Tag: LinkedIn

Already the 3rd week of 2010 and I’ve still read only a smattering of the responses to the 2010 Edge Question “How has the internet changed the way you think ?”

This George Dyson response is a good one.

We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.

I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don’t will be left paddling logs, not canoes.

Too true. More needs to be less.

And in fact that is a recurring theme. Dawkins concludes net gain, TBL for the Nobel Peace Prize even, after bemoaning the anonymized rubbish that pads out the web. For Dave Morin, context is more important than the content; Nassim Taleb, the degradation of knowledge … Kevin Kelly

My certainty about anything has decreased. Rather than importing authority, I am reduced to creating my own certainty — not just about things I care about — but about anything I touch, including areas about which I can’t possibly have any direct knowledge . That means that in general I assume more and more that what I know is wrong. We might consider this state perfect for science but it also means that I am more likely to have my mind changed for incorrect reasons. Nonetheless, the embrace of uncertainty is one way my thinking has changed.

More likely to have one’s mind changed for the wrong reasons. The mimetic risk – ideas that stick because they are “sticky” not because they are any good.

Healthy piece from Michael Blastland at BBC Go Figure on …

How wrong can we be?
Often more wrong than we think.
This is good – as in useful – to know.

Good to hear another sympathetic comment regarding Rumsfeld’s epistemology. Previously on Psybertron:
(Aug 2004) Robert Matthews invokes Rumsfeld on limits to scientific knowledge.
(Dec 2003) Geoff Cohen on Ignorance in Denial in the original kerfuffle ridiculing the Rumsfeld quote.

The real point is the problem with communicating doubt in an environment that demands certainties and no-surprises – without being drowned in scorn – now that’s a problem meme.

And a little more ammunition for the idea that ever more communication is not necessarily a good thing. Less is more, even when it comes to information.

more important than ever
to know who we can trust
to keep us well-informed

Well yeah – trust hits top slot again, and “well-informed” is about quality, not quantity. The theme emerging.

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[Post Note: (2016) Nick Spencer of Theos:

What do you know? #DonaldTrump & #HilaryClinton Clinton. Our latest blog on US #PresidentialDebate, from @theosnick: https://t.co/YVB1sO1AWp pic.twitter.com/Yw718hMvFw

— Theos think tank (@Theosthinktank) September 28, 2016

… invoking Rumsfeld’s epistemology in  the reality of electoral voting re Trump / Corbyn (delete as inappropriate).]

Tell me about it. Two very brief but excellent posts from Kevin Kelly on the need for and difficulties in technology standardization.

Standardization preceeds growth,
and
The process involves conflict and compromise.

And whilst I’m here, for my LinkedIn readers, here are links to …

My earlier W3C Fig 7 post,
and
The IEC-61346 Tag Lifecycle Figure : IEC-61346-4-Realization-Lifecycle

I keep banging on about this picture, so I thought I should share and explain it.

Semantic Web Levels (Figure 7 from W3C Kick Off in 2001)

No amount of proof, logic or science (not even computer science) can bundle trust within its communications. Trust comes from care, from humans, not systems.

Excellent post from Kevin Kelly. Lessons of why a fee-based – but free at point of use – model works in valuing the intangibles, and “products” that are perceived as “staples”.

Flat or monthly fixed pricing is one way of pricing “as if free.” ….. Subscriptions tend to emphasize and charge for intangible values: regularity, reliability, first to be served, and authenticity, and work well in the arena of “as if free.”

Interesting piece on the success or otherwise of Second Life. Not least because of the comment thread; read a few.

I might be considered a bit of a luddite when it comes to automated sensors and navigational aids on private cars – I can never see the point of taking the human out of the loop – don’t believe the dumbing down can be net positive.

But this road-train idea I like. Totally guided – hands-off / brain-off freedom as in a train when linked to the lead vehicle, but private motoring when it’s the motoring flexibility and freedom you want. Can see the efficiency working if the cars themselves are hybrids – with performance when you want it.

Guess there must be a few failure modes to work out before this can go live ?

If this were adults rather than children perhaps the “piss-up in a brewery” metaphor might be more apt, but I love the dead-pan delivery of the choices in planning a childrens party from Dave Snowden at Cognitive Edge. I saw Dave do this a few years ago, so it’s good to have the video to share – the point is well made anyway.

“Cross that line you little ba****ds and you die.”

Audience participation for conference speakers ? The common power of the pentatonic scale demonstrated by Bobby McFerrin at the World Science Festival.

After rehearsing just two notes the entire audience is spot on the third – with absolutely no warning of where he’s going next, up or down. And it continues eventually to the tonic / octave via random intervals. Simple but very impressive.

(Don’t know anything about WSF – looks a lot like TED – but got the link via StumbleUpon.)

Followed a series of links from Johnnie Moore (on more reflective, indirect approach to “problem solving” when the situation is complex and the “problem” itself not at all clear – reminded me of Terry Eagleton’s “C-Word” reaction to the macho “can do” mentality).

Peter Block …  we have a deeply held belief that the way to make a difference in the world is to define problems and needs and then recommend actions to solve those needs.  We are all problem solvers, action oriented and results minded. It is illegal in this culture to leave a meeting without a to-do list. We want measurable outcomes and we want them now. What is hard to grasp is that it is this very mindset which prevents anything fundamental from changing.  We cannot problem solve our way into fundamental change, or transformation.

Led me to Viv McWaters “Beyond the Edge” – lots of good self-organization / emergence material.

This particular post caught my eye because amongst other things it includes specifc links to the Dutch Road Traffic approach – of removing all instructional road-traffic signs – improving road safety. I frequently quote it, but was beginning to think it was apocryphal, something I’d maybe imagined. Hell no. Wikipedia has the specifics.

The idea of self-organization arising from relatively few simple rules – the old flocking / shoaling “A-Life” simulations – rather than detailed expert instructions on how to achieve some complex end result (which can never work), is fitting with two current threads.

(a) How to handle complex situations, by simplifying the “architectural approach” rather than attempting to simplify the complexity of teh situation itself – which is conserved however you slice and dice “the problem”, (Cue Einstein – “Simple as possible, but not more so.”) and

(b) the “Aha!” moment that this is entirely consistent with the ethical approach to acting local – “tending one’s own garden” – rather than presuming to address a large complex global-scale “crisis” as something with a tractable solution.

(Both also fit another current thread – that ontologies may be a red-herring. Why spend time designing or discovering the best or correct ontology for a given enterprise, and debating which is best, when you can give the means to each player to characterize the ontological relationships with its neighbours ?)