The easiest way to think about IC is like tagging. Only you're tagging everything, even the tags themselves. And the tags don't have to be short, they can be any length. And the tags aren't siloed inside whatever platform you happen to be using. They're just "on the internet", so when you tag "tree", or "embarassing moments" it can be combined with everyone else's everywhere.
Or it's like an umbel. Clusters of meaning scattered through a meadow, and we're the kids collecting them for potions.
Every new splooge of tech needs a dumb word and this is ours. But don't worry, this one is actually good cuz it sounds the same but it's spelled different.
Thots are just text, but you can think of them like a digital version of thoughts. They are our thoughts when we put them into a computer. Clearly something is lost, but it's so much more efficient. Shorter thots like "cool" and "brilliant" can be used to tie huge numbers of things together. As thots get longer ("it's quite possible this is not what they intended") and/or more idiosyncratic ("i guess you're right that I didn't technically eat a shoehorn"), and as the collections of thots grow and grow, they can be used to connect like minds, or explore new ones.
Because thots are just text and so much other stuff online is also just text, thots can also represent those online things. For example:
@owise1can be assumed to be a social media handle of some kind. at least these days.https://web.archive.org/web/20070625161555im_/http://www.pantspantspants.biz/top-original.jpgcan be assumed to be an image of some kind (but lets be a little careful with location based urls because the thing that's there could change)0xed9bc30ffd85ace691fcbcd9487b37ca7818c072a public address, an NFT?https://yes.aye.si/index.icnow here's where things start to get interesting. we can link to, build on, and describe another whole collection of thots./ipfs/bafybeifui4lre7es4fay4v6zonrrex2crlrh6ijcopyggl445uny7fuz34/you.icand here's a collection that will never change. We can keep using it to connect larger and larger collections like building up DNA, ultimately creating a "knowledge layer" for the universal stack. See "Pure ICs"
thots are first and foremost by humans for humans. They are not facts. In fact, they're not even true. They're not our "digital exhaust".
Also, if it makes you more comfortable, you can just call them "tags". We're old.
Here's an example. Sometimes, when I see something I want I literally think:
I hear that voice in my head, vaguely imagine this scene from Napoleon Dynamite and, depending on who's around, I may even attempt to immitate this character. Online I might react with this gif. If the object of my desire was, say, a ham sandwich I could represent that like:
ham sandwich
+ https://i.imgur.com/EaFwl8Y.gif
or, if I were worried about the longevity of the imgur.com service...
ham sandwich
+ /ipfs/bafybeig7xsqsxnp57xvxmksnihhkjz5ll5v6rslgnqsbolpr2x5atgg7fa
same thing1
What's cool is that now this piece of information can be combined with every other thing someone wanted in precisely this way. And if you think about it, this tiny piece of data is actually extremely dense with meaning. You'd need to be from a fairly specific place and time to connect these two things. Aggregating a pool of things connected to this one gif could yield so much about the culture and the individuals who saw the world in this way.
Perspectives are what tie thots together. A perspective says "this thing is like that thing", "that thot is not like this thot", "these thots seem related", or "that is definitely not that". A perspective strengthens a connection between two thots or it weakens the connection.
Let's try an example: "tree". When a lumberjack looks at a tree they may see it's genus, it's age, diameter, straightness, hardness, it's proximity to other trees, accessibility. When a gardener looks at a tree they too may think of it's genus, but also when it blooms, how big it gets, its habit, whether it's native to the area, whether it produces fruit. In some moments their thoughts overlap, in others they diverge. As their experience grows their thoughts about trees grow more nuanced and idiosyncratic. Were the gardener and the lumberjack to meet we'd likely see some "cross-pollination" of their perspectives. Wouldn't it be cool (useful, so dang psychedelic...) for the lumberjack to see what the gardener sees when they look at a black locust tree? And vice versa?
I dont have a single perspective. If I am anything it is a collection of ever-shifting perspectives. As I encounter new perspectives I can try them on and retain the parts that stick. This is how we treat perspectives in IC. They're "cheap": easy to create, incorporate, or discard. They are ubiquitous. Some perspectives are collections of other perspectives. We hold onto and build on the ones that have meaning for us or that are useful for certain purposes.
That's really all there is to it. We've got thots and we've got perspectives that connect them together. That's all we need to build an entirely new way of using the internet. If you are the techie sort you can go here to read about the IC spec. Otherwise, I can teach you in like 1 minute.
- Find a place where you can type, a note in your phone, a google doc, a tweet.
- First type the thing you want to describe
an ideal day
- Hit "enter"
- If you want to add something that "goes with" that thing start with a "+"
an ideal day
+ waking up whenever
- Hit "enter"
- If you want to talk about something that doesn't go with that thing use a "-"
an ideal day
+ waking up whenever
- reading an email
That's pretty much the gist of it. Make it as long as you want. Describe as many things as you want this way. Be quick about it, or thoughtful, whatever. Don't sweat it. If you think it (or if you think someone might think it (or if you think someone would never think it)) it's all good.
There is actually one final step:
- Get it on the internet
You dont have to sign it. It doesnt have to be "from you". Keep it anonymous, just get it out there. If you can get it on the internet you've contributed. You've shared your perspective. And the sky's the limit on what we can do with it.
We can use ICs to create and discover meaning. I put down what I think. You put down what you think. Then we combine them in all the different ways.
