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…

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.

This is from TED.

How do I put this constructively?  I need to eat and sleep in my apartment to protect me from the rain and the cold and mosquitoes.  I need my spouse to enjoy the same comforts as me.  Collectively we have utility bills to pay and insurance premiums to account for and student loans to crush our near term dreams.  I need to prop up all of these things and yet I know I’m doing something wrong and this video puts it all to words.

We are made to be isolated by our dreams.   We move away from home in pursuit of something bigger and more rewarding than our presence, drawn in by the bright shining light at the top of a hill.  Meanwhile, our homes are cluttered and dirty and in the way and so we leave them for our new organized and optimized environment.  Our kitchens become clean and orderly.  There are no smells and we don’t sweat unless dressed for it.   Anyway…

The point is that we can’t abandon one track for the other.  We can’t find the special Sardinian wine and sit on the floor for the sake of our golden years.  How to right this boat?  I ate Chipotle for lunch yesterday – that was stupid and wrong and I knew it with every bite.  The lives that are defined in this video are lives that are not chosen and in the cold empty space of my dreams, I am free.