Category: Uncategorized

Fireworks for all

A Soundtrack To Blog By – Liked Ayda, for the backing track (plus references to Michael Moore and Nilsson ?)

To illustrate my recent points [eg here] about memes suffering from too much communication ….

In my manifesto I mentioned the fact that “rabbits run”. An idea, a piece of information released into the world, is very difficult to control being spread and multiplied by onward communication. Normally recognised in relation to subjects where there is some a priori reason for confidentiality or controlled timing, and where a misleading (or embarassing) half-truth escapes. My point relates even to the communication of well considered messages. You know the case. You’ve spent the last two weeks honing that presentation getting those bon mots just right, and the following week someone quotes you, but “That’s not what I meant, but, but, ….” Too late. Face the fact that in effect that IS what you meant, if that’s what was understood. The effort needed to change the situation to your original intent, or a considered revision of that view, escalates as the rabbits breed.

Always a suspicion of conspiracy theory – your words being twisted for someone else’s ends – or stupidity if not – did you deliberately misunderstand me you dimwit ? Speed of light communication of memes just accentuates the effect, conspiracy or cock-up is irrelevant, forget causality, it’s nature.

See, even me too. My apologies for doing it with the word meme itself – I actually no longer have any precise recollection of what Dawkins or Blackmore actually defined the term to mean, just the general idea – received / perceived wisdom – in practice I just mean “a thought shared by communication, which can be further shared and can mutate in the process”. A paradox I see, not something I’m advocating you understand, is that without some species boundaries to communication, mutation is degeneration all the way. Someone tell me I’m wrong, please. (Or is success just a numbers game ?)

The Nonsense of Knowledge Management – Paper by Professor Tom Wilson [via Oryon] lamenting the fact that KM is just the latest fad in management bandwagons. Actually he’s more objective and less scathing than that, but I have offerred the same lament once or twice recently. KM is becoming de-valued jargon linked with every management issue, and the new followers would do well to research some of the more general organisational management subjects before adding the KM tag. Tom also, like me, is concerned with narrowing the definition of Knowledge itself to distinguish it from Information, something which I approve in theory, but accept that language defines itself. Interesting that Oryon’s only problem with this is the Popperian view that one cannot scientifically “prove” the meaning of any word – 100% correct, about as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle – that’s science for you.

Actually this is the same issue I blogged about memetic evolution suffering from too widespread communication too soon. A term like KM can only ever come to mean some watered down mediocre average of what anyone who first coined the term could have really intended. Fortunately this doesn’t change the significance of the issue intended. Tom actually seems to shoot his own argument in the foot by placing any credibility on the numbers-game head count of of references to KM in various management consultant papers etc, though I guess that’s the Catch-22 of having to prove his point – scientifically.

The Future’s Bright … ? From Future Meetup (4th Thursday every month) a subset of Blog Meetup (3rd Wednesday every month) via Ming The Mechanic (A blog I’d lost contact with until today.) “Future” blogs are blogs by futurists, and their meet up agenda includes these two points.

? Ray Kurzweil has suggested that by 2099 humans and machines will be indistinguishable from each other. Can this be a good thing?
? How can we maintain the higher elements of the human spirit as computers begin to exceed human intelligence in our lifetime?

Anyone who believes that by 2099 humans and machines will actually be indistinguishable or that computers will begin to exceed human intelligence, is either barking or provocatively witty, I think I know which Ray Kurzweil is. The two questions posed suggest these futurists are actually taking the suggestion seriously.

Blinding flash – One point I picked-up from Dawkins, is that whilst genetic mutation leading to potential evolution occurs spontaneously, anywhere in any organism, in order it to get into a cycle of re-inforcement by natural selection of species, it is necessary for that population to become isolated (genetically) from other populations. In talking about cultural, technological human development, more memetics than genetics, could the same also be true. In the global village of mass media communications – there is no hope of isolating ideas, so no hope of cultural evolution except towards satisfying the mediocrity of the average of the entire global population.

This seems paradoxical, but might explain some slowness in truly beneficial exploitation of technological capabilities, and frustration at apparent negative consequences. Dialogue is clearly essential to developing ideas and turning them into “technology”, but you can have too much of a good thing – if ideas spread like wildfire converging into every domain of life too soon, are opportunities for substantive techno-cultural development actually being squandered ? An original thought, but no doubt someone else thought of this before – right ?

