2000 hits

Another milestone. Most are Google search hits, amazing number of searches for Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s World) and Friedrich Durrenmatt (Die Physiker) – both of which figure in my references, but not as significant contributions to the main threads. Increasing number of recognisable regular visitors. Thanks peeps.
[Thanks to gimbo too for the reciprocal sidebar link.]
[And thanks also to Leonid for his link.]

Talking of Post-Modernists

“It’s like receiving a threat from a post-modernist gangster, who makes you an offer you can’t understand.” – Charlie Stross (via Jeff Vogel, via Jacob Haller, via “kibology”, via Jorn). [Link omitted intentionally. I’ve not ventured into kibology yet, whatever that is, but the time may yet come.]

Seriously though, I re-read most of Joe Powell’s “Postmodernism” last night, much more enlightening having now read Foucault. I can see Derrida (“Of Grammatology”) being next, followed closely by Deleuze and Guattari (“Forget Foucault” and “Rhizome”). Interestingly although the deconstructionists seemed to turn against Foucault – they look like a logical progression to me – all that’s missing is something to re-construct with !

Foucault’s archaeological journey makes a big thing of the much neeeded demise of “tables” in organising knowledge going foward. (Ref Bacon’s tables, Linnaeus’ classical taxonomies, and Roussel’s operating table – grids in “space” in which to organise things.) The others simply go one step further and attack any kind of tree / hierarchy / ontology – hence rhizome. Of course Foucault himself had already suggested the web analogy in his “Semantic Web” earlier in the discourse. What a great deal of fuss about not a lot – No need to diasgree with, or denounce one “ism” before adopting another, so much better to build on relationships. Who needs binary opposites ? (Quantum computing again ?)

It is pretty credible that whilst ontologies (trees / taxonomies) are useful they are in no way fundamental in themselves. Rhizomes, Fractal Thickets (Jorn) and Groves are closer to the truth, but clearly the cross-linking of relationships on multiple levels of intent in a web is even closer. – Question is, is there anything fundamental about the “levels” to choose, and any fundamental order in these ? Enter Pirsig again, and Maslow and Foucault, and Cuvier. A FRACTAL WEB in fact too – scale factoring in fractals must bear some relationship to the levels chosen.

How not to get behind in the 21st century

How not to get behind in the 21st century. Interesting summary from Leonid Ototsky of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (via Danny’s Blog) of technical directions in e-style information integration. Not surprisingly Leonid makes reference to his adopting the EPISTLE information model, as well as numerous references to his recently deceased inspiration – Stafford Beer. More interesting in this context are his references to Norbert Wiener?s ?Cybernetics and Society” and to Principia Cybernetica (See sidebar).

Interestingly too, is the machine translation of Leonid’s “IT Strategy for a New Century” paper, hosted by the SUO (Standard Upper Ontology) project. This group organised uder IEEE, is already linked on my resources page, where I had previously seen them as thrashing around from first principles somewhat – worth a second look.

What a tangled web we weave. [Must communicate with Leonid / SUO.]

Man and His Doubles

Struggled with the penultimate chapter of Foucault – He name drops every philosopher since 18C that I’ve heard of (except Wittgenstein), but I don’t get what this chapter is about – the concept of Man. Fortunately the final chapter on Human Sciences is much clearer – the balance between science and anthropology / behaviour / subjectivity. I keep finding evocations of Pirsig / Lila.