"The Power of Stigmergic Social Annotation in Collective Sensemaking"

"The Power of Stigmergic Social Annotation in Collective Sensemaking"

Introduction:
In today's platform-centric ecology, user annotations are locked within data siloes, limiting their potential for optimizing platform growth. However, inspired by the decentralization and open-source software movements, a new framework called Open Source Attention (OSA) aims to "free" human attention from platform control. By creating a decentralized ecosystem for stigmergic markers, OSA seeks to empower maker-centric ecologies and revolutionize collective sensemaking.

Understanding Stigmergic Communication:
Stigmergic communication is a process where the environment serves as a distributed memory, with modifications left by others providing cybernetic feedback. There are two types of modifications: sematectonic stigmergy, which directly alters the environment state, and stigmergic markers, which serve as signaling cues. In the digital realm, stigmergic markers can be seen as digital traces of human attention, valuable for both extractive and constructive purposes.

Moving Towards Healthier Epistemic Environments:
To create healthier epistemic environments, we need to shift from the exploitation of attention to supporting our intentions. Just as the open-source software movement aimed to "free" software, OSA aims to "free" stigmergic markers. Starting from basic hypertext primitives like emotional valence, bi-directional links, span highlighting, semantic categorization, and textual annotation, OSA seeks to unlock the full potential of stigmergic markers.

Challenges and Opportunities for OSA:
One key challenge for OSA is scaling up to compete with massive, well-established platforms. However, OSA aligns with the "protocols, not platforms" approach, allowing existing personal knowledge management (PKM) systems to contribute to collective knowledge management (CKM). By introducing interoperable protocols and storage for stigmergic primitives, data from diverse PKM apps can be shared, contributing to collective sensemaking efforts.

Actionable Advice:

1. Embrace Open Source Attention: Explore the potential of OSA in your own knowledge management practices. Start incorporating stigmergic markers like emotional valence, bi-directional links, and semantic categorization into your annotations and content creation.