Push and Pull Technology

Ross at Socialtext explains why he thinks e-mail is dead. I agree with him. His suggested solution is that RSS feeds and Blogs are better than e-mail. I disagree with that however. In fact there needs to be something else besides these two extremes. E-mail gives the sender the choice about what content others receive -- in other words it is entirely a "push" technology. RSS and Blogs give all the choice to the recipient -- they are entirely "pull" technologies. But an effective communications channel should enable the sender and recipient to collaborate in choosing what content is transmitted. Recipients should be able to control their policies and so should senders, and so long as their policies are compatible, communication can take place. This approach combines the best of "pull" and "push" to create a better modality. Simple I.M. buddy lists are an example, but this is just the beginning. In this paradigm the movement of information is policy driven so that any given channel can implement push, pull or anything in between.

Comments

[leadmountain]

would love to write an article for your blog if you would let us use your article on our blog.

Eric R. Levi,Esq.
Co-Founder of Matrix Management Group, Inc
http://matrixmgmtgroup.com.

[sfgower]

Three years have passed since this was
posted. But I like this very simple
idea. Makes total sense. In particular,
the receiver should be able to provider
further filters on what is sent. For example,
automatic text categorization might filter
out pushed medical documents that are not
about lung cancer. In effect, we have
a filtering intermediary (a proxy server
by any other name), but there is an
important difference. When we think of
proxy servers, we generally (though not
always) think of applying filters across
an entire user population. Here the idea
is about a personally configured filter.

I had an idea related to this one years
back. It had to do with censorship.
Of course, censorship imposed on us by
others is bad. But some individuals
would prefer to have content filtered
out for them. This opens up the possibility
of there being content filters that are
implemented both via automatic software
and/or human decision making.

How would this work? Well, some person or
group offers his or her censorship services.
This service is implemented as a filter.

A user then directs pushed content through
this filter. If the content gets through
the censor filter, the reader receives it,
otherwise it get redirected to a censored
folder, or not delivered at all, depending on how this the filter is configured.

Voluntary use of a censor filter now allows
any group or individual to offer a
censorship filter, and lets any user
voluntarily apply the filter. No coercion.
The relationship between the censor and
content readers is entirely voluntary.

A most dramatic example might be in
a public library. Parents might select
censor filters for their children,
or even teenagers. What is important
here is that there is no longer any
need to impose one-size-fits-all
community standards on everyone.
Each family can decide for itself what
its family standards are, and select
from a censor filter that reflects their
value judgements. Or no censor filter at
all.