A couple of days ago, I wrote up a thought that I was afraid sounds better than it is. But now I think maybe it isn’t as hollow as I’d thought.

The idea was this: Aristotle says that to know x is to place x into a relationship of similarity and difference: A robin is a type of bird (same as all other birds) but is a unique species of bird (different from all other birds). This is a world-changing insight, especially since Aristotle thought it was true not just of knowledge but of reality. But as our belief in a single, uninterpreted reality — or our ability to know a single reality — falters, we find ourselves in a global network of conversations. And conversations iterate differences on the ground of shared beliefs — difference and similarity.

I was worried that the formal similarity between Aristotle’s idea and the nature of conversation was too facile. But this morning I think there’s also something right. In these billions of conversations, we attempt to work out what’s true. But, especially as the conversation goes global and involves people with deep differences, we (= I) have no hope of ever resolving issues and creating anything like an eternal tree of knowledge. That dream of Reason is gone. (Appropriate exceptions admitted.) Instead, for the rest of our time on the planet, we will be iterating differences, hopefully on an increasing ground of commonality. But we’re never going to all agree and fall silent. That’s not even a desirable outcome.

So, I think maybe I do believe that knowledge is becoming the eternality of conversations dancing difference over common ground.

(I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow.) [Technorati tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous aristotle philosophy]

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You know what works? Skype Out. You plug a microphone and headset into your laptop (or use the built-in ones), plug your laptop into a broadband connection, pay Skype 10 euros for about 10 hours of talk time, and you can call anywhere in the world. Plain old Skype lets you call any other Skype user for free, computer to computer, but Skype Out lets you call from your computer to other people’s phones. The connections have been a bit echo-y, and calls to mobile phones are way more expensive — 4.14 minutes to the US from London cost me .085 euros while 2:06 minutes to a London cellphone cost .615 euros — but it works.

Or, you could bring your VOIP modem with you and plug a telephone into it, but not if your family needs the modem at home.

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USA Today’s front-page headline today:

So now a tipping point is any change. Thus has the term reached the pinnacle of success: It’s become utterly meaningless.

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Glenn Fleishman writes in the NY Times about a Seattle cafe that gives free wifi on weekdays but is wifi-free on weekends in order to encourage conversation…

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From Rebecca MacKinnon at GlobalVoicesOnline.com:

Microsoft has launched a Chinese-language version of its Spaces blog hosting service, and guess what? Users are banned from using the word “democracy” and other politically sensitive words to label their blogs — although it does appear possible to use those words within blog posts, for now. (As noted in my interview with Isaac Mao, people who set up blogs under this service don’t have to register with the authorities because MSN is already obliging the government by policing their content.)

I understand the argument — Google’s, for example — that it’s better to provide limited access to Web services than no access. Of course, that argument happens to work out in favor of the companies’ commercial interests, so it’s tainted. But there’s also a point at which the compromises turn your software into an instrument of control. I don’t know where that point is but it should be making companies intensely uncomfortable.

Of course, about the control-obsessed, fear-based Chinese government there can be little ambiguity. [Technorati tags: china GlobalVoices microsoft RebeccaMacKinnon]

Here’s Scoble’s take. (And isn’t it most excellent that he’s out there talking for and to Microsoft?) Although he staunchly believes in free speech, he says he has “ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS forcing the Chinese into a position they don’t believe in.”

First, I agree that it’s important to understand the other country’s perspective. I have heard, on my few brief trips to China (I could say “Please,” “Thank you” and “No, I don’t want to buy a DVD,” so I am obviously an expert in Chinese politics) that during this difficult period, the Chinese people can’t afford to allow a few enemies of the people to spread their seductive lies. And I don’t believe free speech is an absolute right: I support laws against slander, perjury and even giving away genuine trade secrets. But I have also had the privilege of meeting Chinese people who have risked death by speaking freely. So, when Scoble talks about “the Chinese,” I want to know which Chinese he’s talking about. Every Chinese person? Or the Chinese government?

Second, if Microsoft had refused to compromise its software, it wouldn’t be forcing the Chinese government to do anything. It would be refusing to enable the Chinese government to impede free speech. (On the other hand, to be honest, I’d like Microsoft to take a stand on this in order to influence China, and influence can be taken as a type of force.)

Personally, I think there are times when we absolutely do not want to enable other governments to do whatever it is that they want to do. I would not have wanted my company to help enable Apartheid, and I won’t even go back to enabling the legitimate government of Germany in the 1930s. My point is not that the Chinese government should be compared to this or that other regime but that I do not agree with Scoble’s idea that companies have no right to take moral stances against the policies of other governments. Whether this is one of those cases is a separate point; in fact, it’s point #1 above.

So, I agree with Scoble that we don’t want to go around thinking our values are the only values, forcing the rest of the world to act the way we think they ought. Excellent point. I even agree that there are times and places where free speech isn’t the highest value. And I don’t think it’s totally obvious what Microsoft ought to do in cases such as this. But I disagree with Scoble’s reasoning that takes the moral issue off the table. Instead, I think there needs to be vigorous, practical debate about whether this particular software compromise is acceptable. Reasonable people (like Scoble) may disagree on this question. But it is, for me, a question.

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It has been a long but wonderful day.

I woke up in Copenhagen unreasonably early and went for a walk aimlessly and maplessly; since I am so direction-impaired that I can’t even read maps, bringing a map doesn’t really help. I walked along the river and wandered down large and small streets. Because it was early on a Sunday morning, there wasn’t a lot going on. The city was quiet, empty and quite rectangular. And, as Doc pointed out last night, the streets are awfully broad given that they were created long before cars would come along to use up all that bandwidth.

