An interesting question by Metafilter[1] user Pastabagel [2], “Where do you people find the things you post to the “blue”, and how do you consistently find them before the rest of us?
I should note that Metafilter’s main goal is to be a log of the best of the internet; the main site ( Metafilter.com ) is often referred to as the “front page”, or the “blue” ( because of the default color of Metafilter’s front page background ). Pastabagel’s question was not posted on the front page, or the blue, but in a sub-site of Metafilter called “Metatalk” or the “gray”, where readers, instead of discussing the best of the web, discuss Metafilter itself.
I find the resulting thread [3] quite interesting, as it gets to the heart of what I do every day– how to collect new information that is either interesting or useful to me. I should note that in my online information gathering pursuits, I don’t use digg, stumble upon, boing boing, and for zeus’s sake I don’t use fark. I gather most of my information, and have conversations about it, with a combination of books, software documentation, personal conversations, MPR, email, following smart people on Twitter/Flickr, and as a last resort Google. And in the case where the information I desire simply cannot be found online, when I have come to wits end in my pursuit of some topic, I often find I have to create that information myself ( which humph has written about [4] ).
But back to the question Where is the bleeding edge of the internet?, and I would like to cite a comment from that thread, by user jason’s_planet[5]:
There is no singular bleeding edge, there is no one MeFi-style high-profile link aggregator that could possibly answer to that name because, as noted above, once a decent link hits a high-profile site, it makes the rounds within a few days and it’s no longer cutting-edge.
No, there is no singular bleeding edge. Instead, there are hundreds of millions of bleeding edges. Little microscopic shards of cutting edge, if you will. Any possible topic under the sun, any body of knowledge that the human mind can conceive of, will have its own gurus, its own mavens. A sub-set of those gurus will have off-the-radar blogs dedicated to those obscure interests. And that’s where you’ll find the good stuff.
I pretty much agree with jason’s_planet, in terms of the question of where the edge of the internet is. I would add that as far as gathering and sharing the bleeding edge of the internet with others– it takes a lot of work. I’ve made a total of 20 posts in my 3 year membership at Metafilter. [6] Some of them were rather lame, and others were deleted. The good ones, however, required anywhere between 4 and 20 hours of research, writing, editing, hand-wringing, and finally an honest desire to share.
…
Going back, I would re-phrase the question of this post into a broader question: Where is the bleeding edge of thought? And also, How do we find it, and, if it is not there, how do we create it?.
On this blog I’ve made it my task to use the lessons I’ve learned in my interactions with Metafilter, and amplify them. Almost every post here is the work of somewhere between 10 and 40 hours of work– finding articles, going to libraries, reading, taking notes, talking with others, editing, thinking, doubting. Sharing interesting, valuable information is hard, and I feel we would all do better to realize this and act accordingly.
Metafilter user bigmusic [7] towards the end of the thread cited above writes about a certain “crunchland method”, which, though I’ve used the site for upwards of 3 years now have never heard of. Upon inspection it seems a quite excellent method [8] for making new posts to the blue, and perhaps exists as the information which Pastabagel was searching for. But further than that, I find it an interesting method for finding new and interesting information in general, and perhaps interesting to us in a broader sense that just the world of Metafilter.
…
As an aside, I might note that crunchland’s profile page resembles, in a sense, the traditional Unix man page[9] in the fact that it provides a certain kind of manual, or set of instructions for how to use metafilter, and add to it. It is also of note that the crunchland method is an undocumented feature [10] of Metafilter, a feature found not so easily, and only in combination with extensive experience with the site and a desire to know how do to things right.
Appendix
1: Metafilter http://metafilter.com
2: User profile: Pastabagel
3: Metatalk Thread: Where do you discover the links you post to the blue?
4: The Other Side of Search, David Humphrey, 2009
5: User profile: jasons_planet
6: My own user profile: localhuman ( If you are wondering what MarkovFilter is, I am sorry to say that it no longer exists, though more information on Markov in general can be found here
7: User profile: bigmusic
8: User profile: crunchland (scroll down to see the “crunchland method”
9: Wiki: Man page
10: Wiki: Undocumented Feature
on flickr...
Where is the bleeding edge of the internet?
An interesting question by Metafilter[1] user Pastabagel [2], “Where do you people find the things you post to the “blue”, and how do you consistently find them before the rest of us?
I should note that Metafilter’s main goal is to be a log of the best of the internet; the main site ( Metafilter.com ) is often referred to as the “front page”, or the “blue” ( because of the default color of Metafilter’s front page background ). Pastabagel’s question was not posted on the front page, or the blue, but in a sub-site of Metafilter called “Metatalk” or the “gray”, where readers, instead of discussing the best of the web, discuss Metafilter itself.
I find the resulting thread [3] quite interesting, as it gets to the heart of what I do every day– how to collect new information that is either interesting or useful to me. I should note that in my online information gathering pursuits, I don’t use digg, stumble upon, boing boing, and for zeus’s sake I don’t use fark. I gather most of my information, and have conversations about it, with a combination of books, software documentation, personal conversations, MPR, email, following smart people on Twitter/Flickr, and as a last resort Google. And in the case where the information I desire simply cannot be found online, when I have come to wits end in my pursuit of some topic, I often find I have to create that information myself ( which humph has written about [4] ).
But back to the question Where is the bleeding edge of the internet?, and I would like to cite a comment from that thread, by user jason’s_planet[5]:
I pretty much agree with jason’s_planet, in terms of the question of where the edge of the internet is. I would add that as far as gathering and sharing the bleeding edge of the internet with others– it takes a lot of work. I’ve made a total of 20 posts in my 3 year membership at Metafilter. [6] Some of them were rather lame, and others were deleted. The good ones, however, required anywhere between 4 and 20 hours of research, writing, editing, hand-wringing, and finally an honest desire to share.
…
Going back, I would re-phrase the question of this post into a broader question: Where is the bleeding edge of thought? And also, How do we find it, and, if it is not there, how do we create it?.
On this blog I’ve made it my task to use the lessons I’ve learned in my interactions with Metafilter, and amplify them. Almost every post here is the work of somewhere between 10 and 40 hours of work– finding articles, going to libraries, reading, taking notes, talking with others, editing, thinking, doubting. Sharing interesting, valuable information is hard, and I feel we would all do better to realize this and act accordingly.
Metafilter user bigmusic [7] towards the end of the thread cited above writes about a certain “crunchland method”, which, though I’ve used the site for upwards of 3 years now have never heard of. Upon inspection it seems a quite excellent method [8] for making new posts to the blue, and perhaps exists as the information which Pastabagel was searching for. But further than that, I find it an interesting method for finding new and interesting information in general, and perhaps interesting to us in a broader sense that just the world of Metafilter.
…
As an aside, I might note that crunchland’s profile page resembles, in a sense, the traditional Unix man page[9] in the fact that it provides a certain kind of manual, or set of instructions for how to use metafilter, and add to it. It is also of note that the crunchland method is an undocumented feature [10] of Metafilter, a feature found not so easily, and only in combination with extensive experience with the site and a desire to know how do to things right.
Appendix
1: Metafilter http://metafilter.com
2: User profile: Pastabagel
3: Metatalk Thread: Where do you discover the links you post to the blue?
4: The Other Side of Search, David Humphrey, 2009
5: User profile: jasons_planet
6: My own user profile: localhuman ( If you are wondering what MarkovFilter is, I am sorry to say that it no longer exists, though more information on Markov in general can be found here
7: User profile: bigmusic
8: User profile: crunchland (scroll down to see the “crunchland method”
9: Wiki: Man page
10: Wiki: Undocumented Feature