Year: 2008

Yesterday I noticed yet another web 15th birthday story.

The usual Tim Berners-Lee / CERN story proposing and then releasing URL / HTML / HTTP freely. The precise birth of that “web” depends on which point in that process you consider significant – the proposal to do it (1989), the agreement to do it, the doing of it, or the agreement to let it go free (1993).

The point that always confuses me is the DARPA TCP/IP story – I’m guessing that’s the invention of the internet – network of interconnected communications – (as opposed to the web of information on the internet).

From memory that packet-based redundant / multi-route connectivity was invented for reasons of secure (US) military communications so that messages broken into packets on multiple, random network routes could never be (easily) intercepted, and a receiver could always know if a packet had been lost, since the message could not be rebuilt without it – secure as in reliable.

Let me check. Yep, that’s it – ARPANet in 1967/68. I guess the perspective that agitates W3C people is the “free” collaborative standard aspect as opposed to the earlier military need aspect of ISoc. 20 years between the internet and the web, but it “took off” when the web information standards were set free, since the important internet comms standards were already free to use.

[Post Note : Even spam pre-dates the web; almost as old as the Arpanet itself, 30 years.]

A poll of the top 100 public intellectuals, in Prospect Magazine, with an interesting take on not just voting but also suggesting an alternative; plus a blog-meme that I picked-up from Sam, to list:

(1) those with whom you could carry on a conversation.
(2) those with whom you’ve actually had any contact.
(3) those who are must-read and those who are unworthy of the listing.
(4) those you have read some, and intend to read more before confirming an opinion.
(5) those you would add to the list.

As Sam says, the number unread or unrecognized just adds to your reading list. I see Zizek appearing again – not read yet. Anyway, coming soon … my lists:

Died yesterday aged 102. Blogged twice about his 100th Birthday.

Also this interesting story today on the effects of LSD too … change that is, created by people who were affected by it.

Or if you prefer; the “Three Body Language”.

Something that has cropped-up several times in recent quite separate correspondences are analogies to the Newtonian “Three-Body-Problem” and I realised these linked to some earlier things I’d blogged about.

The three-body-problem is insoluble analytically – take three or more bodies (physical objects) apply Newtons laws of motion (inlcuding gravitation) to each of them, and you find you can’t solve the resultant set of equations. Not directly anyway; numerical methods and simulation processes can take each object / object-pair progressively and iterate to an overall solution in small time-slices that ultimately predicts their motions. Of course heavenly bodies didn’t have to wait for someone to find that solution – they just got on with orbitting each other, they’re not analytical objects.

And neither are human subjects – analytical objects. Real human car drivers can cope with three or more cars on the road at once, without bumping into each other too often, they can predict and manage their motions giving and reacting to body-language. They don’t stop to solve equations of motion in order to do it. (And of course there is evidence of this from the opposite case. The Dutch road-traffic experiments, repeated & elsewhere, that show that if you take away road-traffic control signs, people have fewer accidents and drive more safely in general – because they have to use body language to negotiate interactions and passing / crossing manoevres. Conversely in places where every intersection has lights and stop signs the humans forget to use body language, trust the signs, and use their freedom from involvement in the process to make better use of their valuable time dealing with their cell-phones, offspring and breakfast, and their cars have more accidents as a result.)

The correspondences were …

One of them, in a private colleague correspondence, was a three-piece band (Drums, bass, guitar say) and how the real rhythms, attack and timings were never as objectively perfect as just two people or one / two people with a drum-machine / click-track – but were less sterile and all the better for it. A rhythm section may be “tight” but music needs that soul and emotion of humans bouncing their body language off one another. Tight like an elastic rubber-band, not tight as in bolted down.

Another, on the Inclusionality Forum, was Ted Lumley talking about “harmony seeking” fluid dynamic behaviour – in response to my “faith in love” – used a freeway driving example (!) and the Newtonian three-body-problem analogy.

And another I can’t pin down at the moment,
Not Zen driving … anyway …

More related to the earlier boiled frog, but sparked by this line of thought, is the idea that a metaphor in a parallel domain is better than an explicit statement in the real one. If a team is performing well, it’s making music, not following a plan; If musicians are playing well, they’re cooking on gas, not following a score; If you can’t stand the heat (Mr Frog), you can get out of the kitchen (boiling pot); You hum it, I’ll play it; Thereof which we cannot speak, we can’t whistle it either; If you can think of any more, you can let me know …

Post Note … Tom offered this one:

In the days of the Greeks it was thought all could be know about the behaviour of all the particles in the universe.
Then Newton Came along and three bodies was too many.
Then with Einstein relativity made two bodies too complicated a system to understand.
With quantum uncertainty it turns out that even knowing what one thing is doing is impossible.
That is progress.

Made references to the thoughful words of Dr Rowan Williams before, and this is no exception. A link provided by Sam.

Only scanned it so far, and capturing the link for now – but some interesting stuff I’m going to have to come back to. As usual, I find myself agreeing with both sides, Bono and Rowan in this instance.

PS – Also some good current postings & linkage on sustainable food economy from Sam – this is just one example (go browse) – developing from his Peak Oil interests and his aversion to supermarkets (like Tesco, which is specifically a red-herring to the underlying sustainabilty issue.)

Research shows …. etc …. people think better when they’re not working under a low office ceiling, so as Chris Chatham at Developing Intelligence says … work under the sky.

(You should see the office I work in ….)

Often referred to Charles Handy’s “boiled frog” metaphor – tell me I don’t have to explain it – and referred to it as hard-boiled already at the time I did my MBA dissertation in 1991.

Well Matt at WordPress picked-up this link that “debunks” it.

So what ? I say – metaphors don’t have to be true, just good.

(“A picture is worth ten thousand words” is a good – misunderstood – example, but people still get value from using it. Being good is better than being right.)

I&I saw The Wailers in Huntsville last night, at Crossroads – which is a great venue by the way, once it has drawn a big enough crowd to at least 1/3 fill its large yet intimate layout, which The Wailers more than did.

Aston “Family Man” Barrett is the sole survivor of the original Pete Tosh / Bunny Wailer / Burning Spear Jamaican era, solid on bass. Great treat to see Junior Marvins on guitar, and an excellent, engaging (white) front-man in Elan Atias, out of LA. All round solid 8-piece, smiles all round, doing justice to those reggae rhythms and plenty of those “songs of freedom” from the Bob Marley days. Took me back to all those sweaty 70’s ska gigs – now that’s a work-out – and a large contingent of the audience singing along to the verses as well as the choruses. It didn’t know Huntsville had Rastafari in it.

Don’t worry ’bout a t’ing,
‘Cos every little t’ing’s gonna be all right.