.ic is a way to store and share our thoughts on the web. It's simpler and more straightforward than HTML (or even RDF) because it serves a different purpose. We can use it to build a universal database of human thought normalized on the way we speak. And we can use it to create dense meaning webs with closeknit groups.
These are tools for connection not influence. There is no reason to spam an IC because there is no central authority. We can easily decide what to include or remove depending on what we're after. Our trusted collections are treasures. We protect them.
Plus, there are only like a bazillion other things you could do with an IC. Here are a few ideas...
To get a taste of what the web has become, what we've all become accustomed to, search for a recipe on google. Wade past Google's promoted links and the prepackaged results from services with the resources/$$/motivation to build to google's idosyncratic recipe ingestion API, then click one of the results. Now scroll past popups, video ads, commentary on how much the author's family loves this generations old secret recipe and you may find the recipe you started out wanting in the first place. It sucks, yes, but HTML enables all of this. That doesnt mean HTML sucks (far from it). But it really was designed to do all these things. And because it's doing like 10 different things at once we need to rely on a megacorp of eggheads (meggheadacorp) to make sense of it all "for us"
With IC I could easily start collecting links under "recipes" then combine mine with all my friends, or other trusted ICs. Add to that that we can tag each recipe with the ingredients, or thoughts about it, tips...and we'd have a simple, personalized, searchable recipe box. You could add a "favorite" tag to recipes you like, then filter everything on perspectives that had similar favorites. It wouldn't be "AI" or particularly algorithmic in any real sense, just finding what you wanted.
You could even go one step further and put the entire recipe into the .ic format. Then you could do truly insane things like find all the recipes with "1 cup of milk" and "a pinch of spicebush sugar".
Or you could do this whole thing with links instead of recipes and you've got yourself a distributed del.icio.us with almost no effort.
When you use Google you basically type in keywords. "Gifts" for "moms" who like "baking shows". But as you add keywords the results get slimmer and slimmer until there's nothing there. You've reached the limits of this truly impressive human project to glean meaning from HTML on the internet.
Now what happens if you actually have something to put there? Like for instance what if I had something to say about "gifts for moms who like The Great British Baking Show, rodeos and Christina Applegate movies"? (cuz hoo boy do i). With the current web I'd post it on social media where it'd flit by glazed stares or post it on my lonely blog and hope the google gods shine their countenance on me. Another alternative is to jot down a quick ic, upload it anywhere public (even in a tweet if it fits) and add it to some of your collections. You may share ICs with your old high school friends, or maybe you contribute to some larger collections that you know aggregators actively monitor. Now at least it's out there, and anyone within your extended networks looking for that combination of tags ("thots", thoughts...) can find it.
Still getting too many results? Try using a dialect that makes sense for whatever you're after. If your local rodeo is "The Pit" use that instead, change "The Great British Baking Show" to "bake off" and now you're getting results closer to "you". We dont need fancy black boxes full of mystery to produce results "for you" all that complexity is already built right into us.
What if you had a motivated group of Star Wars superfans describe all the characters in the franchise....
Darth Vader
+slightly torn, but mostly evil
+prone to overreactions
-cuddly
Then we created an online personality test where participants described themselves using only those descriptions (sans characters). Now we can show them the Star Wars character they're most like! We can also easily combine their responses with Harry Potter fan lists or traditional psychological categories too. It's all open and easy. All we need to know is the location of the sanctioned lists. We could also use ML clustering techniques to find connections between characters across literature. fun.
A browser extension that creates a shadow review system on top of every e-commerce site. It'd use the canonical url as the parent from which all associations/descriptions stemmed. Individual .ic files would be published in public on ipfs and aggregated by the extension. This system would have a number of benefits over the current review systems
- decentralized so they can't be controlled by the site owners
- reviews would be more in depth than the current "narrative" style because they could contain our impressions and feelings
- individual reviewers (perspectives) / review keywords (thots and the perspectives that used them) could be purged from your view to create a more personalized view
- easily surface reviews from your social networks
I have plenty of opinions on products I've bought, but I mostly find it a chore to sit down and write. However, if it was as easy as:
EGO POWER+ Hedge Trimmer
+makes clearing invasives a breeze
+litterally changed my life
+i love it
-super cheap
+a little worried about the battery life but so far it's fine
+recommended
That took me like 10 seconds. It was decidedly "low effort." But the fact that people I know are more likely to see it and benefit from it makes it so much better than providing Amazon with free content.
We can combine any number of disperate thoughts together and then place something there for someone to find. What lies at the intersection of "I must admit I've lost faith in the entire enterprise", "Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson", "Surely you take weather cirrusly?" and "Bojangles"? Gifts, buried treasure, hidden gems in all the unexplored corners.
Let's address the elephant in the room. Are we about to unwittingly unleash the sentient machine that ends all human suffering by removing the source? I kinda doubt it, but it's probably worth considering.
Footnotes
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↩i want that + https://i.imgur.com/EaFwl8Y.gif + /ipfs/bafybeig7xsqsxnp57xvxmksnihhkjz5ll5v6rslgnqsbolpr2x5atgg7fa https://i.imgur.com/EaFwl8Y.gif + /ipfs/bafybeig7xsqsxnp57xvxmksnihhkjz5ll5v6rslgnqsbolpr2x5atgg7fa