Category: Uncategorized

Referral Feedback Loops – I’ve posted this worry a couple of times before, [here] & [here] about track-backs and referral linkings potentially causing unstoppable feedback loops. My link to you creates a link to me, creates a link to you, creates a link to me, etc …Seems it has really happened here with Stephen Downes referral script.

Warm Fuzzies – A paper by Michael Meier Published in 1993 on the Pirsig / MOQ site, claims to be about those warm fuzzy desires that get omitted from software “specifications”. Actually it doesn’t go far enough IMHO, most of the anecdotal “warm fuzzies” (like the feel / balance of a hand-tool) are ones that could easily be incorporated into “specifications”, but the main point is cool. This particular quote is very apt in the context of my current day-job.

[Quote]
Our Vision

If we want our clients to be happy with their systems
If we want to take ourselves out of a situation in which we can’t be successful
If we want to maximize the contribution of everyone concerned

then, I believe, we have only one viable alternative. We must make it possible for our clients to assemble their own systems. We must provide them with system Leggo? blocks that can be combined and recombined without programming.
[Unquote]

All part of this monolithic / enterprise equals bad, fragmented / flexible / peer-to-peer equals good as per this recent blog.

Armed Liberal – A political blog which shares with Psybertron Google hits on Pirsig, Cellular Automata and the war on bad philosophy !!!

BlogMatcher

Organica – What’s this ?

Remains of the Piano – Erstwhile Python Eric Idle’s costume drama spoof. [via Jorn]

A naive, but incisive question to Philip Greenspun from a 1st Year MBA student [via Jorn] about enterprise software. The whole thrust of blogs / social software et al has been the recognition that the flexibiliy of peer-to-peer arrangements actually affords a better picture of the true information content of the medium. Any monolithic centralised system is “doomed to misinform”, as I say in my manifesto summary in the page header. See recent computerworld story Enterprise Software’s End – this is already a mainstream issue.

Communication Intent – Fairly basic but intelligible paper by Dan Sperber [via Jorn] reminding us of the importance of the communication context as well as content if the “communicator’s meaning” is to be correctly inferred from the message received. In disembodied messages (web-pages / posts) we need to be sure we have some way of referencing or linking back to the issuers “intent” as I have said many times.