Earlier I argued that the everyday applications that we consider to be the online world are too easy to use.  It was a complicated argument that was lacking for examples as well as a clearer explanation.  The bottom line is that the concepts of interaction are so commonplace they’ve become banal and invisible.  Until they are updated, the interactive breakthroughs that make the web so exciting will live on the cutting room floor of the next failed start-up.  What is a commonplace web-interaction that is ignored and boring and useless?

Comments.

It is hard to imagine this in 2010, but comments are a very strange phenomenon.  What is a comment section doing in an article?  What is the purpose of it?  An article is the broadcast of a thesis – in most cases it has been considered and marinated with time and editing and rewriting.  A comment is a statement made in the moment.  Until the online world made it ubiquitous, the phrase comment had verbal/audio connotations.  In other words, one made comments only in conversations.  Conversations are instantaneous and spontaneous exchanges – quite the opposite of articles.  Currently, a word about comments is considered more textual.  To put it all together: the fact that an article and a web-based comment are both text-based, is the only commonality.  They are different beasts all together.  An article is a donkey – it works and is productive and it can reproduce.  A comment is a mule – it works as well, but it cannot reproduce.

Currently the relationship between articles and comments is taken for granted.  They are almost always included on a blog or article, an in almost always the same way.  An article is broadcast into the universe and the readership takes in the thesis.  Then slowly over time, the readership responds with comments – they can be thoughtful, challenging, spam, confrontational, tangential, long and short.  Either way, they are posted in chronological order at the bottom of the page in a way that de-emphasizes their content (opposite of the article).  Some commenters respond to other comments, rather than the article itself.  Rather than broadcasting the fruits of that tangent, the content is buried deep at the bottom of the page relevant only to those willing to dig for it.

How to make comments more relevant

Make them harder to post.  Hire a well-paid moderator to sift through incoming comments and select only those that contribute to the thesis in a pre-determined way.  Hide all comments to readers – only making them available to those who have posted acceptable comments.  After a time, broadcast all accepted comments in a way that organizes the content.

This proposal for a comment meritocracy requires something that is considered counter-productive in the speed-first internet.  The articles that use this strategy need time to marinate with readers.  They need time for things to happen behind-the-scenes.  Andrew Sullivan uses comments in such a way on his blog.  Rather than open all comments to users, he accepts user emails and filters through all the noise that accrues, publishing only those user-comments that contribute (positively or negatively) to the conversation.  His conversations take on their own life on this publication, giving the readership time to ingest the points he is making, and contribute thoughts of their own.  What transpires is a truly interactive experience where the ideas are emphasized by turning down the noise volume of the comments.

More on this soon…

It has been snowing, without a pause, since last night.

And I have been trying to fit my dissertation within the limits of a ‘one page only’ application just as incessantly. Well, there has been some pause on my end, namely a night’s sleep, but the endeavor feels just as unremitting.

There is no clarity in sight, for either the damp and distraught sky or my mind. But it is a race to the finish. Can I finish the synopsis before it stops snowing?

I am competing with the sky – infinity, as it extends into the eternal and unknowable cosmos.

Soon, I will be howling at the full moon.

Yes, I am being melodramatic. And silly.

But indulge me.

A dissertation worth its name should be inflicted by drama.

It is only appropriate that I fight cosmos this snow draped, damp afternoon. And, test the limits of my human, rational, reasoning; defy destiny; scream at the haze above and abyss below; claim my existential realm, build and destroy, write and erase, think and rethink in defiance of whatever that invisible, infinite, eternal power is.

It is what we modern people do – compete with the cosmos.

And this is my modernist quest – this dissertation.

A thesis, a narrative that explains the world – empirically induced; conceptually deduced; reliably argued; authoritatively pursued. Beyond the doubt or force of even a slithering shadow of a snowflake.

A dissertation is, after all, a modernist battle cry: yes, I can; yes, I shall; yes, I will.

(And then, congratulations: yes, you have.

All this for one moment of validation? You insecure bastard child of mine: whispers the cosmos, as the snowflakes smile and slither past my window.)

Sail around the world? Yes.

Trace the shape of the world? Yes.

(Why is it round by the way? A cruel joke played by the cosmos in a sense: leaving us back where we started.)

Convince others of my narrative (by force or wit – and start the colonial-neo-colonial-imperial-neo-imperial-capitalist-neo-capitalist world system)? Yes.

I am doing what others have done, over and over and over again.

Not the hustling in abstractions part, though that too. Rather, the attempt to test the limits of my ability to think-prove-argue and conquer the world, via mind or matter – the modernist part.

It seems petty.

And silly.

Until I make it melodramatic – and find in my quest a modern valor; an ambition to reach the frontiers, trace the horizons, find new lands and open seas in between; shoot a rocket and get giddy over a fluttering cloth on a piece of a moon-rock; and tell stories of the journey (some call it social theory). Then this effort seems all right again – still silly but not petty; dramatic and grand in its self-involved abandon.

