Quote of the Day

" I can say that, from what I’ve observed so far, these are things that computers can do for us, to make the social computing experience more humane, should we establish simple and straightforward means to express a basic list of contacts between contexts:

• help us find and connect to people that we’ve already indicated that we know
• introduce us to people who we might know, or based on social proximity, should know (with no obligation to make friends, of course!)
• help us from accidently bumping into people we’d rather not interact with (see block-list portability)
• helping us to segment our friendships in ways that make sense to us (rather than the semi-arbitrary ways that social networks define)
• helping us to confidently share things with just the people with whom we intend to share"

--Chris Messina, writing about average users, semantic data, portable contact lists, Facebook, and yes of course, data portability as neccesities for supporting seamless online interaction.