Category: Uncategorized

The Human Side of Knowledge Management. Slides (pdf) (via Seb and Thomas) from John Seeley Brown, plugging his book “The Social Life of Knowledge”. Basic message is knowledge is socially constructed, so design any system, be it physical office organisation, training courses or computer applications to encourage social interaction – “conversation” metaphor. He’ll get no argument from me. [Some good graphics to re-use elsewhere – Rate of processing power / storage capacity doubling periods + plus the community law, knowledge value equals 2 to the power of n connected users. Explicit vs tacit knowledge iceberg, and several more including the obligatory BCG 2×2 grid and “virtuous circle” cliches.]

History of the Blog from Rebecca Blood.

Metaphors We Live By. From JOHO’s booklist. Blogged several earlier mentions about how metaphorical aphorisms often seemed closer to the truth than any apparently rational view of a reality being described. (Part of my main thesis in fact as “many a true word”.) Bizarre, but here’s a book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson on that very subject. Hmmmm. I’m due to start a new book this week too ?

JOHO also comments on “Affective Computing” by Rosalind Picard [Quote] Raises questions about our assumption that rationality is the king of consciousness. [Unquote] I should say so.

JOHO’s Weinberger is also one of the contributors to “Cluetrain”. Ref The Cluetrain Manifesto : The End of Business as Usual. Intersting that an “e-biz” dot.com marketing hype book should still draw rave reviews in 2002. Good stuff about how it’s “humans” actually communicating even if the medium is the web. The human interactivity theme is very evocative of Douglas Adams thoughts on the web. This one caught my eye [Quote] No.29 (of 95) Elvis said it best: “We can’t go on together with suspicious minds.” [Unquote] IMHO – there is clearly an element of trust across a hyperlink, presumed or negotiated, about the communication you’re about to receive. [Post note – Just started reading Eco’s “Kant and the Platypus”, and he also talks of communicating knowledge being like a contract.]

[Quote] If you only have time for one clue this year [and can’t be bothered to read the other 94], this is the one to get… “We are not seats, or eyeballs, [or hits], or users, or consumers. We are human beings, and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it.”[Unquote]

randgaengeAnother interesting Radio Userland K-Blog from Thomas N. Burg. Uses some neat features of the Radio blogging system.

The Apothecary’s Drawer. Interesting mixed culture / science / history / writing blog from Ray Girvan (Link via Seb) with main site home pages containing many interesting (and classified) links. Picked up a link from there to Kuro5hin – “Technology and Culture from the Trenches” a lo-noise bulletin board with democratic moderation.

[Post Note – I’d forgotten until I re-looked recently that Ray’s tag line was actually “an eclectic and sceptical look at topics near the triple point of science, arts, and culture”.]

Finished Foucault – ultimately unsatisfactory despite 80% good content. Conclusions as incomprehensible as the penultimate chapter on Man. Did Foucault get tired towards the end, or his translator, or his editor (or was it just me) ?

Discovered publishers note about the mysterious translation of the title – sure enough, the publisher suggested The Order of Things precisely to distinguish it from other works in English with the titles “Words and Things / Objects” (See Quine below)

Umberto Eco’s little joke in his title “Foucault’s Pendulum” is of course responsible for the confusion between Michel Foucault and the Pendulum. (See the 10 most elegant experiments blog earlier)

[Note that psybertron seems to have got into search engines and directory listings at last – so more direct google hits etc, rather than re-directs from the old weblog archives. That, plus the increasing number of reciprocal links, probably responsible for the rising hit rate. I’ll have to watch my P’s&Q’s.]

Seb’s Open Reasearch. Another interesting blog – seen some time ago, now added to the sidebar. Picked-up this quote / link:
The O’Reilly Network has posted a transcript of Lawrence Lessig’s keynote speech on copyright at the Open Source Convention in late July. His four theses:
[Quote]
+ Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
+ The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
+ Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
+ Ours is less and less a free society.
[Unquote]
Pirsig’s levels explicitly in here, though not acknowledged – ie base / older level enables higher/ future level , but must not constrain it, however the other side of the deal is that the more developed level mustn’t undermine the lower, until it has re-built a foundation – kind of credible “respect your elders” adage. Dupuy also said about AI / Cybernetics “reflective contemplation is essential to progress”, not because one should feel constrained by it, but because it provides many possible bases on which to build, and many more allies than enemies. Little is thought that has not been thought before – who said that ?

Confucious “Study the past, if you would divine the future.”

Stepford Citizen Syndrome. (From BuzzFlash via Adam Curry). Many a true word, but really an example of how “cultural rationalisation” manifests itself like some kind of evil conspiracy, yet each individual would probably claim – “but I’m different.” Argyris again.

[Post Note – spookily my recorded impression of Perth, WA is Stepford Wives meets Bournemouth … now I recall why.]