Psybertron Asks

Link to a movie I’d not heard of, picked up from Ronelle in the Sam Harris “Politics of Ignorance” discussion thread. (In fact I see Sam Harris has some commercial involvement in the film, and Dawkins provides a commentary too. Can’t see what the existence or otherwise of Jesus has to do with it, mind – ah I see, it’s the mythos again, personification of the myth, see the final comment below.)

Ronelle says

President Bush, I fear, may intentionally be kicking off a zero-sum game of “Armageddon” and the “Rapture.” I don’t believe in this but he certainly does.

Not usually my kinda conspiracy theory stuff either, but did pick up on that Bush & Armageddon thread a couple of years ago.

Ronelle also quotes

As Carl Sagan pointed out in The Demon Haunted World it is more dangerous today for society to tolerate and promote any pseudo-scientific belief – like ID and Creationism – than any previous time in history. Those fanatics had no A Bomb back then and the unimaginable eradication of human life on earth could not have been accomplished with spears, or even, cannons and guns. Our technology has advanced way beyond our capability to let go of childish mythology which is the basis of all religion. Irrational thinking of how the world really operates will probably be the downfall of our technologically advanced society.

Too true. I’m not sure it’s the weapons that make it the urgent issue “of our times”, but the ubiquity of information technology, that allows ignorance to spread like wild-fire. It’s not the “childish mythology” but the religion that’s the problem, the mythos is merely the basis for misuse by the latter.

Why would Google want to get into this messaging / telephony / VOIP space ?

I’m a big fan of Google as you know, but puzzled by Google’s recent round of financing – putting up more shares for sale, not just to finance development but also operating expenses the story read. So despite being the world’s largest media company, are they just one huge dot.com bubble ? Careful guys, we need you.

Their targetted, sponsored advertising in the low graphic search pages and even more so in the G-Mail pages are quite spectacular, spooky even, in how focussed they are, but I have to say they tend to say more to me about the people prepared to pay to promote their wares, than the value in the wares offered. With a lot of “philosophical” subject matter in my e-mails, it’s interesting to see how many paid ads there are out there for people SELLING “intelligent designer creationist” crap and the like.

As I was in the Opposite Aphorisms post below … here is a link to Steve Johnson’s latest book “Why Everything Bad Is Good For You“, linked from Euan Semple’s blog.

I assume this is the same Steve Johnson as in Lakoff and Johnson ?
Looks worth a look. Looks like pure Dynamic Quality.
Almost all change produces some good – is this any more than every cloud has a silver lining ?

Thanks to Euan also for this link. Like him I say “You’re not bloody kidding”. I’ve posted several times in the past month about the poisonous meme that is “intelligent designer creationism”. It needs to be stopped, by force of intellect over culture. I like the Trojan Horse metaphor, also picked-up by one of the commenters. Interestingly Barbara Tuchman uses it as the archetype for governmental cock-ups everywhere. Where is the Mythos when you need it ?

Interesting post from Digital Dust (Dan Dixon ?) via Piers. The gist is about the difference between “teams” and “organisations”. His title is “Many hands make light work, but too many cooks spoil the broth.” two aphorisms that seem to say the opposite, but in fact express the fact that there is an optimum size (in any given circumstance) for a team of people cooperating on a common “project” beyond that inter-team management must be seen as different to intra-team management, unless …

… you can engineer “teams of teams” …

… teams are almost by definition in competition (or even conflict) with each other.

Meta-Teams. This circularity, or strange loopiness, keeps cropping up.

Interesting idea, very like the core of the EPISTLE Templates implementation architecture. Micro-Formats are small re-usable pieces of semantic (intended to mean something to a human first, machine second) where each may conform to any appropriate existing standard, but which can be re-used and assembled into larger messages and applications. Via Monkey Magic, where Piers is still concentrating on the taxonomic / ontological aspects of the semantic web. Lots of good links if that’s your bag.

It’s still my bag in a way, despite focussing on the philosophical foundations of information, but it’s good to see that more and more of the implementation developments focus on more abstract aspects of architecture rather than explicit schemas and the like. Definitely more long term mileage in that.

A recurring interest of mine, this is a blog of that name, linked by Ray Girvan. This particular story about natural antibiotics that can beat MRSA super-bugs, debunked with some simple genetic evolution facts.

