Blake was a Blogger

Almost finished reading Bronowski’s “Man Without a Mask”, about the life and works of William Blake, and was struck, by this summary …

“We find [Blake’s life] eccentric, only if we miss it’s context, which is made by his writings and his times together [American and French and Industrial revolutions] … the context of a man who gave his mind to speaking in a public world.”

Also this succinct summary of the significance of freedom and empowerment, and that social (industrial, political) institutions should be means to that end, not means of control and restriction.

“Blake believed society had no ends. Like his [Satanic Mills] it is a means become master …. The good remains an end to which society gives means, but which man must know and make.”

This last phrase is in fact exactly Pirsig’s MoQ view of the social and intellectual levels of Quality [Good]. Lower layers support (act as hygiene) to those above, but do not direct or control [Maslow] Individual man must know and make.

Interesting given yesterday’s BlogWalk in London [walking around Bloomsbury], that a striking conclusion by David Wilcox, was that discussing blogging as social software within organisations seemed simply to raise all the issues of society and organisation, independent of blogging as the technological means, and that in itself was a valid reason for blogging as a subject and a tool. Linked posts as index cards again. How true. Nothing new under the sun again.

Those issues of society and organisation I’ve seen previously summarised by Quinn & Cameron as the classic paradoxical aspects of management – empowerment vs control, centralisation vs decentralisation, discretion vs direction, open-communication vs secrecy, and so on. Johnnie Moore mentioned a company whose elightened operational guidelines was simply a single statement that “Each member of staff should exercise their best judgement”.

Some Rivetting Goodies

Thanks to Rivets for these gems.

Strangers on my Flight (Needs sound on.)

The Official God FAQ

Gobbledygook

BBC Radio4 Today Programme this morning 16th Sept, discussing a book by ex-Aussie-PM speech-writer Don Watson and comic Adam Hill(?). About the “generalisation” of management speak actually reducing the number of core words, particularly adjectives, in the language. Many “portmanteau” words with many meanings from trivial to important. It’s partly political correctness, using euphemisms to avoid a taboo or unpleasant word, when everybody knows that’s what you actually mean from the context. Since we all know downsized means sacked, why don’t we actually say sacked ? This is the hypocrisy.

This was contrasted with “strine” creative Australian dialectic use of the language, and a suggstion that the stereotypical rising questioning intonation, or the habit of leaving sentences unfinished, was actually adding meaning to the original phrase.

Captsolo

Captsolo – a semantic web / social networks blog. Or is it just an aggregator ? Or is Planet RDF the aggregator ?

Strong Opinions

Blogged earlier on the “strong opinions, lightly held” theme, but didn’t recognise the Nabokov connection to his “Strong Opinions”. Jorn has a relevant Nabokov page [Robot Wisdom] Some excellent quotes in there.

“the greater one’s science, the deeper the sense of mystery”

“I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more”

Words as Idols

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.

Psychological Counselling

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.

Blogging in China

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.

Play Adds Value

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 ?)

Nothing New Under The Sun … Except …

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”.