Category: Uncategorized

Technorati Weblog Stats – And that’s just Technorati ! David Sifry (Technorati creator and host) via Oliver Wrede

Disposable Bang – Cape Times via Gimbo. Made me smile.

Language Hat – Interesting linguistic site blogged here by the Apothecary.

In view of the Owen Barfield posts below, and coming next, you’ll understand why this post on an (sic) obscure word struck a chord too. If we only ever read writers who only ever used words we already knew in contexts we already knew, everything would be extremely boring and sterile – and, more’s the point, knowledge would never advance. Interesting given Barfield’s point extolling Archaism, that this particular complaint is about William Gibson using a word from common currency in the early 19th century.

There’s is a valid point here actually about education and learning of the individual, not being left behind some elite snobbery at the level of advancement of human knowledge. The point would be all the more poignant if the particular word “Luddite” was reasonably obscure anyway, but even now I find a dictionary-rate tolerance myself. I’m reasonable educated, intelligent and I’m deliberately reading a great deal at present with learning in mind, but even I have a threshhold for how many words I need either to look-up or battle through in ignorance, before deciding a book is too much effort. No gain without pain, but you can have too much pain for too little gain, unless you’re a masochist. Give the girl a chance (eek – on second thoughts this is not some teenager, she’s actually a published sci-fi author herself in a spat with Gibson – and describes Neuromancer as a “yawner”.)

Which reminds me I still haven’t read Gibson yet, so I’d better be careful what I say.

The Cynefin Centre – Also via Ton, who reports on the KM Europe Conference where Dave Snowden of IBM’s Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity spoke – creating a new, emergent simplicity for the on-demand-era, working in un-ordered systems known as contextual complexity provides both pragmatic and conceptual capability for the people aspects of the on-demand age, in which we no longer need to sacrifice effectiveness on the altar of efficiency. All a bit IBM consultant speak, but actually touching on a key issue.

Good phrase – no longer need to sacrifice effectiveness on the altar of efficiency.
It’s not all a numbers and scientific logic game. Efficiency may appear objective and easy to measure, but effectiveness is about real quality in its widest sense.

Now where did I read that quote about putting arty types in charge of science ?

Seem’s Ton is onto a rich seam here – he also blogged about Dave Weinberger’s Small Pieces, Loosley Joined, from which I also picked up the marvellous expression … Undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings in a world of pure connection. World of pure connection = On-demand era perhaps ?

Ton quotes Rorty on Catch-22 – Ton Zijlstra‘s post “Wrong Vocabulary” includes a quote from Rorty, which is another good statement of my Catch-22 [Quote] It reminds me of American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty who stated that it is not possible to argue the pragmatist case with the vocabulary of Platonian dichotomies, the very thing it aims to replace. The Platonian vocabulary simply is not fitted out for this. [Unquote]

Paraphrase
Rational logic is not (entirely) useful when dealing with humans,
and is particularly useless when trying to explain or justify why.

In fact Ton’s post precedes the Rorty quote with a conversation prompted by Verna Allee about social change [Quote] … change is not something you can plan, or can set goals in and then work towards them …. being able to gain understanding of social issues and conventions in an organisation may well be the first step in working towards (evolutionary) change …. the combination of design and social change implicitly contains the wish to make social change a controlleable process …. there is no such control, nor is it needed …. we can work towards change, but we’ll never be sure of the outcome. [Unquote] reminds me not only of my MBA thesis on the subject of organisational cultural change, but also that quote from Northrop [Quote] the basic paradox of our time [is that] “sound” theory tends to destroy the state of affairs it aims to achieve [Unquote] (His scare quotes, not mine). As good a statement of the Catch-22 as any I’ve heard.

Verna Allee takes much the same line as myself about not wasting time with traditional logical arguments [Quote] Winning the uphill battle [against command and control management mentality] would merely amount to showing how the ‘new’ fits in with the ‘old’. The thing is: it doesn’t, and it doesn’t have to either. [Unquote] This is very Tom Peters too, as in Ready, Fire, Aim.

Steven Pinker Interview – Pre-Blank-Slate interview from Meaning of Life TV [via James Marshall on MoQ]. My review of Pinker’s Blank Slate.

Fritjof Capra – Tao of Physics (1975)
Fritjof Capra – Turning Point (1982)
Malcolm Gladwell – Tipping Point (2000 / 2002)
Michael Talbot – Holographic Universe (1990 / 1992)
Michael Talbot – Mysticism and the New Physics (Written 1975 / 1981 / 1993 Read already)
Fritjof Capra – Web of Life (1996)
Fritjof Capra – Hidden Connections (2002)
(Plus systems theory stuff – Lazlo, von Bertalanffy, etc.)

Pirsig presented to the Rocky Mountain Modern Languages Association on 13th October 1961 [see Timeline]. It seems Owen Barfield is a regular item on the RMMLA agenda.

And this is a much better Barfield link that the one I blogged earlier which is a nasty frames-base site.