Psybertron Asks

Read Owen Barfield’s “Poetic Diction” and “History in English Words” a year or so ago, and blogged several items. [here][here][here]. I was doing a search on Barfield today in preparation for reading more of his work and came across two interesting sites.

This review of Barfield’s “Saving the Appearances – A Study in Idolatry” on the somewhat odd doyletics site.

Liked this 1933 Hoffenstein quote, about the reductionist dangers of logical positivism, “cutting one’s own throat with Occam’s razor” as I’ve called it, the ruthlessness of the analytic “knife” to use Pirsig’s metaphor, or “scientific fundamentalism” as James Willis coined it.

Little by little we subtract
Faith and fallacy from fact
The illusory from the true
And starve upon the residue.

(See also Wordsworth’s “we murder to dissect”)

And this comprehensive Barfield site updated recently by David Lavery.

An old friend Denise contacted me via a hit on my music photo gallery pages about 70’s London pub rock band “Scarecrow“. Interesting enough in itself, to reminisce about old London pub stomping grounds, but spookily, now she runs an interesting business in psychological career counselling (what, who, me ?). And she blogs. Echoes of the Russo piece on recognising your life’s work in being good at what you’re really interested in as opposed to the day job. Many a true word.

Joi Ito reporting on being blocked from using Blogger whilst in China.

Strange, I have to say I’ve done so successfully several times in the past year, and blogged about it in the process [example-1][example-2]. Now the Beeb, that’s a different matter.

Suw Charman reviewing Shaun of the Dead.

Having just witnessed the gore in The Passion (post earlier today) and come away preferring Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, I have to say you can’t have too much gore as long as it’s done with wit. Play adds value. Realism adds nothing.

(You’re not bringing that Krikkit bat to BlogWalk are you Suw ?)

Arrangement and Context. [Amy Gahran][via Julian Elve]

Information, facts, statements, ideas etc are social, nothing in themselves, rarely new, but brought to life by interaction and linking. The outcome is “emergent behaviour”, not causally predictable from the “specific pieces”.

At someone’s request – just switched my XML subscription button to Full RSS publishing (rather than just title), using the Blogger feature, no frills.

I was loaned two DVD’s this weekend, so watched them both.

The Name of the Rose – a “palimpsest” of Eco’s book. Actually covers essential aspects of the plot, with all the characters and style replicated in caricature. Great atmospheric production too. The main message is spoken explicitly, lest you miss it – humour conquers all – if authority permits (Aristotle, Poetics 2). Only flaw is the cheesey ending – The rabble turning on the bad-guys and Adso meeting the girl (otherwise presumed burned at the stake) as they depart the scene of the crime for ever.

The Passion – predictable plot, gratuitous violence. No wish to offend, so I’ll say no more.

Matt Whyndham on project management trade-off of time vs scope / budget / quality. How true.

Also from Matt, this one on the trade-off between rational planning and free space for innovation. From David Anderson at Agile Management quoting Peter Drucker’s explantion of why planning conflicts with organisational aims, unless you’re running a production line.

Didn’t I see a bunch of other Drucker quotes from Matt earlier ? A theme here.

Having recently read Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” a colleague lent me the film on DVD yesterday. Magic – Sean Connery as William of Baskerville. Now all I need is the tee-shirt.

Didn’t spot this post from July by Dave Pollard, discussing and quoting from Dave Snowden’s “Masterclass”, until a cross-hit today.

Usual stuff – analysis of “official” business processes leads to duff decision – no, really ? The unofficial business (in this case rest-break exchanges, but classically the “water-cooler meeting ” or “elevator pitch” idea) exhanged more real knowledge than any formal process – for cultural (anthropological) reasons as much as the mechanics – you can’t beat a good (apochryphal) story or distorted gossip to get the real meaning.

This story is about (non-specific) public-sector workers. James Willis work is full of similar anecdotes (ie truth) from a life of UK health-care experience, and I’ve seen others cite health-care management examples in a Dave Snowden context before. (Which reminds me I have a Bruce Charlton paper to review.) Personally, the power of unoficial narrative in setting the cultural basis for how an organisation (actually) works was a part of my 1980’s thesis. Yet again – nothing new under the sun.

Wake up from the meme dream and smell the hypocrisy.

The meme dream is that simple cause and effect models (using things we can easily see and measure – objectively, whatever that means) can be used to make decisions and to attribute success or failure in previous decision outcomes. The hypocrisy is we all keep using this view of the world despite the fact we all know it’s wrong. Reality is that human affairs (business, politics or otherwise) have little to do with classical “scientific” logic, and everything to do with complex systems. Outcomes are emergent, not causal in any “proximate” sense. Humans recognise truth lies in interesting stories, metaphors, aphorism, jokes etc, whereas logical argument may be objectively true, but can somehow seem wrong. (“Jawohl, 100% correct, 10 out of 10, useless” – as Doc, a mentor of mine, used to say some 20 years ago. BTW Jeff, another mentor from the same period, also use to say, “Write it down, one day you’ll want to write a book” – but that’s another story)

How do we turn “somehow seem” into a useful and credible toolset ? It’s currently so politically incorrect to treat an “objective” fact, as being of no practical significance. That’s where Dave Snowden is, and that’s why I like his “Cynefin“.