Links: 2005-06-30

• The Mental Evolutionary Process of Moving From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 in 17 Steps | What's Web 2.0?
  Probably worth a read
  Posted: 2005-06-30T06:42:36Z (categories: readthis web20 )

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Kwiki Fun

While at YAPC::NA Ingy shanghaied me into being his lovely assistant during a tutorial on building Kwiki plugins: he talked while I made a new plugin from scratch. In an hour and a half we got the basics of a folksonomy tagging keyword system call Kwiki-Keywords hacked out.    (PQC)

Last night we had a Kwiki hackathon in my room for about seven hours. In that time we had fun and:    (PQD)

• Discovered how to make core Kwiki work on windows via the svn install    (PQE)
• Finished up Kwiki-Keywords and stuck it on CPAN and the YAPC::NA wiki    (PQF)
• Added Atom feed support to Kwiki-FetchRSS    (PQG)
• Fixed some bugs in Kwiki-PageStats and Kwiki-Raw    (PQH)
• Apparently found some sweet spot that stabilized Kwiki-Purple enough for me to be willing to turn my Purple Kwiki back on    (PQI)
• Started work on a Kwiki-Blog (not to CPAN yet) package that uses Kwiki-Keywords    (PQJ)

Now sleepy.    (PQK)

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every thing turn or learn

Heidegger has come up quite often in my own personal ramblings about the nature of work, collaboration, and information and knowledge representation. A few days ago, Aldo posted some information about the foundations of the Language Action Perspective (social constructionism, Heidegger, the notion of breakdowns in learning, organization as networks or interaction and commitments) that tickled long bound threads in my brain and ancient notes in my palm pilot.    (PQ5)

In a modern phenomenology, a person is a being embodied in a physical and social environment by which they create, discover and manipulate meaning: That which is in the world is what we know. What we learn is the result of an ongoing compare and contrast of what we already know with what we are becoming to know through experience and interpretation. Knowledge is the exploration of the sympathies between concepts.    (PQ6)

Our appreciation of existing description is based, to a powerful degree, on how well it resonates with our conception of the world or the world we want. Analogical reasoning describes what we know, it reveals new learning, but it only does so in the way in which we allow ourselves to vibrate in or out of tune with the phenomenological world.    (PQ7)

Husserl regards phenomenology as a way of describing without the influence of individual interpretations (our own tunes). More modern views eschew such things: there is always the interpretive dance, coming through our senses. We know what we want to know by what we allow ourselves to feel, smell, hear, etc.    (PQ8)

The most true moments of learning (from the mundane "I did not know that" to the alterations of faith) are the breakdowns: That which we are and know collides with the world of experience in a moment of discordancy that we either accept with a cascade of adaptations, or reject with a closing of doors.    (PQ9)

Information tools and environments support breakdowns to varying degrees of effectiveness. Tools and communication networks with open formats, open (and granular) access and flexible processes of use stir diversity into the information ecology, making room, by design, for the unexpected and thus for learning. Tools and communication networks with constrained formats, access and processes are not for learning, but that does not make them bad. They are for action (to be continued...)    (PQA)

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YAPC::NA 2005

I'll be at YAPC::NA in Toronto next week. I've not been to a YAPC before, but I hear they're fun.    (PQ3)

I'll post notes if/as they happen.    (PQ4)

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Links: 2005-06-20

• Language/Action Perspective: 10 years in retrospect
  A paper describing LAP that looks like it could be way up tight with some of my own interests and feelings on ICT
  Posted: 2005-06-20T00:26:56Z (categories: information lap readthis )

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Comments Again

Phil says:    (PQ2)

Yeah, I don't much like it yet either. It's a work in progress. But let this serve as notice that it is once more possible to leave comments.    (PQ0)

There are still many issues.    (PQ1)

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Old Stuff: Classification v Categorization

When I was in school I took an Information Architecture class that required a readings journal. Some of those entries deserve revision.    (PPB)

I was, at the time, especially in the difference, similarities and interrelationships between classification and categorization. What follows began life as Studer: Classification v. Categorization. The first version was written November, 2001.    (PPC)

The Studer article suggests there is a lack of consistency in the literature in the use of the terms classification and categorization. Studer uses the terms carelessly, especially when quoting: while he uses the term classification in his own text the quoted text uses category.    (PPE)

Studer makes it sound like the process of creating classifications is a step following the creation or identification of categories. This conflicts with my interpretations.    (PPF)

In my view classification is an artificial (synthetic, non-fundamental) process by which we organize things for presentation or later access. It involves the arbitrary creation of a group of classes which have explicit definitions and may be arranged in a hierarchy. In other words a class is strictly defined and once inhabited the inhabitants can be enumerated.    (PPG)

Categorization, on the other hand is a natural process in the sense that humans do it as part of their cognitive fundament. It is, like Studer reports, an act of simplification to make apprehension and comprehension of the environment more efficient. Categories spring up out of necessity and because they are designed to replace the details of definition are themselves resistant to definition. When provided with a list of stuff we are able to categorize the stuff, but when asked to list the full contents of a category we cannot.    (PPH)

So to put it more succinctly:    (PPI)

