I’m honored to be giving the Henderson Lecture at the University of North Carolina on Dec. 7. For it I’ve written a presentation that’s a bit more philosophical and lecture-y than usual for me, on my same-old topic of tags and knowledge.It asks how closely aligned knowledge and taxonomies have to be, whether and why some taxonomies have special standing, whether tags can ever be false, and whether folksonomies really have anything to do with knowledge at all.

On Monday, Dec. 4, at 7pm, I’m going to read a draft of it at a Web of Ideas session at the Berkman (23 Everett St in Cambridge [map]), and then throw it open for discussion. Any and all are welcome. We even serve pizza. [Tags: tags folksonomy taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous berkman]

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Thanks to Indigo and Colin Rhinesmith, a 46-minute video of my interview of Paul Graham is now available. It starts after the overflow crowd (Paul is a rock star) had introduced itself.

Paul raised some issues that I’ve been thinking about since. I fully intended to blog about them before this got posted, but Indigo and Colin beat me to it, damn them! ;) Paul is, to put it mildly, a stimulating thinker, speaker, writer, programmer and painter…

The discussion glancingly refers to a post of mine from earlier that day. (I’ve listened to the first few minutes and already have found places where I want to insert an explanation of what I meant. E.g., in saying that taste is that about which we don’t argue, I didn’t mean to imply that everything is a matter of taste.) [Tags: paul_graham berkman video]

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I’m interviewing Paul Graham tonight as part of my perpetually intermittent Web of Ideas discussions at the Berkman Center. (Yes, you’re invited. It’s at 7pm and we serve pizza, just in case Paul Freaking Graham isn’t enough of an enticement for you! [map.])

We’re going to be talking about his Taste for Makers article. Here are some of the issues I think I want to talk with him about:

I think the article isn’t so much about the role of taste as about what makes good design. Some of the elements he lists have directly to do with taste and beauty. Some are just good design principles. But I want to focus on simplicity, which Paul thinks is a virtue shared by art, science and engineering.

First, I’m unconvinced about the importance of simplicity. Sure, simplicity is often good in design, but that’s sometimes because we define “simple” as “what is necessary,” so sometimes our preference for simplicity works out to a tautological desire to exclude what doesn’t need to be included.

Also, simplicity is the current fashion. It’s not clear to me that it’s a permanent design principle. I’m not convinced that a Bronzino or Van Eyck would be better if we got rid of that damn detail. Nor am I convinced that the Parthenon would look better if we filled in the flutes in the columns or that Chrysler building is ruined by all that damn Art Deco trim.

Perhaps we’re at a point where art and science and programming diverge. Science (often) aims at finding the simplicity behind the apparent complexity of the universe. Engineering usually aims at efficient solutions, excluding the extraneous which introduces cost and more paths to failure. Art doesn’t always aim at simplicity. It just as frequently tries to expose the complexity of what looked simple. Thus, perhaps the union of art, science and engineering maintained by Paul’s essay isn’t fundamental, although there are certainly historical periods in which they align.

Finally, I think this raises the metaphysical roots of Paul’s argument. What is it about the universe that puts simplicity, taste and beauty at the root of the order we find in science and the order we construct in engineering? Were the Greeks right in thinking that the world is fundamentally orderly and that therefore knowledge and beauty were deeply aligned?

So, come on to the Berkman Center tonight. Despite this blog post, we’ll have plenty of time for open discussion with the awesomely talented programmer, painter, enterpreneur and writer, Paul Freaking Graham. [Tags: paul_graham berkman design beauty]

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Tom Matrullo has posted a lovely and insightful review of AKMA’s Faithful Interpretation, along with incisive and engaged comments from The Happy Tutor. They dig deep into perhaps the central question AKMA’s book poses: If we accept the idea that interpretations are only right or wrong within a community, do we then have to embrace ideas of interpretation—say, a literal fundamentalism—that (a) dispute this interpretation of interpretation and (b) may be dangerously wrong? One of the many things I like about AKMA’s approach is the insistence that interpreting is a moral act, but the content of that morality is similarly situated within a particular community.

This is a big, big issue. If it’s taken as a criticism of AKMA’s argument, it’s important to remember that it was an issue before AKMA and before postmodernism. It is the issue of sharing a world with people with whom we seriously disagree so seriously that a failure to act is itself an act.

AKMA replies to Tom and the Tutor here, refusing to let us have a standpoint from which we can simply declare others wrong. But are there complex ways we can declare others wrong sufficiently that we may act against them?

The Berkman Center this morning has posted a 45 minute podcast of me asking AKMA about how all of this applies to the Web, since what AKMA says about Biblical interpreters—thousands of years of experience shows us that smart, wise, well-intentioned people are not going to come to agreement—applies also to our experience of the Web. [Tags: akma tom_matrullo faithful_interpretation hermeneutics berkman happy_tutor philosophy theology postmodernism podcasts]

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I’ve been using a quote from Umberto Eco about there being many ways to carve a cow, but you won’t find many cuts that have the snout and tail attached. This is a direct reference to Plato saying that a wise person knows how to carve nature at its joints. But I’m keynoting the combined KMWorld and Taxonomy Bootcamp conferences this morning and realized that I’m not very happy with what I’ve been saying. Eco is right that not every way of carving the cow works, but there are so many ways of carving it that the old structures of knowledge and authority—once required because of the limitations on how we preserved, communicated and presented knowledge—lose their right to be the sole hands guiding the knife. Nature is just about all joints. How we carve depends on our interests, intentions and culture.