A common thread of mine is that the formally managed aspects of business life often represent the 80% with only 20% of the value, and often there is a very important hidden element which actualy represents most of the real value. (I say something to that effect in the manifesto.) In Dr Willis on-line book the Paradox of Progress, he laments the fact that management are in fact completely unaware of the value and success of semi-autonomous distributed “community” workers, and that this becomes obvious when technology enables more centralised control to stifle the essential autonomy. [Quote] It would be nice to think that community staff enjoy this freedom because those in authority realise its value. But it is clear that this is not the case. The new era of computer technology is demonstrating that this freedom and richness has not arisen by design, but by default. It is no wise insight that has recognized its ultimate necessity and value. It is simply that nobody has managed to find a way of extending the reach of central control out into the wilderness. – Until now. [Unquote]

I think I said in the introduction to my dissertation all those (12?) years ago “There is a perception that Information Technology, which pervades our operation and our deliverables, far from increasing flexibility, creates new constraints”. Nothing new under the sun.

The rest of Chapter 4 is a litany of examples of the political correctness of rationally jutifiable things we ought to do, and the tacit understanding that anyone who actually did try to do would be considered insane. Do as I do, not as I say, in action. [Quote] THE UNSPOKEN AGREEMENT TO PRETEND TO DO THE IMPOSSIBLE – We have a double standard here which is going to get worse as society gets more and more tightly organised [electronically integrated ? – I’d say] unless we find a way of giving the corporate mind of society the equivalent of common sense.[Unquote]

Almost finished this book on-line now and it is an excellent read, peppered with little anecdotal gems from a GP’s life, bags of common sense, plenty of black wit and, for me, a finger right on the pulse of how the lie of logical positivism is going to find its come-uppance in the world of mass ICT (or gawd ‘elp us.)

[Quote] It is already quite obvious from a personal perspective that technology and rules are a poor substitute for common sense. The question remains how long it will be before this becomes obvious from the media scale perspective as well, and how far things will have deteriorated by then.[Unquote] The real trouble is [Quote] GENERALISTS MUST LIE – Yes. Generalists must lie. Controlled lying, or slippage, is the only means we have of coping with the complexity and the uncertainty of life. The slippage which our minds permit, the subtle distortion of the literal reality of the world, is not a failing but a necessary strength.[Unquote]

Dithyramb – Today’s word. Nietzsche keeps using it, along with other allusions to Dionysus, and today I find it used by Socrates in his dialogue with Phaedrus as recorded by Plato. A frenzied, passionate, enthusiastic, exhalted, inspired, wild, irregular piece of discourse, from the form of the original passionate choric poems and dance in praise of Dionysus. [I’m expecting to find myself coming full circle back to Pirsig any day soon.]

[Quote]
Socrates : …… And now, dear Phaedrus, I shall pause for an instant to ask whether you do not think me, as I appear to myself, inspired?
Phaedrus : Yes, Socrates, you seem to have a very unusual flow of words.
Socrates : Listen to me, ….. so that you must not wonder, if, as I proceed, I appear to be in a divine fury, for already I am getting into dithyrambics.
Phaedrus : Nothing can be truer.
Socrates : The responsibility rests with you. But hear what follows, and perhaps the fit may be averted; all is in their hands above. I will go on talking to my youth. Listen ….
Unquote]

Talking to my youth ? Hmmm.

Some notes for later.
Socrates : “Birds of a feather, flock together”
Socrates : “Your love of discourse, Phaedrus, is superhuman.”
Socrates : “…. ceteris paribus ….”
Socrates : “I told a lie when I said that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad. It might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness, …”
Socrates : “There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names, who would never have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour – they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter t is only a modern and tasteless insertion. And this is confirmed by the name which was given by them to the rational investigation of futurity, whether made by the help of birds or of other signs-this, for as much as it is an art which supplies from the reasoning faculty mind (nous) and information (istoria) to human thought (oiesis) they originally termed oionoistike, but the word has been lately altered and made sonorous by the modern introduction of the letter Omega (oionoistike and oionistike), and in proportion prophecy (mantike) is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind (sophrosune) for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin.”
Socrates : “I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think.”
Socrates : ” ….. there seem to be a great many holes in their web.”
Socrates : “The perfection which is required of the finished orator is, or rather must be, like the perfection of anything else; partly given by nature, but may also be assisted by art.”