Amazon DevCon is happening right now and happily the Amazon Web Services Blog is blogging it in “near-real-time” (hat-tip to Greg Linden for linking to it). I haven’t browsed through all the notes from day 1 yet, but I feel compelled to post about Rael Dornfest’s speech on the subject of “remix: beyond rip, mix, burn”. Some real gems in this…
–> Rael: “Remixing requires good source, inspiration, skill, trial and error, magic, and some combinatorics.”
I had to look up ‘combinatorics’. The Wikipedia definition is too complex (but no doubt correct). I like this simpler, user-friendly, definition of Combinatorics: “The branch of mathematics dealing with the number of different ways objects can be selected or arranged.”
–> Rael on data remixing:
“Remix your data. Scraping begat XML which begat APIs. Hacks led to standards which led to business opportunity. Syndicated ecommerce. Google/Amazon/Alexa, Amazon/eBay for buying and selling, etc. Creative commons, Salesforce, Blogger/Typepad, Technorati, Feedster, Bloglines. Delicious, feedburner, typekey. Glued with JavaScript, Perl, Python, PHP as glue. Lesson: There are parts of the platform that you don’t have to own.”
–> The following has got to be the most concise attempt yet at explaining how blogging is impacting on journalism (and there have been a lot of non-concise attempts!): “Blogging [is] remixing journalism”
–> On RSS:
“RSS reinvented syndication, [it’s] not a remix. RSS is still an approximation of something, not sure where it will go. Tiny compared to where it will be. Everyone monetizes RSS. Perhaps a bubble already.”
–> Finally, here’s the speech in a nutshell:
“Rules for remixing: * If it ain’t broke it soon will be * Need to focus on why it is broken, how is not enough * Look to the alpha geeks * If you are an alpha geek, look to the consumer * Remix even if you have no ear for music * Keep it open and hackable * Think of the end-to-end * If it ain’t broke, it soon will be”
Information Remixing
Note that a lot of Rael’s speech referenced hacking, as befits a conference for Web Services developers. But the highlights I’ve picked out are just as relevant to Information Remixing, which is I guess my forte.
I frequently talk about remixing (ref: a search of my blog for the word “remix”). For example, take this excerpt from a post I wrote nearly a year ago:
“We can mix and match RSS feeds as we (the “consumers”) see fit. Perhaps future generations of tools like Blogdigger Groups will allow us to mix and match microcontent, much like a DJ scratching a rap song on top of a Beatles melody.”
In 2005 we’re starting to see tools that make such remixing of data possible – and that’s exciting. e.g. did you know that in PubSub you can create custom RSS feeds using combinations of topics, people, sites, data types, and other things.
Future of RSS – One Scenario
Here’s a prediction from me on the future of RSS: in the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds than feeds of actual people. Is that a scary thought?
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)