But abandonment is everywhere I turn to. The slow sway of the snowflake; the drift of the breeze; the meandering clouds without addresses; the awkward, jaunty waves of tree tops; even, the pit less neon street light.

So what is their abandonment and what is mine? Where do we meet and where do we leave?

Brooklyn sticks out its tongue – a block long series of rooftops stained by thick, sticky, black tar, painted with caring hands of weary landlords – to stop the wet snow in its track.

The mad, ethereal dance of snowflakes, falling with abandon, careless and dizzying, meets the roof top in silent sighs and rushes away to other business in puddles of water through the city streets. The city never stops, they say. Is it competing with the cosmos too? Heartbeat by heartbeat; snowflake-by-snowflake; water puddle over water puddle.

Where does it end?

When will it stop snowing?

And my dissertation?

Ah, that too.

The internet is too easy.  Sorry: too broad; let me use a scalpel on my point.  The way we design and define interaction online is too simple.  It’s limiting our concept of a connected world and is preventing the kind of breakthroughs that make this medium so exciting.

We are barely connected now.  Look past all the signal noise from the most popular sites online and you see a lot of people talking to walls.  They are clicking instant polls, commenting on random posts and stalking their high school crushes.  The accessibility of information (absolute and relative, important and not important) is eating our time and streamlining our thoughts.  The connections that were once celebrated – I can chat with someone in Bangalore right now! – are hollow and short.  We, the world, the known intelligent Universe are all speaking more English.  We are all thinking the same thoughts, accessing the same kind of information.  This is because it is too easy.

The internet is full of failure on the development level.  It is full of broken start-ups and incomplete revolutions.  What about failure on a different level.  Can a user fail when making a comment on a blog post?  Can a person fail a tweet?  Currently we consider failure in terms of content.  You might miss the point of a post and your comment will reflect that to an embarrassing level.  You might tweet a link to a Nevada bordello to the wrong crowd.  Those are embarrassments for sure, but are they failures in the same way as Betamax?

A failed startup begets an improved startup.  That doesn’t guarantee success – it just leads to improvement.  Who cares about success – I want more improvement.  Does a failed comment mean improved discourse?  Does an inappropriate tweet lead to improvements or simply to reticence?  Does that make it better?

What is the point of web-based interaction?  I know: that’s way way too broad.  Consider specific examples.  My employer considers extra comments on articles an enhanced interactive experience.  The more buttons we add to a page, the more interaction we offer to the user.  But why?  What are we creating with those buttons?  At this point, the comments on an article represent a separate and completely unrelated aspect to the original content.  The applications we add to the page should be considered tools to the user-base.  The community uses those tools to create an experience that cannot otherwise be duplicated.  It also cannot be explained.  A proper interactive experience is to the user what a good moderator is to a discussion.  The moderator keeps the discussion lively and draws from it points that would not have been made and could not necessarily have been predicted.

I will continue this conversation in other posts.  I am painting with the broadest strokes imaginable here on accident.  This discussion will return to specific examples.  Look out next for the online language learning breakdown.  There is an important component missing from this market that needs to be launched.

Editor: This series is written by a IT professional from India.  She transplanted herself to NYC and worked for one of the biggest media companies in the world.  Despite her success, she was lured back home by the opportunities and developments present in one of the world’s fastest growing economies.  What does it mean to come back home? How is it to try the non conventional path?  What does a growing nation mean at the individual level? Follow her story here…

The photo above was taken from my Jersey City apartment the day I left to return home to India.  You can see the Statue of Liberty facing East on the right.  The script underneath the photo is a line from one of my favorite Kannada poems.  It means “Life’s about leaving behind what we have and yearning towards what we don’t.”  I love this line; considering my current situation, it couldn’t be more apt.  My life in the Big Apple was fantastic.  I have had one of the best year’s of my life there.  I was given more opportunities to fulfill all the dreams (and more) that this small town Indian girl could ever imagine.  But the problem with dreams is as soon as you fulfill one, another one rises.

Moving from the US to back home to India was not an easy decision.  It is always hard to get out of your comfort zone and do something that’s not conventional.  Thanks to the American thinking I have started questioning why I want to do something (at least partly now).  If not for this, I would have spent the majority of my life doing what is supposed to be the next best thing to do.

Living away from home – especially in a New York City coping with a bad recession while constantly hearing and readin gabout all the growth and magical GDP numbers in India makes you wonder if you’re in the right place.  Isn’t success about being in the right place at the right time?  Even though economically, India is doing great, socio-politically a lot needs to be improved.  I believe one can’t thrive without the other.

So I thought why not apply the skills I have learnt living away from home into something which I believe needs to be improved.  I hope this makes all the people in India who cry about brain-drain a little happy.  Maybe I am just stupid or way too idealistic.  I don’t know but a little that’s what I am hoping to figure out.

I would never ever imagined I would be writing about something like this on my century-old desk.  I have had all the horrific memories of slogging for my 10th, 12th and engineering exams on this.  It occupies about half of my room and mom keeps reminding me such a waste of space it is.  But I simply love it.  Few things are just so special and I am glad I am writing my first ever blog post on this.