Microformats represent a concept to me that has deep merit, and not just that link of what exists now, but as a concept in general. It's a fundamental shift of technical standards development to a different economy of advancement. So in my not-insignificant experiences with standards development, I'd now separate it into three categories:

* Standards by Committee serve Commercial interests.
* Standards by Community serve Platform interests.
* Standards by Microcosms serve Edge interests.

Committee standards are a necessary evil, they provide a sense of stability and attempt to solve bureaucratic problems that larger established organizations face. I'd love to rant about my deep distaste for this process and the over-generalized inconsistently specific formats that result from it, but that's not benefitting anyone :)

Communities tend to develop standards in a much more organic way (duh), frequently making mistakes but not being overly concerned about breaking compatibility and focusing more on simplicity and utility. It's often the result of a few core focused individuals, with support from those benefitting from their works and encouraging growth through evolution and real use.

Microformats are all about lowering that bar, not even needing a large community or developing a whole new framework or platform to establish a standard. Reuse, mix, and publish. Not at the core either, at the edge, where content and diversity is becoming quite rich and these small and overtly simple (almost just a collection of best practices) standards can provide quite useful benefits.

What strikes me as most fascinating about this trend, is how it mimics nature. What we're really seeing is just these patterns growing in the fertile data soil on the web. No longer can larger or centralized models handle the amount of information flowing and the extreme environments it has to exist in, so nature is kicking in and doing what it does best, adapting and evolving.

Where there's a source of energy and nutrients you'll discover life flourishing. Where there's attention and content you'll encounter microformats growing.

The title is a probably misleading, and this post isn't very well thought out since I'm trying to look distantly into the future. What I'm really talking about is generally classified as web-based advertising. When I was at the Search SIG last week, John Battelle's talk made me realize something I hadn't seen or considered: google adwords is not advertising.

The first major wave of web advertising in the 90's was CPM, impressions, traditional old-media marketing and branding. The transaction was based primarily based on visibility, eyeballs. You could say that the content owner was sacrificing design, and you could say that the users were sacrificing some small bit of mental capacity or storage.

This second wave we're in, led by adwords, is based on click-throughs. John called it a sales channel which makes sense in how adwords is treated by companies using it. Because of it's textual nature and direct relationship to the page it's presented on, the content owners are now giving up context, they're allowing the placement to be blended closer to their topic which dilutes their value while boosting the ad. The users are now ultimately spending money for the most part, they're sacrificing their attention or greenbacks (when 'converted').

Looking at this trend, I can only predict that a third wave of something-that-isnt-advertising-anymore (probably some ways off yet) will have to do with production. The content providers will give up part of the content itself, either aggregating in, or being enhanced by this future model. The users will be asked to give up something even more valuable than money or attention, they'll be asked to create, to spend their activity and participate or produce. I can see a number of web-2.0-ish trends in this direction already.

While the basic economist in me can't see exactly how this third wave will relate to traditional retail/product/distribution, I have a gut feeling that it's not about that kind of old world model anymore. This third wave of Web Economics is about slowly replacing the traditional top down with a new bottom up from individuals. We can all produce very valuable things to our friends, families, social groups, and in our areas of specialties hobbies and interests. It's all about the world becoming a Big Small Town.

I like to consider myself a deep thinker, in that I enjoy collecting, sorting, and processing information on topics and problems and trying to find different and creative angles or solutions. Usually it's not very fruitful, sometimes it just results in obvious conclusions, but once in a while you find a planetoid sized object lurking in the chaos.

I'll start refining it, looking for structure, simplicity, scale, the things I love most about knowledge. The planetoid will come into focus and become a vivid entity with beauty and serenity, a powerful and motivating vision. But the larger and more powerful the ideas become, the more challenging they are to share.

Crayons. It feels like using the english language, codifying thoughts into words, and structuring them in such a way as to convey this idyllic planetoid of an idea, is to draw it with only a few large crayons on a small peice of paper. It takes time and many iterations, reguardless of the internal clarity. There's no way to depict the rich fractal depth and structure and eminent potential with such a poor and constrained form of communication.

Perhaps this is a gift in disguise, in that if ones mind used words as a primary thought medium it would be easier to share, but the thoughts may never extend much further than the ideas in the language itself. Does this define a person's potential for creativity, how they internally model knowledge and thinking, their mental vocabulary?

People always talk about the "Ten Thousand Foot View" to the "Ten Foot View" and as someone who's started eating more RSS and falling into the web-2.0-attention-deficit gravity, it's easy to say that the closer you get to information ground zero, the faster you have to move to make sense of it.

From a high altitude the movement below might hardly be noticeable. What's this web 2.0 stuff? It's just 1.0 with a twist, what's all the fuss? Not a lot of motion from that perspective.

As you get a little closer, as you drill in, start to engage yourself, and start to use the tools on a daily basis, you feel your pace change. You start to run. Hmm, maybe there's something to this, I feel like I'm getting a mental workout here. All this commotion must mean something, right? Yes, upon closer inspection the pace does seem to be transformative.

Finally, once your feet hit the ground running, once you're actively engaged in a few of the participatory systems and contributing, becoming a member, the pace of life itself feels skewed. Boy, this feels dot-com ish, it's "Internet Time" all over again! Last time it was all a lot of change-the-world hot air from companies, but this time it feels like it's from us the users, does that make it different? Some say No, some say Yes, obviously somebody's going to be wrong :)

I was moved this weekend by one very special event, just a short moment in time with a very strong impact.

There was a knock on our apartment door last evening (currently in an apt while our house is getting remodeled) and it was the elderly gentleman from upstairs. He is the classic sweet and thoughtful grandfatherly type, and he was having some trouble getting his bow tie unclipped. He looked like he felt bad about having to ask for help, and it was clear he had been trying for quite some time, even to the point of having his shirt half twisted around and a few straps pulled to the point where he couldn't reach them any longer.

The way he talks has a tremor and a strong rasp, you have to pay very close attention, and he was so very thankful and repeating his gratefulness numerous times. In being caught up helping him remove this penguin suit and ribbons, I didn't even recognize or think about why he would have been wearing it. He had to repeat a couple of times to me that he had just received his 4th Degree Knights of Columbus, and it wasn't in a tone meant to explain his attire, it was glowing, the pride was so strong through his weakened voice and situation that I believe that's all that was holding him together at that moment. Childlike, innocent but with such rich and pure pride, in a being obviously alone in and not long for this world.

The work I do every day, I try so hard to find meaning in moving these bits around, in developing "web 2.0" ideals, participation, attention, sharing, communicating. In just one simple perchance gesture with a stranger, I felt more moved and connected than all of these technologies I try to help advance.

I want this to mean something, I want to do more to let these networked bitmangling devices actually help us get to know each other, to value each other, as people, as individuals. It's important for me to keep true to this moment and return here, and remember what it's like to help and get to know a stranger in need.