When someone creates a new piece of information in a computer they must make some fundamental decisions. They might have to decide which computer they use, PDA, laptop, theirs or someone else's. That decision will probably be based on ease of use.

Having made that decision they then need to decide which program to use. Again people go for the familiar as the default. So since a large part of the information society is wedded to Word, therefore I would guess most information is dropped into a Word document.

That's the easy bit. Creating a new piece of information is easy. Deciding what to do with it is different. Problems start with saving. You have to give it a name. A name? Why do I need to give it a name? Microsoft have clued into this problem - so they default the name of new information according to the first line of text. Subtle, simple and effective.

But let's go back to that name. For someone who has been around computers for many years the need for a name is obvious. But for the novice this is a hurdle.

The next problem is this name is called something like a filename. Sorry? A what? A filename. Filenames are unique the novice is told. And the novice is thinking, "do I care about this?" All I want to do is create another piece of information, or go home.

Then life gets difficult. Sooner or later having accepted this non-human concept of unique filenames some swears - they utter the word directory. At that point our novice goes into palpitations with beads of sweat dropping from their furrowed brow, thinking I am never going to touch a computer every again.

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What's all this got to do with Groove? Ok, perhaps I am being too melodramatic. But such emotions I have seen on people's faces over the years. And now comes the rub.

If someone is creating a peice of information why should they create it in Groove? That's the million dollar question.

I think is that a mindset for most people is that they divorce the notion of information creation away from the notion of the consequesces of that information existing. This is exacerbated by people being used to doing something in private initially. It is exacerbated by the momentum of how they have done things before. It is exacerbated by the fear and uncertainty of doing something different. It is exacerbated by a lack of comprehension of the notion of sharing.

posted by Andy Swarbrick/PopG at 2:20