Community Info

Community Information

Below is information about the "pattern phreaks" community on LiveJournal. To join this community, click here. You may leave the community at any time.

Customize

User:

infojunkies (348505)

View all userpics

The Main Vein
Processing particular patterns

Name:

pattern phreaks

About:

"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point."
-Claude Shannon

Do you crave and/or love information?

Do you enjoy stealing it, recieving it, exchanging it, hording it, or sharing it?

Have you ever run across some great information that you wanted to share on lj, and you posted it in your journal? Of course, there is the audience of your friends list, and if it is popular many people will link to the link to the link, ad nauseum.

So the idea is: A community that uses a shared journal to post all of that information. So our journals can be journals again and not newsreels.

So what's game? Well here's a living, breathing list:
rants, internet links, announcements, declarations, essays, book reviews, alternative news, gossip, interviews, research, trivia, statistics, source code

Do you get the idea? This way it is a central area to interact, argue and flame each other, into the stratosphere, about things that we care about w/o cluttering up each others journals. So you get things like less people posting the *same* link in their repsective journals, It is the quality of participants not raw numbers.

There will be very little moderation (mostly content, and not comment oriented). You better have a thick skin and be able to hold it down when people come at you. They will come at you. If you use lj you have probably already been singed, at least a little.

This does not mean that there aren't any rules, uh er *cough*, guidelines (heh heh.).

Here's what there is so far:
use lj-cut as much as possible, don't post anything personal! (a rant on an interesting subject is a-1), use lj-cut as much as possible, be creative, don't just repost the usual entries that are going around, if you are reposting, try to come at the subject from an original angle, think of more rules because people like to break rules, flame people that break the rules, don't be afraid to be radical in your thinking (no hive mind stuff), the stranger the better, try to be thorough as possible, try to be varied, be prepared to answer your critics with supporting arguments, links, facts, don't be afraid to cite your sources,

That's it, for now, maybe.

If you remember just one thing it should be that this is an experiment. It is called *live* journal, so evolution seems appropriate. This thing will be what the people who are a part of it make it. Think of it as a game. It can suck or it can thrive! It is up to you. Pass the word.

Oh yeah, if you kind of like the idea but think this implementation is wack, then please do feel encouraged to do something similar or even radically different.

"I want to PayPal for some nameless download out of an offshore data haven, something that feeds every piece of Web news I read through some unknowable outland server, some swift and anonymous meshing of fuzzy logics cooked up by sleepless programmers in Bangladesh or Burma; some voodoo thing that unfailingly highlights outright lies, spin and misperception - in different colors.

I'd set my Mac to show me the outright lies in Pistachio, the spin in sky-blue Bondi, and the misperceptions in succulent Plum. Large swaths of news would probably be Plum, both that written by journalists and some large percentage of politicians' quotes. Perhaps relatively few Pistachio highlights would appear in the actual reportage, indicating direct mendacity on the part of a journalist, though it would be interesting to find out just how few, or how many.

The Plum of misperception would be heavily shot through with the Bondi of spin, I've no doubt, but the real nuggets, whole Pistachio statements by politicians, would stand out, I would imagine, quite regularly down the screen.

Some people, I suppose, might complain that it took the fun out of guessing. Luddites!"
--William Gibson

Q.: What is the difference between data and information?
A.: Data is factual information, especially that used for analysis or reasoning. Data on its own has no meaning, but becomes information when it is interpreted. Information is a collection of facts or data. However, in many contexts they are considered and are used as synonyms.