The State of Ren

Dear Reader,
The State of Ren has moved to www.suren.net. All previous posts now appear at the new location.
I look forward to hearing from you
Suren

We take it for granted now, but the level of contribution and collaboration on the Internet, without clear tangible reciprocal benefits for those contributing, is mind-blowing. In a selfish world, the amount of free information, free advice, and free goods (namely software) gives a sense of hope that the human race can indeed band together [...]

It has always struck me how badly academic sites and software is designed, from technical, aesthetic and usability perspectives. Most seem to have been designed sufficiently well from a database/data storage perspective, but this often creates a long ‘click stream’ to achieve a goal, which is bad usability design and results in a frustrating user [...]

Peter Kollock explores the traditional nature of gift giving/exchange in a physical sense, contrasting it against digital cooperation and the notion of giving the gift of information, without a direct expectation of reciprocation. This is set against the idea that online cooperation has massively cut the cost of producing certain public goods. Kollock delves into [...]

Ayelet Noff, in her renowned web marketing blog “Blonde 2.0”, looks at the psychological factors behind participation in online communities and throws down the notion that we have created a generation of narcissists. Interpreting and sharing the findings of a Jewish psychiatrist, who explores the sense of self identity and the need to project a [...]

This short yet entertaining piece goes beyond incentive structures to look at actual motivations for contributing online. It paraphrases some major players in the industry to back up its claims, and suggests that it is indirect, intangible, downstream benefits that really motivate otherwise seemingly altruistic public contributions online. The need to express one’s self and [...]

This thorough, entertaining and particularly informative piece by reputable practitioner Andy Brice, explores ways in which graphical user interfaces, and the ways in which we physically engage with them, can make or break the overall experience. He does so by summarising how humans generally receive, perceive, filter, acknowledge and store information. Applying these theories to [...]