Had missed this announcement. The annotation scene has this interesting ambivalence between being old and new, forward-looking and somewhat nostalgic. Wish Diigo were forward-looking enough to get into Open Annotations.

This pithy statement brings together all sorts of previous annotations. Would be neat to map them.

Kind of surprised not to see other [h] annotations, here.

Shoutout to h?

Flattery will lead us nowhere… But it’s still a warm and fuzzy feeling to be in such illustrious company.

Obvious case for h. Imagine the possibilities of linked open data used in annotating presentations which would be part of scholarly books along with all the necessary material? The mind wanders…

Funny how frequently this terms comes up, when talking about Genius. The difference between annotation platforms is significantly a matter of usage. Usage of Genius has a lot to do with snarky comments made by “the smart kid at the back of the class”. My perception of Hypothesis is that it’s much more oriented towards diversifying voices. But that has less to do with technical features of the platform than with the community adopting it.

Just got in touch with @DoyleOwl. Neat approach to annotation. My sense is that Genius can have a useful effect similar to that of those programmes using basketball to keep kids off the streets.

Glad this was mentioned. To the Eric Raymonds of this world, such a response sounds “perfectly legitimate”. But it’s precisely what can differentiate communities and make one more welcoming than the other. Case in point: Arduino-related forums, in contrast with the Raspberry Pi community. Was looking for information about building a device to track knee movement. Noticed that “goniometer” was the technical term for that kind of device, measuring an angle (say, in physiotherapy). Ended up on this page, where someone had asked a legitimate question about Arduino and goniometers. First, the question:

Trying to make a goniometer using imu (gy-85). Hoe do I aquire data from the imu using the arduino? How do I code the data acquisition? Are there any tutorials avaible online? Thanks =)

Maybe it wouldn’t pass the Raymond test for “smart questions”, but it’s easy to understand and a straight answer could help others (e.g., me).

Now, the answer:

For me, google found 87,000,000 hits for gy-85. I wonder why it failed for you.

Wow. Just, wow.

Then, on the key part of the question (the goniometer):

No idea what that is or why I should have to google it for you.

While this one aborted Q&A is enough to put somebody off Arduino forever, it’s just an example among many. Like Stack Overflow, Quora, and geek hideouts, Arduino-related forums are filled with these kinds of snarky comments about #LMGTFY.

Contrast this with the Raspberry Pi. Liz Upton said it best in a recent interview (ca. 25:30):

People find it difficult to remember that sometimes when somebody comes along… and appears to be “not thinking very hard”, it could well be because they’re ten years old.

And we understand (from the context and such) that it’s about appearance (not about “not thinking clearly”). It’s also not really about age.

So, imagine this scenario. You’re teacher a class, seminar, workshop… Someone asks a question about using data from a device to make it into a goniometer. What’s the most appropriate strategy? Sure, you might ask the person to look for some of that information online. But there are ways to do so which are much more effective than the offputting ’tude behind #LMGTFY. Assuming they do search for that kind of information, you might want to help them dig through the massive results to find something usable, which is a remarkably difficult task which is misunderstood by someone who answer questions about goniometers without knowing the least thing about them.

The situation also applies to the notion that a question which has already been asked isn’t a legitimate question. A teacher adopting this notion would probably have a very difficult time teaching anyone who’s not in extremely narrow a field. (Those teachers do exist, but they complain bitterly about their job.)

Further, the same logic applies to the pedantry of correcting others. Despite the fact that English-speakers’ language ideology allows for a lot of non-normative speech, the kind of online #WordRage which leads to the creation of “language police” bots is more than a mere annoyance. Notice the name of this Twitter account (and the profile of the account which “liked” this tweet).

Lots of insight from @BiellaColeman on people who do things “for the lulz”. Her work is becoming increasingly relevant to thoughtful dialogue on annotations.

Same experience, even in the Genius guidelines. The tool’s affordances (and name) revolve around snark. In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with that. We need spaces for people to have fun, even if it’s at the expense of others. But the startup is based on a very specific idea of what constitutes useful commentary. That idea is closer to pedantry, snark, intellectual bullying, and animated gifs than on respectful exchange.

That part never worked. But maybe these annotations will? That’d be neat.

It may annoy many, but overtagging can be playful.

We’re here! We’re always here. You can hide us, but we’re in your webpages, annotating away.

In my wishlist to Jon Udell (still in draft), these two modes can be separate phases with Hypothesis. But in reverse order. First pass is the distributed commentary about the whole piece, similar to social bookmarking and potentially affording a very cursory look (or even just a glance at a headline). It says: “Hey, please read this and tell me what you think!” The second pass could be the deep reading, with one’s personal comments visible, but not influenced by other comments. Then comes the “fun part”, which is also a form of distributed commentary, but is much more conversational. “Distributed” might not be as appropriate, though. At least in computer lingo.

This one remains to be demonstrated. As we keep saying, exclusion may be passive but inclusion is by definition active. Open annotations may not sound so exclusive for those who appropriated it as a technology, the same way literacies are often taken for granted. But we often tend to take “democratization” as a given.

Despite an important continuity.

Could soooo imagine a presentation on using #Hypothesis with #PressBooks!

Just got to think about our roles, in view of annotation. Using “curation” as a term for collecting URLs sounds like usurping the title of “curator”. But there’s something to be said about the role involved. From the whole “guide on the side” angle to the issue with finding appropriate resources based on a wealth of expertise.

Wish [h] had a similar feature. And that NB supported #OpenAnnotation.

Sounds like something interesting for Dr. Jeremy Dean.

Like an algorithmic version of Hypothesis? Is McGraw-Hill part of the Coalition? Looks like it isn’t. Is it a “for us or against us” situation?

Oops! Started annotating the Forbes version but this one might be better (no preload). Wish I could transfer my annotations from one version to the other…

Useful list, almost a roadmap or set of scenarios. The last two might be especially intriguing, in view of the Semantic Web.

The “Open World Assumption” is central to this post and to the actual shift in paradigm when it comes to moving from documents to data. People/institutions have an alleged interest in protecting the way their assets are described. Even libraries. The Open World Assumption makes it sound quite chaotic, to some ears. And claims that machine learning will solve everything tend not to help the unconvinced too much. Something to note is that this ability to say something about a third party’s resource connects really well with Web annotations (which do more than “add metadata” to those resources) and with the fact that no-cost access to some item of content isn’t the end of the openness.

Sometimes an annotation is just an annotation.

Let’s imagine that future. What else could [h] do, if we were to make a wishlist?

Chain of attribution, as @Shepazu would have it.

Will our annotations issues be solved, in nine years?

Interesting that SVG guru Shepazu would talk about Hypothes.is…

Besides the piece’s content, the interactions which happened through a layer of Diigo annotations were quite interesting.

The future of news is still about journalism? We can annotate any content. This piece makes it sound as though journalism should become even more controlling.

Wonder how Colwiz compares to Annotator.js …

Tell that to Genius!

what is this resource? what does it do?