Re: [Hampshire] [OT] I'm an octopus!

On 10 March 2010 15:48, Daniel Pope <mauve@???> wrote:
> On 10/03/10 13:08, Chris Dennis wrote:
>> I'm an octopus -- which probably translates as a sad loner who spends
>> too much time with computers :)
>
> I'm an elephant, thought I suspect the arbitrary pigeonholing of users is a
> social carrot for people to complete the experiment. Smells of false dichotomy,
> and at the very least, little explanatory or predictive power.

FWIW, I am a Bear. Slow moving (well it did take me until now to do the test).
Three 'dimensions' => eight categories. Seems to me like it does a
sort-of helpful categorisation a la Myers Briggs
>
> I have yet to see anything approaching real science come out of any group that
> has been talking about "web science". Sir Tim's "Web Science Trust" has a
> pathetic list of papers[1] that I would summarise as saying approximately "hey,
> maybe someone could try to explain something about these here internets".

It does make me want to say "Oooh, look at this 'Web Science'" in a
Homer Simpson-like waving-the-fingers quotation marks style...

>
> The group that put together this test is only slightly more productive[2], with
> some analyses of existing research and a few papers particularly focused on
> internet use in academia.

Bit dismissive.. There is quite a bit of work there. Of course, some
publications could be re-hashes of the same material, I haven't looked
in detail.

>
> I get the impression that there are no practical results from web science
> outside of web usability, which is really an established branch of psychology
> applied to web use rather than a new or revolutionary subject.
>
"This must be a solution, now find the problem."?

> I'm still not convinced there really is a subject here, or if there is, that
> there are fewer answers than there are sites on the internets.

I recall a psychology prof saying "there are as many forms of
schizophrenia as there are schizophrenics".

> And they've had 3
> years[3] to come up with something already.


Three years exactly tomorrow since that post. Spooky.