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Interesting read. It made me realize that the big "value add" for a bookstore is essentially expert human curation. Too bad that the Internet has not fostered

Interesting read. It made me realize that the big "value add" for a bookstore is essentially expert human curation. Too bad that the Internet has not fostered a way to monetarily reward curation. Not doing so means that we lose our curation experts. Or??

alizaki 11y ago
the like/share/repin/rate/review buttons are a form of natural curation built into the fabric of the social web.
- sdoering 11y ago
  If I look at my algorithmically optimized feed, I obviously do not see the things most of my contacts like/share/read/click/dislike/pin/and so on. I see the things the algo decides are fitting for me to optimize for ad-value. If I could filter the raw feeds of my contacts and could weight them (ideally regarding the topic, as some people are weighted more on privacy matters and lower on food matters), I would be able to use the social knowledge within my contacts to create a curated list of (hopefully) interesting (at least for me) things. These would be weighted, so that the more time I had, the more I could go down that list. If then I had a way to tell this curation mechanism, that I did like this piece more then that, and the third one was bullshit, over time, it could learn even better. And then I would finally end up within my own echo chamber. At least if I would not do the hard work of curating my contacts in a way, that counters this. This social web might be good for nice pictures of cat, but the more I have to do with it, the less it really seems to deliver on its promises. Just my 2 cents.
robryan 11y ago
I think goodreads is good enough. If a website gets popular enough there are no shortage of people that are willing to share their thoughts on books for free.
- codecamper 11y ago
  The trouble is how do you find the needle in the haystack? If there isn't financial reward you won't have experts who can devote their lives to finding & sharing the good stuff. Maybe it will work like this: Before there would be people who's full time job was to find great books. Now there are tens of thousands of people who, on their spare time, find those books & report back online. The reality though is that any sort of review system gets hacked. Amazon, yelp, & trip advisor are good examples.
peterclary 11y ago
Can people not publish their own reviews and/or lists and use Amazon affiliate links to get a cut?
VLM 11y ago
MOOC free online literature classes? My personal experience with store clerks over the decades indicates severely rose colored glasses over the idealized concept of store clerks coincidentally being extremely highly educated in my momentary topic of interest. Most of the time, store clerks have been experts at shoveling product on shelves, making change, and telling me all about their art history degree while I'm trying to find a gift for my son who likes minecraft. Insert the stereotypical Radio Shack experience of trying to locate an over priced adapter that the clerk can't help find while being grilled about my cell phone plan as opposed to their cell phone plan. I'm sure there have occasionally existed useful store clerks and customers who somehow know less than the clerks, but it seems to have been statistically very rare. A quarter century ago as a part time student at a food store just to pick up beer money, it was comical watching customers ask me and my coworkers cooking questions. "Well, I'm not really sure how to cook that, but I've watched my mom and she usually bakes roasts for a long time in the oven". "Sorry I don't know anything about frozen chitlins". "I've never made jello, but I think there are instructions on the box". Underemployment and economic conditions were not quite as severe back then, now a days food stores probably have out of work trained chefs as employees.

alizaki 11y ago

the like/share/repin/rate/review buttons are a form of natural curation built into the fabric of the social web.

sdoering 11y ago
If I look at my algorithmically optimized feed, I obviously do not see the things most of my contacts like/share/read/click/dislike/pin/and so on. I see the things the algo decides are fitting for me to optimize for ad-value. If I could filter the raw feeds of my contacts and could weight them (ideally regarding the topic, as some people are weighted more on privacy matters and lower on food matters), I would be able to use the social knowledge within my contacts to create a curated list of (hopefully) interesting (at least for me) things. These would be weighted, so that the more time I had, the more I could go down that list. If then I had a way to tell this curation mechanism, that I did like this piece more then that, and the third one was bullshit, over time, it could learn even better. And then I would finally end up within my own echo chamber. At least if I would not do the hard work of curating my contacts in a way, that counters this. This social web might be good for nice pictures of cat, but the more I have to do with it, the less it really seems to deliver on its promises. Just my 2 cents.

robryan 11y ago

I think goodreads is good enough. If a website gets popular enough there are no shortage of people that are willing to share their thoughts on books for free.

codecamper 11y ago
The trouble is how do you find the needle in the haystack? If there isn't financial reward you won't have experts who can devote their lives to finding & sharing the good stuff. Maybe it will work like this: Before there would be people who's full time job was to find great books. Now there are tens of thousands of people who, on their spare time, find those books & report back online. The reality though is that any sort of review system gets hacked. Amazon, yelp, & trip advisor are good examples.

peterclary 11y ago

Can people not publish their own reviews and/or lists and use Amazon affiliate links to get a cut?

VLM 11y ago

MOOC free online literature classes? My personal experience with store clerks over the decades indicates severely rose colored glasses over the idealized concept of store clerks coincidentally being extremely highly educated in my momentary topic of interest. Most of the time, store clerks have been experts at shoveling product on shelves, making change, and telling me all about their art history degree while I'm trying to find a gift for my son who likes minecraft. Insert the stereotypical Radio Shack experience of trying to locate an over priced adapter that the clerk can't help find while being grilled about my cell phone plan as opposed to their cell phone plan. I'm sure there have occasionally existed useful store clerks and customers who somehow know less than the clerks, but it seems to have been statistically very rare. A quarter century ago as a part time student at a food store just to pick up beer money, it was comical watching customers ask me and my coworkers cooking questions. "Well, I'm not really sure how to cook that, but I've watched my mom and she usually bakes roasts for a long time in the oven". "Sorry I don't know anything about frozen chitlins". "I've never made jello, but I think there are instructions on the box". Underemployment and economic conditions were not quite as severe back then, now a days food stores probably have out of work trained chefs as employees.