It doesn’t depend entirely on us – Eco talks about nature having a “grain,” which I don’t find a very helpful metaphor – but the fact that there are ways we can go wrong does not mean that there’s only one way we can go right.[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous umberto_eco plato taxonomy kmworld]

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I’m an agnostic, but I find Richard Dawkins an embarrassment for my side, so to speak.

In his interview at Salon (either subscribe or watch an ad), conducted by Steve Paulson, the British biologist goes through his highly marketable outrage about religion. But, while he thinks he’s arguing against all “Abrahamic” religions, he’s in fact arguing against one branch of one religion. He seems to have not the slightest idea that not all religions think of faith as he characterizes it, and some “Abrahamic” religions don’t really much care about faith in the first place.

He has not done his homework. He does not recognize differences in the phenomena he’s studying. He is being a crappy scientist. And he’s stirring up hatred and misunderstanding…exactly what he accuses Religion of doing.

He ought to shut up for a while and go hang out with a variety of religious folks. Field work, Richard, field work!

I’ve been reading AKMA‘s new book, and although I hate to mention AKMA and Dawkins in the same sentence, I seem to have done so.

Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World is not an easy book, but it’s quite wonderful. AKMA is a terrific writer, and this book wrestles with the hardest problems in interpreting a text—most of it applies to all texts, not just to the Bible—without falling for Postmodernism’s self-hypnotic tendencies.

Does text have a meaning? Nope, AKMA answers. Meaning is not contained in the text itself. But once the easy linkage between text and meaning (with intention bundled in) goes all 404 on us, then are we left without any way to prefer one interpretation over another? Nope, AKMA answers (because any other answer leads us to trivialization and/or madness). But interpretation becomes an ethical issue, not merely a cognitive one.

The above is, of course, a simplification that does real violence to the book, which is careful and notably respectful of those who disagree with AKMA’s point of view. In that, AKMA models the “differential hermeneutics” for which he argues, an understanding of interpretation that allows for differences.

This book is written within and for the Christian tradition, but you don’t have to be Christian to appreciate the care with which AKMA approaches his topic. But you do have to be more open-minded than Richard Dawkins. But that’s ok. Even without knowing you, I’d say the chances are damn good that you qualify.

(On a lighter note, Amazon says that “Customers interested in this title may also be interested in: “The Bible – Cliff Notes” and “Numerology: Get Your Free Horoscope.”) [Tags: richard_dawkins religion AKMA christianity hermeneutics postmodernism intelligent_design evolution]

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AKMA gestures towards gestures, stimulated by an offhand comment by Doc. “I’ve found the problem of communicative gestures to constitute one decisive fulcrum for my reasoning,” writes AKMA. I wouldn’t go that far for myself, but I do find something important about gestures, stimulated (as is so often the case for me) by that ol’ Nazi bastard, Martin Heidegger.

Heidegger talks about gestures, as I recall, as a way of getting past the notion that language is a series of coded definitions that re-create in the hearer the image or meaning intended by the speaker. Instead, take gestures such as pointing or even simply turning towards something as language. In gesturing at the world, I’m turning you towards it, letting it show itself to you as it is showing itself to me. And that’s what language does. It doesn’t re-create a representation of the world in the hearer; it turns her toward the world we share. It’s all part of Heidegger’s attempt to get us past the idea that we live in inner representations of the world.

As the old joke goes, when you point at something with your finger, your dog looks at your finger. Humans don’t. Gestures point away from themselves in order to let something show itself to us. Heidegger likes this because he’s always trying to point out (!) that existing isn’t simply being present; what isn’t present (e.g., the future, but also the unsaid in what’s explicitly said) is even more important. To give an example not explicit in Heidegger, the canonical rock that’s used as an example of a real thing is present to us as real because it points beyond our awareness of it; it’s only a real rock (as opposed to, say, an imaginary one) if it is present to us as something that exists independent of its presence to us. In computer terms, that’s metadata. In Heidegger’s terms (well, sort of), that’s a gesture. [Tags: heidegger ontology akma gestures language philosophy]

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I am in possession of AKMA‘s new book, Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World. I am a big fan of his What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism?, one of the best introductions to Postmodernism I’ve read. I’m also a big fan of AKMA in general. So I couldn’t keep from opening the new one even though I’m not supposed to be doing anything other than revising my book.

I intended to read just the opening paragraph or two but got sucked all the way through the introduction. AKMA plunges straight into the question of whether intention is in the text. AKMA, as you know, respects his readers both by thinking hard and by writing clearly. In fact, he writes brilliantly.