Will add Bad Science to the side-bar blogroll.

And Information is no different. Not even worth blogging says Gimbo. Computing Review quotes from 1987 and 1990 about the ubiquity of information and the independance of its issues from the technology.

In fact the march of technology is simply making tensions in how information is understood by society all the greater, not easier.

Seems the Loggins paper at the MoQ Conference (and Loggins himself) was a hoax, a parody perpetrated by Glenn Bradford and Struan Hellier.

Damned by faint praise in my own report (fortunately), in fact the parody, in the paper itself and in Glenn’s description of the hoax, can only be seen as a valuable addition to MoQ debate, whatever Glenn and Struan’s motives. (The parody itself is based on the famous Sokal post modern quantum mechanics hoax.)

In fact the day of the “First MoQ Conference” was more a celebration and a social event than a conference at which the subject matter was debated – the papers were all “personal views”. The “positive vibes” all those got out of the day, need to be put to better organisation of what the MoQ does actually say, and the issues people have with it.

Oh well; Many a true word; Nothing new under the sun.

[Post Note – Jan 2006 – In the conference report linked above, I mentioned that the hoax and responses to it had created ill-feeling between those directly affected. Some relevant web-pages and forum correspondence have been removed from public view, some remain live. Any of my links to such live pages remain active. Beware therefore that the public record of the public and private responses to the hoax is incomplete and potentially misleading. If in my view the remaining links do mislead or are misused, I reserve the right to delete any and all such links from my pages..]

Strange set of connections materialised whilst I was reading Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly”, hope you’re following this …

I’m reading Tuchman’s March of Folly, because I recalled (incorrectly) Charles Handy recommending it as the best management text book ever written, making all the others redundant. (In fact it was Warren Bennis’ recommendation, Handy’s was Mary Parker Follett’s “Prophet of Management”. Folly / Follett see.)

Anyway Handy was (is) one of my favourite management gurus, folksy style, contemporary of Roald Dahl in Shell in the Dutch East Indies I guess, but I digress; most people will know Handy through his BBC Radio 4 “Thought for the Day” slot. (Odd that I identify with Handy, a lay preacher, when one of the MoQ’ers I seem to have most in common with is Rev Sam Norton.) Handy, together with Tom Peters, I also associate with the management gurus of the 80’s pushing excellence through corporate cultures, and making quality management links to Pirsig’s ZMM, the origin of the MoQ.

Anyway another MoQ’er I have a lot of time for is Dave Buchannan, whose MoQ Conference paper “Fun With Blaspheny” drew on the work of Joe Campbell, in particular “The Masks of God”, in outlining an Orphic myhological screenplay for ZMM and the MoQ. (Incidentally I’ve just received the Jean Cocteau Orphic Trilogy DVD set, and watched the first two “Blood of a Poet” and “Orpheus” so far. At least the second one has a recognisable Orphic plot. Anyway the third one “Testament to Orpheus” was recommended by Pirsig after being moved by David’s paper, but I digress again.)

Joe Campbell’s “Masks of God” was referenced by Pirsig in Lila, his sequal to ZMM, in which he develops his MoQ.

The spooky connection ? Tuchman’s “March of Folly” opens, preceeding it’s introduction, with a quote taken from Joe Campbell’s 1969 foreward to “Masks of God” –

“And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still …
… put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends,
… or by madmen to nonsense and disaster.”

So add Joe Campbell and Mary Parker-Follett to my reading list.

Barbara Tuchman’s “March of Folly” is a good read so far; her style made me laugh out loud several times, particularly reading the “Renaissance Popes 1470 to 1530” section, the general depravity leading to the sack of Rome and confirming the Lutheran protestant secession, by way of the Medicis and Borgias, not forgetting Savonarola’s bonfires of the vanities again. Being a major patron of the arts is one thing, but your motives for being so matter. The gist of the book is that govermental (managerial) incompetence knows no bounds, and is a case of folly (cock-up rather than conspiracy) despite ample evidence and means of higher quality actions in the long term self-interest of the institutions governed. Hence the fit with my thesis / manifesto.

Oh well, time to pack-up ready for the trip home. Only a brief stop at Changi this time, so probably no further posts until back in Reading during Monday. Bye folks.