Design and Society

The importance of the text that links

On the Financial Times Tech Blog Richard Waters discusses the challenge of search link descriptions (Bill's excellent (internet) adventure, April 17, 2007), discussing search auction pioneer Bill Gross's Snap.com service, which shows an image of pages linked to. Bill Gross is addressing an issue that has been known about for years in the discipline of human-computer interaction. There it is described as the 'rhetoric of departure' and there is a converse challenge, described as the 'rhetoric of arrival', ie: 'what is this thing I am on?'. (These terms are attributed by Jakob Nielsen to George P. Landow, author of Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization). Part of the problem is that journalists, as Waters illustrates, don't take the time to make the text of their links descriptive of the destination, by describing the thing, including key names and, ideally, making a readable phrase. At worst, the word 'here' is used as the link. While this may just about work in the context of the piece, the semantic value of having a URL with an in-built description is lost. Imagine a search engine that indexed richly described links as well as using existing search models (PageRank, etc). The results one would get would actually be descriptive of the thing linked to, and may also offer a judgement on it. Filtered by publications or people you trust, search could move to a new level. [This idea was first suggested to be by Bill Thompson in 2004, discussing Tim Berners-Lee's concept of the Semantic Web.]

Encouraging civility in online debate

Jonathan Freedland recently addressed the issue of civility in online debate (The blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males, Comment, Guardian, April 11, 2007).

In his considered reflections on democracy and online debate, Freedland is right to note that "the more democratic encounter is the meeting properly chaired, allowing everyone their say". Media and other organisations developing online complements to their real world activities would do well to replicate in the former the formats that have successfully evolved in the latter.

However, Freedland then advocates the blogosphere concept of moderation in place of the real world format of chairing that he rightly values. Online debate hosted by media organisations really does need more chairing and, as happens at a public meeting in the real world, more response from the writers and presenters to who people are responding.

We should also bear in mind that the lowering of the quality and civility of debate is not the sole responsibility of those occupying the blogosphere. Among some established commentators and politicians there has also been a tendency to debate at the level of personality rather than ideas, to use pejorative language and infer guilt by association, and to ignore or dismiss good counter-arguments. It is up to the media and our political class to lead the blogosphere back to more civil, informed and thoughtful debate.

Published, in edited form, in the Guardian, Letters 'Democracy in cyber-space', April 16, 2007. Note the following letter draws out one of my points, albeit more crudely and with a specific target. I also posted my comments in the comments following Freedland's article. No direct responses have been posted.

Article: London: still stuck in a jam

My recent article in spiked Environment on the Congestion Charge ties into the recent Western Extension of the charging zone.

The piece argues that the Congestion Charge doesn’t appear to be designed to reduce driving in central London during the busiest periods. At the same time as traditional ways of managing traffic congestion and flow been relegated, London is continually being made less accessible. It contends that a number of elements have been lost from London's transport policy: ambition, imagination and innovation, and humanism, and looks at the increasing tendency blame to blame drivers. Noting the lack of appreciate for the researchers, engineers, designers and craftsmen who create the automobile, it considers the consequences of presenting people as the problem. It concludes on the attack on people's living standards and freedoms represented by initiatives such as the Congestion Charge.

The piece is also documented on my site.