I’m looking forward to having my mind banged upside the brain by AKMA’s latest… [Tags: akma bible hermeneutics postmodernism pomo]

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For the past couple of weeks, I’ve done little except revise my book. All day, every day. Well, I’ve had a couple of events I’d committed to, including a keynote at the Scottish Learning Festival that I leave for tonight—I was supposed to be done with my revising by now—but basically I’ve been head-down in my book.

Which means I haven’t had time to read other people’s blogs.

The blogosphere and its local eddies are often thought of as bubbles, little hermetic worlds unaware that there’s a bigger world with bigger ideas beyond them. But not reading blogs now feels to me like being in a bubble. I’m cut off. I don’t know what’s going on, what people are talking about, who’s on a high, who’s on a roll, who’s just keeping on.

The truth is that we humans always live in bubbles. While our ideas and ideals may strive for the universal, we are embodied locally. So, living in a bubble isn’t an objection; it is our condition. The question is whether we seek to expand our ideas and—more important—our sympathy or we think our local bubble is the one that’s figured it all out (as per Mel Brooks’ immortal caveman anthem: “Let ’em all go to Hell, except Cave Seven”). Even the best intentioned of us still live locally—damn bodies!—so we’re talking here about trying, about a dialectic, about a failed awareness. But, that failure keeps our bubbles honest.

I look forward to breaking out of my bubble of self-involvement pretty soon now. I hear it’s been a mild September. [Tags: bubble blogosphere mel_brooks]

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[As always, all of this is me rapidly paraphrasing, paying attention most to what happens to interest me, and putting everything worse than the speakers did.]

Chris Csikszentmihalyi says science doesn’t work the way it thinks it does. For one thing, only 3-5% of experiments are re-proven. Often that’s because they’re so sensitive to instruments and materials. Also, much of the knowledge is tacit. Instead, scientific conflicts are usually settled by looking at the lab it came from, etc.

So, his lab wants to know what types of research isn’t getting done.

Three dualisms: 1. The Prayer Gauge Debate. In the 19th Century there were attempts to measure the efficacy of prayer. Science went up against a popular paradigm. Chris contrasts this with lab press releases getting done if they promise a cure for cancer. I.e., scientists learn to mis-represent their projects in order to get funded.

2. Mertonian Norms. Merton said that scientists work for commonality, universalism, and organized skepticism. Vs. 80% of MIT funding comes from the US government. To the scientists involved, the knowledge they develop is not politicized. But Chris’ Indian friends see it as inevitably and very much politicized.

3. Tool neutrality. But saying it’s neutral is like saying that from far away, everything is small. Vs. Technology is out of control. If it’s out of control, it is an agent, and thus isn’t neutral. [Hmm. This contrast isn’t symmetrical.]

Chris’ conclusion: We know very little about how technology works, and we tend to very sloppy in how we think about it.

He gives a couple of examples of non-neutral tech: A Lebanese grad student is consistently searched multiple times when coming across the US border, so she built a suit that records the pat-downs.

And a student created a personal audio device that integrates ambient sounds, so that someone speaking to you is brought in as someone singing beautifully.

Me: If someone says what they’re building is neutral, you can ask them, “Then why are you building it?”

Chris: Given where the funding for tech is coming from, given how hard it is, how can we build stuff that isn’t just neutral? Bruno Latour’s example: The thingies that automatically pull the door closed behind you. You get one after the sign you put up that says “Please close the door” fails to work. The door now shifts from normally being open to being shut.

Kaliya Hamlin: The interesting thing is to shift where the money is coming from.

Quinn Norton: Socially responsible investing has the reputation of being money-losing, but it’s not.

Tom Coates: I’m reminded of research that showed that initially took sperm as the active principle and eggs as lazy. And looking at only one sexuality scale rather than multiples is silly. Examining these premises is useful. Not everything is right.

Chris: The idea of bedrock is troubling. Diverse interpretations work.

Tom: But some paradigms advance us. E.g., the info model of the brain lets us do more than the old pneumatic one.

Chris tries to steer the discussion from this topic because, he thinks, it can progress without having to resolve the issue. Chris and Tom agree that all are politicized.

Zack Exley: For the past 150 years ago we’ve been stuck in this abstract argument.The solution is to do something. Make something. Run for Congress. More smart people in Congress.

Kaliyah: It’s a structural problem.

Someone: VCs are investing heavily in non-military projects aimed at making the world better.

[Conversation gets too thick to take notes on sensibly. And, as you may have noticed, the above doesn’t capture the conversation up to this point very well. Sorry.]

Chris: Right now, engineers generally look at the efficiency of solutions. My thirty year goal is to expand the considerations. E.g., suppose the democratic quotient or the egalitarian quotient were involved? We don’t have a lot of language for talking about this.

Zack: Why would a corporation do this?

Chris: They can do this in part because of the myth of the neutrality of technology.

Me: But “tech is neutral” is only a rationalization. If you could get the corporate mission to be enhance shareholder value AND make the world better, you wouldn’t have to worry about the rationalization.

Chris: But 18 year old engineers-to-be are taught that they don’t need to consider the effect of their tech on the world because they’ve been taught that tech is neutral.

Kaliya: You should read Engineering by Design…

[It continues...]

[Tags: foocamp06 technology politics]

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