• a class is a defined grouping of entities in which the members fulfill the definition of the class and can be listed.    (PPJ)
• a category is a cognitive label applied to a non-enumerable grouping of entities wherein membership is determined by typicality amongst the members and not some overarching definition.    (PPK)

This is important to me, in part, because I'm playing around with trying to determine if computers can ever be actually intelligent or must always fake it. I vote for the latter because computers, thus far, cannot categorize.    (PPL)

The ability to categorize may be the basis for intelligence (On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins, presents some data to support this, as well as some assertions that may blow my "thus far" out of the water, given time). On the fly categorization allows us to place data in an informational context. Once in that matrix we can do what amounts to an endless recursive dialectic wherein each new synthesis becomes thesis.    (PPM)

Computers can presumably replicate this process but if they do, it is imitation. Their distinctions must be made by definition, by classification, not categorization. They can be made to appear to do categorization but the alternate representations they provide are rules (definition) based. Until recently the most promising research in creating seemingly intelligent machines has used what can be called a brute force approach: supply the computer with as much information as possible, related in as many ways as possible. This is the method that IBM used to get Deep Blue to become a chess champion and is one of the keys to the Semantic Web.    (PPN)

If we want to create truly intelligent machines we must determine how categorization works. I wonder, though, why we want intelligent machines. What do we gain from that? Don't we instead want machines that are tools to augment our own intelligence? If that's the case, then we are already have the understandings to make progress: we simply need to improve on what we have.    (PPO)

Posted by cdent at 05:08 AM | Trackback This | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | | bl | Categories: collaboration

Queues and Stacks and Creepy Crawlies

In separate conversations with an old coworker and a new coworker I've stumbled upon a new word that I rather like.    (POV)

It seems to me that the most effective way to manage a collection of tasks is to model them as a queue: first in, first out. Real life requires that we be able to reorder the queue in response to changes in the world, but the general principle of FIFO applies.    (POW)

A queue can be lengthened or shortened as needed, but provides a fairly robust cognitive aid in the face of additional requests that happen when the queue is already full: "There's no room in here, what would you like me to take out to make room?" or "You can get in here, but you have to go on the end."    (POX)

Very often organizations or people that are too busy or unfocused lose the discipline to maintain a queue of tasks and switch to using a stack: first in, last out. I know I do this. A lot of forces influence this: It's important not to say no to someone or something; A mess of dependencies makes it difficult to choose which tasks to sacrifice in the queue ; When there is a perception that stack or queue overrun will cause an organizational crash of some kind, a stack absorbs tasks into its dark confines more easily.    (POY)

It's in these dark confines where the new word lurks. Those tasks which are in the depths of the stack, pushed in a long time ago, warped and sickly from lack of attention, are filobytes.    (POZ)

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Demo Kwiki Back Up

Some time ago I shut down my Kwiki where I was demonstrating my various plugins because it wasn't working correctly.    (POS)

I've just fixed most of the things, so now it is back up.    (POT)

The Kwiki-Purple test wiki remains down until I feel smart.    (POU)

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Genius Social Networks

Back in my junior year of high school, my physics teacher, who had a penchant for pausing class to say something pithy, etched the following phrase into my brain: Genius is the ability to find the connections between seemingly disparate things.    (POG)

That idea has driven much of my thinking since then.    (POH)

Phil Jones (with whom I'd been having a lively chat about purple numbers) recently found my Why Wiki? posting. He responds with some comments on his own aspirations:    (POI)

I've convinced myself recently that if there were a universe where it were possible for statements like "there are two kinds of people" to be true then it would be true that there are two kinds of people interested in developing collaboration tools. Neither better nor worse, just different. Both are necessary and useful.    (POK)

One type is interested in enabling or augmenting the subtle interplay of people found in synchronous encounters, in synchronous settings as well as extended into asynchronous settings. These extroverts are the true and hopeful believers in collaborative action.    (POL)

The other type is more interested in augmenting the individual to allow them to manipulate information so it can be found, created and then distributed in a way that it can be manipulated by others. Introverts in an augmented dialectic.    (POM)

My own predilections, fears and interests place me in the second camp. For a long time I thought the main reason was because I didn't much like people and couldn't stand the dreadful noise, small packet size and high overhead of synchronous interaction.    (PON)

There's truth to that, but my experience with Phil suggests more: The internet as a whole and personal information tools that operate with it allow us to leap great spaces between disparate places and topics to draw and discover inferences that are like sparks of genius in a giant shared mind.    (POO)

Only a diversity of tools and a diversity of people can create the complexity in the technological and social network to both enable and ensure the distant leaps between hubs and echo chambers that signal the big ideas. Tools that are focused on the individual and their tasks and interests and publish to the universe simultaneously break down hegemony and synthesize the new groups and ideas that will be built from and broken down soon thereafter.    (POP)

Thanks Mr. Riehle.    (POQ)

Update: Phil has some additional comments.    (POR)

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Moved!

   (PO3)

With the excellent help of Aubrey, Sean and Maria we've moved ourself out of our somewhat stanky previous establishment into a much more pleasant place. A small number of pictures on flickr.    (PO4)

Now the hard part: cleaning up the old place.    (PO5)

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