By accident, I walked into a park that turned out to be the huge churchyard cemetary for notables. The “You are here” sign listed Soren Kierkegaard as one of the residents (“You are here, but these guys ain’t leaving”), so I paid him a visit:

Somehow I don’t think Kierkegaard — whose name means “church yard” — would have been tickled pink to find out that he is such a popular dead guy that he gets his own direction sign:

Then it was off to the airport for the 1.5 hour flight to London. Traveling in coach with us normals was a heavy metal band, complete with road managers and handlers. I thought someone said they were Iron Maiden, but the Maiden site says they’re traveling from Italy to Switzerland today; Copenhagen would definitely be a wrong turn. It seems not to have been Iron Butterfly either. (Man, in the photos on their site do those guys look old, i.e., my age! Who’d believe that after one hit in 1968 they’d still be touring, especially since that hit is unlistenable unless you are massively stoned.) Metallica is traveling between Austria and Germany today. (My fantasy was that one of the Metalllicans would sit next to me and I’d explain why file-sharing is good for them. Even in my daydream I lost the argument.) Motley Crue seems to be off the road, although their site tempted me to send $40 to join their fan club so I could get my own motley.crue.com email address. Anyway, whoever those folks on the plane were, they seemed to be very nice young men, albeit nice young men who aren’t so young and now are doomed to remind people initially of Spinal Tap. (By the way, here are some spare umlauts for you sprinkle appropriately over their names: …………)

I got to my hotel in London at 14:00. (Modulo 12 to get the real time.) It’s a lovely little hotel, picked by Wired’s travel agency because I’m here writing a story on the BBC. But the Internet connection at the hotel has been down for two days and they aren’t doing anything to bring it back up. That’s like having a hotel room without a telephone or a TV. Or blankets. So I asked them to find me another hotel. As a result, I’m in the Hilton across the street for precisely the same room rate. The Internet works in the Hilton…but it’s 15 pounds a day, or almost US$30. Oy veh!

I went out for a 3.5 hour walk, up through Picadilly, to Leicester Sq., then beyond, then down a little, and then some curlicues around some statute of someone on a horse, then swoop up past a very large green swath, then catch the end of a demonstration that my first reaction to is “Gosh, I hope it’s against us,” then some doglegs and a loop around the back 9, up through a really crowded bit, then a cone of soft ice cream that tastes like blackboard eraser, then a zig here and zag there, past Buckingham Palace, head in the wrong direction entirely, cross the big yard in front of the Palace waving all friendly-like to the quaint locals as they make a big show of saving the Queen, and finally back to my hotel.

I love walking in London. It’s like NYC but with elbow room and history.

Before you go bopping me upside my head for hoping the demonstration was against us, let me explain: I’m against us — at least against how we’re fighting the “war on terror.” I acknowledge, though, that seeing another nation’s people denounce the US is painful, even when you agree with them. No, you want to say as they chant, it’s more complicated than it seems from the outside. We need more of that nuance that our President so despises. [Technorati tags: copenhagen london]

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It’s Sunday morning. Reboot is over. It was a damn good conference.

For a geekfest, a surprising number of sessions were on cultural topics. And the presence of academics was stronger than I’m used to in US tech conferences. Yet it all felt quite integrated. For example, Jyri Engestrom’s session on object-centered social networks used insights from sociology to help software designers create apps that work. I hope US tech conferences take a look at Reboot’s program to get ideas about how to broaden both their appeal and their significance.

The conference was well-run, informal, over-packed with sessions, in English, presumptively in favor of open source, and in Copenhagen. What’s not to like?

Ok, one thing not to like was the meagre presence of female presenters, including zero keynoters. Yet, fwiw, the atmosphere felt less testosteronic than at the typical US geekorama. I heard less techno one-upmanship, saw less swagger. On the other hand, maybe I’m just not as good at decoding European testicular displays. [Technorati tag: reboot7]

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Last night I woke up after four hours of sleep — which was odd because I had been on a sleepless red-eye flight the night before — and had an idea for the talk I gave at Reboot yesterday. The idea connected three points.

1. I had been planning on beginning by talking briefly about Aristotle’s discovery of the shape of knowledge: To know this robin is to see its place in a hierarchy of similarities (it’s like other birds) and differences (it’s different from other birds), an incredibly efficient way to organize complex systems.

2. I had been planning on ending by talking about knowledge as a property of conversations.

3. Last year, when writing about why blogs are not (generally) echo chambers, I had talked about conversation as the iterating of differences on a shared ground.

So, in the middle of last night it occurred to me that conversations, as the iteration of differences on the basis of similarity, are formally like Aristotle’s description of knowledge as the placing of the known in a system of differences and similarities.

This makes for a neat line of patter: Knowledge going from static, pre-existing content the same for everyone to an emergent social process embedded in unique-yet-shared cultural and personal contexts.

My hunch is that there is something true about this, but that there is also a good deal of hollowness. Everything in the universe can be described in terms of similarity and difference, so showing that A and B both can be characterized that way is a bit like saying that crocodiles and hair balls are formally the same because they can both be used as the subject of sentences. But I’m too tired to actually think about this. [Technorati tags: Aristotle conversation philosophy]

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On the irc chat at Reboot, I got a straight line I’ll never get again. We were on a brief thread about how tired we all were. Someone posted “We’re brain dead.” I posted: “And some of us are Dane bred.”

What are the chances of the opportunity to use this Spoonerism ever arising again? Hence my shameless, context-free repeating of it here. Forgive me.

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First, on the plane ride here I read an article in The Times of London that cites John Palfrey, and tonight I come back from the Reboot social event, flip on CNN and there’s Rebecca MacKinnon on a panel about news and bloogging. What next? Ethan Zuckerman Brand soap in my hotel room?

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