Channel Z has the capability to change the way people create blogs, As you create in the outliner, you can integrate digital objects like This happens via a convenient pull-down menu listing all of your categories Dave is still exploring how this new tool for creating and managing For a while now we have been using the content-management analogy to For many people the light goes on when they think of it this way. Perhaps For quite some time we have been wary of outliners in general, as being But the outliner at the heart of Channel Z is a flexible organizer which The more we though about it, the more we realized that the inherent Think about it. The external world our nervous systems have evolved This whole two-dimensional world-view took off relatively recently, Considering recent advances in three-dimesional display technology, Its going to take some time to unlearn the two-dimensional way of thinking The Dowbrigade has seen the future of blogging – and it is on Channel Z. This past Thursday night, Dave Winer demoed his next-generation web-log authoring and managing solution, which has a working title of "Channel Z" (access via Radio). … Continue reading ![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/chanz.jpg\")
The Dowbrigade has seen the future of blogging – and
\n it is on Channel
\n Z<\/a>. This past Thursday night, Dave Winer<\/a> demoed
\n his next-generation web-log authoring and managing solution, which has
\n a working title of
\n "Channel Z" (access via Radio<\/a>).<\/p>\n
\n and how they use them. At its heart is an outliner-based composition
\n interface seamlessly integrated into a flexible, powerful and painless
\n categorization system which allows you to find, access, link and display
\n the content you have created in multiple creative and innovative ways.<\/p>\n
\n pictures, links, files and sounds. You can organize hierarchically,
\n with headers and subheaders, and instantly move tree branches to other
\n parts of the trunk. You can arrange the content chronologically, thematically,
\n by urgency, or however else you want. Best of all, with a single
\n click you can instantly place each entry or item in a category, or in
\n multiple categories.<\/p>\n
\n (super-easy to create as many as you need) and sub-categories. By tagging
\n content with multiple categories you make it accessible as part of various
\n data sets, display formats, and linking schemes. The possibilities are
\n limitless and will optimally reflect the way each user arranges information
\n in their mind.<\/p>\n
\n a blog can make it a more engaging and accessible window on
\n a bloggers world, and justifiable so. You can watch the Alpha implementation
\n of this sweet suite taking form on Scripting.com<\/a> We are blown away by
\n the blog-management stuff and can’t wait to get our
\n hands
\n on
\n this
\n baby. But
\n for the Dowbrigade, personally, the most mind-blowing aspect of the new
\n system
\n is its potential as the core of a content management system.<\/p>\n
\n explain blogs to a whole sub-set of people who find the traditional image
\n of blogs as on-line diaries repulsively exhibitionist. A blog, we explain,
\n is just a super-simple, browser-based content management system. You
\n can use it to store, organize and serve up all sorts of digital and intellectual
\n items: stories and notes, sound files and articles you come across, research
\n and work-in-progress, art and images, links and lists, email and snail-mail
\n letters, Word and Excel documents. You can decide what, if anything,
\n you want accessible to the public or to your trusted associates. And
\n it will all always be there, accessible from any computer in the world
\n with an internet connection.<\/p>\n
\n this organizational aspect of blogging is especially useful to the organizationally-challenged,
\n like your apologetic correspondent. Be that as it may, the new
\n information management capabilities of Channel Z are astounding and
\n potentially
\n revolutionary. Let us try to explain how.<\/p>\n
\n typical of top-down, hierarchical thinking in general. The rigidity of
\n hierarchies seemed to us typical of what we though of as Unix-think,
\n a directory\/sub-directory world-view endemic among programmers and one
\n of the barriers between them and the people who would actually be using
\n their
\n products.
\n A world-view
\n which, in our decidedly analog opinion, made it more rather than less
\n difficult to "think outside the box".<\/p>\n
\n is most notable for its ability to create links BETWEEN widely separate
\n and disparate branches of the overall tree, and find and trace relations
\n between information streams which would otherwise not be obviously connected.
\n The ability to create, change, add and shuffle levels and categories
\n allow
\n myriad new ways of organizing and accessing the content, whatever and
\n wherever it is.<\/p>\n
\n hierarchical nature of outlines is dictated only by the two-dimensionality
\n of the displays we use to interact with them. Furthermore, we decided
\n that this tendency to view information two-dimensionally is a transitory
\n aberration in the evolution of human information processing.<\/p>\n
\n to experience is thoroughly three-dimensional. All of our senses are
\n programmed to process data in three dimensions. Think surround sound.
\n Even taste
\n and smell (perhaps especially taste and smell) are so multi-dimensional
\n that attempts to reduce them to binary data streams have proven difficult
\n if not impossible.<\/p>\n
\n in evolutionary terms, with the invention of paper and painting and picture
\n tubes. it has become so much the standard way to acquire and manipulate
\n information that we take it for granted that it is natural and inevitable.
\n Nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n
\n I suspect that the two-dimensional mania is a blip on the radar-screen
\n of human consciousness, and a formative epoch which is drawing to an
\n end. The ability to cross-categorize and connect disparate branches of
\n the information tree make Channel Z a true three-dimensional tool for
\n content management. As this is much closer to the way our brains
\n were designed to think, we can’t but see it as a huge advance in making
\n the virtual world an integral adjunct to our cognitive apparatus.<\/p>\n
\n and learn to use new tools like Channel Z. We suspect that even Dave
\n can’t imagine what some people are going to do with his latest creation. But
\n as we are sure he realizes, that’s the fun part. Stay tuned…<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"