Writing Online

Alan Sipress (Washington Post) writes that the Patent Office will employ the Internet Wikipedia-like to review patents:

The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency’s examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia.

Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology, has a fascinating, 4 1/2 minute video (Web 2.0 … The Web is Us/ing Us) on the influence of digital text, and thus, the web, on us, and vice versa (via jill/txt). In particular, the separation of content from form (i.e., the code, such as html and xml) has enabled easy web authoring, blogging, wikis, and other online writing tools. The video shows how it isn’t just information that is linked on the web, but people as they collaborate and link to one another. What does that mean with respect with differentiating between “real” and “virtual” reality, online and offline identity, authorship and copyright, …?

Here are some newspaper articles (via Complexity Digest) looking at cyberspace:

Could this be the final chapter in the life of the book? Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times, 07/01/21

Putting a Second Life first David LaGesse, U.S. News and World Report, 07/01/21

Virtual reality spreading in business world CNN, 07/01/17