the community that threaten to slow or even roll back the adoption of open scholarly infrastructure.

The Principles of Fauxpen Scholarly Infrastrcuture

On AI

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

An adaptation of a paper on “AI” that I wrote for the Crossref board for our meeting in November 2023.

Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructures

Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Jennifer Lin, Cameron Neylon and I wrote a thing.

Identify This!

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Identify This! Identifiers and Trust.

Disambiguation without de-duplication: Modeling authority and trust in the ORCID system.

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

At one point there was an impasse in the community over the who would “own” an ORCID record and what strategy ORCID should use to “deduplicate” records. I wrote this paper to try and cut through the thicket of assumptions and misunderstandings.

Structure of the ORCID Identifier

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This was the document I wrote proposing what was eventually to become the ORCID identifier.

Your starter for ten

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I made several predictions in this interview, and it’s interesting to see which ones played out.

Author Identifiers: Interview with Geoffrey Bilder

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In 2009 Martin Fenner sent me an email asking to interview me about the “Author Identifier” project I was working on for Crossref (later to become ORCID). I had no idea who Martin was, but he asked intelligent questions and so I answered them. The result is below. And Martin and I have been friends/colleagues ever since.

Fenner, M. (2009). Author Identifiers: Interview with Geoffrey Bilder. https://doi.org/10.53731/r294649-6f79289-8cw1h

Paste & Cite

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 06:39:59 +0000

I was recently asked by somebody to speculate about generalizable application features that might help researchers in their work. I responded to them directly, but thought it might be worth repeating part of my response here.

Since the early 1990s I’ve wished that the OS (any OS) would support a “Paste & Cite” feature and, now that I’m involved with CrossRef and its linking and (nascent) plagiarism detection initiatives, I am even more convinced that such a feature would be immensely valuable to anybody who does research. The basic idea behind the feature would be that the clipboard would also copy “provenance” information whenever somebody chose to copy something. Then, when the user decided to paste the content someplace else, it would offer an optional “Past & Cite” menu item.

Brain Subscription And Trust Circles

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 09:06:02 +0000

Jon Udell and Ross Mayfield have are talking about the use of social software and trust-circles as tools to find relevant and authoritative content on the web. Sounds familiar. I’ve long thought trust circles (amongst other trust metrics) are key to addressing the “Internet Trust Anti-Pattern“.

It may sound incredibly un-hip and reactionary, but to hell with the wisdom of crowds. Watching the crowd might be entertaining, but when I need to work, I can get far better results if I constrain that crowd to a few people whose opinions I have reason to respect. I’d use the word “authority” again, but the word is overloaded. Just as the open access community struggles with “free as in beer” and “free as in freedom”, the user-generated-content crowd struggles with “authority” as in “power” and “authority” as in “expertise.”

The F-Word

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:13:46 +0000

Will implementing a good information architecture destroy your Alexa rating? Mike Davidson has done a brief analysis of MySpace which basically shows that “Page Views” could be the new “Line Count” in stupid metrics.

I’ve often wondered if part of the attraction of MySpace is the air of “authenticity” conveyed by the hideously amateurish interface(s)? And now I can wonder how many marketers will take Davidson’s observations and perversely conclude that the more unnecessary page views they can get people to go through, the better. Usability be damned.

Van Morrison, Crank and Google Scholar

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 08:27:00 +0000

In a Guardian article dated Saturday July 8 2006, Pico Iyer talks about how Google and other search engines have distorted the literary interview. He describes how interviewers prepare themselves by researching their subjects online and how search results tend to artificially highlight and emphasize interesting, but effectively trivial information about the interviewee. The author describes how he once, in some long-since forgotten interview, had mentioned Van Morrison as being an influence on his work and how almost every interviewer since has found this tidbit of information and incorporated it into their own interview. This repeated citation of the same fact has served only to exaggerate the actual importance of Van Morrison on the Author’s work. Of course, as these interviews also go online, the problem only gets worse. His Guardian article will make things worse. This blog entry will make things worse. Pico Iyer and Van Morrison are becoming forever intwined.

Early Social Bookmarking

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:08:14 +0000

I was recently pondering the characteristics of so-called “cult fiction” and was trying to remember how it was that I learned about certain cult authors back before this thing called the Internet existed. How did I learn about Vonnegut, Pynchon, Roth? As I dredged through my memories I realized that I most probably ran across these authors whilst using an early analog social bookmarking system- the library checkout card.

For those who have never seen one of these things, they were little index-cards inserted into a sleeve that was glued to the inside back cover of library books. When you checked out a book, you would sign your name on a line on the card and the librarian would stamp the due date next to your name on the card and then file it. This was how they kept track of who had which books out and when they were due. When the book was returned, the card would be reinserted in the sleeve and the book would be re-shelved.

