Internet footprints of ‘integrated topics’ now are mostly kaleidoscopic and fragmented
MaterialsProject: Materials Project Seminars – Tian Xie “MatterGen: a generative model for inorganic materials design” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smz1go6_Spo
Please put links to individuals, papers, groups and resources in each video description and “about us”. On your next-gen materials project about/people page the whole list of Materials Algorithms, Data and Experimental Validation people have no affiliation listed. And the links are not going to the people, their backgrounds and interests, but to non-integrated web sites – with no clear theme or overall framework. When you try to make an integrated topic on the Internet, you have to expend much effort to be sure the each link goes to a place where it stays part of the whole. It is possible to share information on the Internet virtually, but if you leave it as fragments, the poor visitors only see a kaleidoscope of random bits and pieces. I like “see a random material” but your list of publications is faded and has no obvious open links.
Your Community page has zero people or groups listed. You must show the community first, then look for connection. You do not do that by sending people down blind pathways. Rather make a screen and bring the information to the screen — NOT make people wander down more blind pathways with no previews. There is a huge gap between “open software” and “closed data”. From your “The Materials Project by the numbers” I see strong biases towards a few topics. On the Internet it is tens of thousands times larger and more varied, and in many places much richer. When you invite people to your seminars, send them links to YouTube video afterward, even if they cannot attend for some reason. “View detailed computed information about any material” has to make the algorithms and methods clear and open. Not more closed and untraceable results. It is hard, but not impossible.
Please have someone edit all the video transcripts to remove the “uhs” and make it the best clear English possible. Then the automated language translations can at least have half a chance of making your material accessible to all languages used on the Internet. Also, if you are like me and only read the captions, you can at a glance understand the meaning and not have to guess what the improper “speech to text” is generating – without grammar check or punctuation. If you do not do that NOW, in a few short months and years, it will be nearly impossible and you will have lost all those “initial interest” opportunities. The waste on the Internet is appalling. You have the potential to do much, but you have no real understanding how much your “internet footprints” matter.
Let people see everything. Then, if they are interested, ask them to join your community, not “pay to view” first. If people do not see what there is to offer, why join or jump through hoops? I have been checking the impacts of policies and practices for the whole Internet every day for the last 25 years. Please listen and think about these things now, not ten years from now or never. You think you are talking to your usual insiders, but these kinds of materials might be seen by 5 billion Internet users, and change the world as we know it.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