Backchannel

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:20:12 +0000

I was relatively late in learning of the term “backchannel”. It describes a phenomena that I have been fumbling to explain to people as being *one* of several reasons for them to use instant messaging (IM) as a regular tool in the office. Whereas the term backchannel seems to be most often used to describe how tech conference attendees use IRC, Wikis and blogs to carry on parallel conversations and commentary during conference sessions, I have observed the phenomena in the office, in meetings and conference calls. I just that, until late last year, didn’t know it had a name.

Beginning, middle, end

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:22:57 +0000

In the early days of the web, buzzword coinage relied on prefixes. Add an “e” or an “i” to any word or phrase and you had yourself a brand new business to flog.

i-widgets

e-grommits

A few years later- the infix became the basis for the buzz-worthy. The numeral “2” became de rigueur.

b2c

b2b

fan2team

farmer2market

dog2vomit

And now it is the turn of the suffix and again it is numeric.

User Behavior As A Music Rating Cue

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:07:24 +0000

The “My Rating” feature on iTunes has always felt a little clumsy. First of all, I hardly ever listen to music on iTunes itself- I listen to most of my music on my iPod. Secondly, I don’t want to have to *do* anything convoluted or extra in order to register that I like or dislike a song. I am surprised that Apple, given its user interface prowess, hasn’t managed to take better advantage of natural user behavior in order to more effectively drive the ratings system. In short:

The Internet Trust Anti-Pattern

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:33:21 +0000

I am afraid that the Wikipedia is a classic case of what I’ve come to term “the internet trust anti-patttern”. It goes something like this:

A communication/collaboration system is started by self-selecting core group of high-trust technologists (or specialists of some sort).
Said system is touted as authority-less, non-hierarchical, etc. But this is not true (see 1).
The general population starts using the system.
The system nearly breaks under the strain of untrustworthy users.
Regulatory controls are instituted to restore order. Sometimes they are automated, sometimes not.
If the regulatory controls work, the system survives and is again touted as authority-less, non-hierarchical, etc. But this is not true (see 5).
If the regulatory controls don’t work, the system becomes marginalized or dies.

Think of Usenet, think of IRC, think of email, think of P2P networks- they’ve all gone through this cycle. Some have survived and other have effectively died.

Jorge Luis Borges on Software Architecture

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:31:23 +0000

The following, from Jorge Luis Borges, reminds me of some software projects I’ve seen…

“.. In that Empire, the Art of Cartography reached such Perfection that the map of one Province alone took up the whole of a City, and the map of the empire, the whole of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps did not satisfy, and the Colleges of Cartographers set up a Map of the Empire which had the size of the Empire itself and coincided with it point by point. Less Addicted to the Study of Cartography, Succeeding Generations understood that this Widespread Map was Useless and not without Impiety they abandoned it to the Inclemencies of the Sun and of the Winters. In the deserts of the West some mangled Ruins of the Map lasted on, inhabited by animals and Beggars; in the whole Country there are no other relics of the Disciplines of Geography.”

Abulafia

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:00:02 +0000

Abulafia

Way back in 1990, when I worked at Brown University, I wrote a hypertext application for the Macintosh called “Abulafia.” (named after the computer in Umberto Eco’s book, Foucault’s Pendulum. Recently I found some old Zip disks onto which I archived my Brown work when I left the university in 1995. I asked a hardware magpie friend of mine if he had a way of reading old 100MB Zip cartridges and he did. Amazingly, the old Zip cartridges were still accessible (thanks Iomega) and even more amazingly, I was able to find an old binary of Abulafia and run it under OS X’s classic emulation mode (thanks Apple).

Two graphs that explain most IT dysfunction (Part II)

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:04:34 +0000

In Part I, I described two graphs that I think help explain much IT dysfunction.

I also noted that, typically:

People in group A will often talk to and solicit advice from people in group C. (think VC or CEO talking to technical guru)
There are relatively few people in group C. (some companies might not have anybody internal in group C- they hire consultants or read expert opinion)
Most of the people who actually have to implement and maintain new technologies are in group B.

Clearly there are lots of gradations between A & C & B, so I am using the groups as a convenient way to refer to the extremes. In the case of group B, the extreme is people with relatively-solid technical credentials but who are very cynical about technology and are very risk-averse. There are a few things that one often finds with group B:

Two graphs that explain most IT dysfunction (Part I)

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 10:48:03 +0000

Inspired by reading about other people’s blogging weaknesses, I’ve decided to finally get this one off the back burner and post it. I’m pretty sure that this isn’t original, but I started thinking about this way back in 1996 (pre-social-bookmarking) and I’ve lost my pointer to whatever influenced it. Anybody who can set me straight- I’d appreciate it.

So here goes.

There are two graphs which, when seen together, explain a hell of a lot about various forms of dysfunction that you see in the technology world.

I want to subscribe to your brain

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:05:34 +0000

The other day I was talking to a former colleague and I was trying to explain how I have gradually switched to using an assortment of social content tools as my primary mechanism for finding relevant and authoritative information on the web. With these tools, I can subscribe to an assortment of RSS feeds produced by people who I trust and think of as authorities in their respective subjects. In short, I said, “I can subscribe to their brains”.