22 March 2007

Web3.0: Ego abhors a vacuum

the challenge of meditation
is not to think

the mind normally filled
with neurotic habits

and the challenge of artistic creativity
is to subvert cliche
(vs nabokov's gap-fillers)

and the scandal of philosophy
is the sophomoric sophistries
like free will or epistemological solipsism
tying innocent minds in useless knots

and usenet newsgroups often used to
suffer from negative intelligence
flamewars displacing constructive discussion
like coinage under gresham's law

or kneejerk techno-utopianism
urging (eg) educators
to squander their budgets on digital multimedia
when the real problem as always
is rewarding the best teachers

so the semantic web movement
for its earliest days
jumped the track
seduced by the shiny
techno quick fix
of xml
and its pie-in-the-sky promises
about embedded metadata

delivering only a flatline
adoption curve
while (eg) wikipedia
keeps rocketing up exponentially

and while journalistic coverage
of 'web 3.0' increases
the hype sounds more and more
hollow and anemic
rdf topicmaps microformats blahblahblah

endless jargonmania
but no 'there' there
never jam today

so i'll suggest again
that metadata belongs in the file header
(not in embedded markup)

and that wikipedia article titles
have solved one semantic problem
by automatically redirecting visitors
when an article title has changed
(i wish blogger did this)

so webpages can begin painlessly
categorizing themselves in their headers
with the closest wikipedia article title/s

and google should index these
with a special keyword
eg "wikiarticle:Ajax_(programming)"

but even more
we can categorise filetypes
"filetype:timeline"

and even more, i now propose
an ontology wiki
eg "ontoclass:business/merger"

that encourages experiment
and redirects changed classnames automatically

and that uses storycycles
as the macroformat

allowing description of
any random news story
any random wikipedia article
any random web resource

by sketching a universal
usual story

of everyperson (eg their wikipedia biographies)
of everyproduct (eg their history and web resources)
of everyprogram (eg the software lifecycle)
of everyenterprise (eg their corporate history)
of everyfile (its creation and dissemination)
ov everyword (its etymology)
of everyidea (its genesis and evolution)
of everyspecies (its selection pressures)

so that the metadata
for any given object
can emphasize precisely
those 'slots' in the usual storycycle
where the object's particular history
deviates from the usual expectations

these storycycles being compiled
incrementally, wiki-fashion
by storytellers who understand
the usual range of details
(a storycycle storycycle)

with an ongoing appreciation of the impermanence
of particular wording
or particular orderings

software storycycle
biography storycycle
business storycycle
hardware storycycle





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09 March 2007

10-31 March 2007 links


Academic rave for del.icio.us (blog via mshook)
G-rated preview of GTA4 graphics (Flash-2min via jm)
Mossad suckers top Iranian (WaPo via dTongue)
Britta's pretty hair (flickr via mlCookies) [arcane]
All known local ?planetoids (11000*1000 via Waxy)
Chomsky classic 'Manufacturing Consent' (GgV-3hr via Fim)
gWarming clobbers baby seals (NewSci via Sam)
Correct url for Philip Weiss's relocated blog (pWeiss via mWeiss) [rss]
'shut up and color' = mind yr own beeswax (dTongue)
Jeffrey Sachs' quick fix for world poverty (SciAm-shortish)
The Economist on The Lobby (shortish via gRm)
Mathematics of juggling (Boston via dTongue)
ClicheWatch: no-news-is-[not good news] (GgW)
Israeli landgrab timeline (maps via Xym)
'Nashville number system' = key-independent music notation (dTongue)
Useful color-similes searchpattern (GgW-eg-yellow)
Full video version of ThisAmericanLife (flash-?30min via Waxy)
New NYRB incl Soros, LeCarre (toc)
Orwellian experience with 'national security letter' (WaPo w/popup via dy)
I want to be a Gummi Bear (oDevwhr)
Pain-intensity scale (tHow w/link)
New profile of Edward Tufte (1pg-page-images)
Interactive map of Baghdad violence (BBC-Flash via iJunk)
Impressed by Edwards (Sam-short)
'breed' = intentionally infect with HIV (dTongue)
Al Qaeda using chlorine bombs in Iraq (dTech via Sam)
Interesting paper airplane (pic w/links via mshook)
Excellent tween NumaNuma-ization of Crazy Frog (yTube-3min via dY)
Looooongshot evidence of Jesus's genealogy (Ralph-arcane)
New adult trike design (pic via Sam)
Special Iraq retrospective (Onion)
New GeorgePacker on Iraq (NYer-loooooong)
Democracy of the Spectacle? (Sam-don't-miss)
Melancholy Madeleine Peyroux video (yTube-4min via eAard)
Pakistan tinderbox update (FT via dy)
A kind word for Walmart's banking dream (iGreed-short)
'Marxist glue' = poster paste (LA via dTongue)
Thermopylae reality-check (Star vis Steve)
NYer adds recent poems (rss)
5yo boy throwing wad of trash at younger brother: Say hello to my little friend! (oDinny)
also: 8yo boy to younger kid: If we were in prison you'd be my b*tch! (ditto)
US-sponsored network learning from al Jazeera? (aAard-longish)
Four (nonzionist) hoaxes revealed (Xym)
Bloggers vs the Lobby (amCon via gRm)
Hillary Clinton Tries To Woo Voters By Rescinding Candidacy (new Onion)
also this: "Florida caught on fire and sank on Tuesday."
'hajji juice' = Iraqi moonshine (dTongue)
MemWatch: "love's lies" (GgBks-arcane)
The blankets they give the Indians / Only make them die (lyrics-1977) [Az]
Contrarian theory that nerves transmit by sound (CBC via eAard)
Hidden Iraq costs to top $2T (nStats via dy)
Natty lullabyes (tBray)

[older]

06 March 2007

14Feb-09Mar 2007 links


Chaucer's back (arcane w/poems)
New NYRB (toc)
New Yorker adds rss feeds (multi)
Finnegans Wake in Basic English (arcane-vshort)
Backstory on Israeli 9/11 celebrants (cPunch via Xym)
9/21/2001 targets: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran (dNow via Sam)
Earliest uses of 'you haters' (GgG-arcane)
'skankie' = caribbean gigolo (dTongue)
'anti-fit' = fashionably poor tailoring (dTongue)
Rave for Wii bowling-sim (Dvorak)
World thinks Israel sucks (BBC-poll via Sam/NPR)
Mountain-biking as self-help metaphor (iGreed-short)
Daylight-saving switch scarier than Y2K (ZdNet via iGreed)
W promotes salmonella (AP w/graphs via eAard)
'free-bagging' = shoplifting w/checker's help (dTongue)
Hot new DeanBaker book $20 (Az)
Eloquent post-feminism (Sinfest)
Depressive-programmer life flowchart (Achewood-friv via pSang)
Cute baby orangutans w/baby tigers (AP w/pix, popup via eAard)
Red moon rising Sat night (Nasa via vBoat)
'snow nose' = dog-nose that changes color in winter (dTongue)
Fed blowing smoke at small investors (dBaker)
Roach-sized med-robot crawls under yr skin (pTent w/pic via rGossip)
Bumbling Ragtag Regiment Achieves Heartwarming Victory In Iraq (Onion w/pix)
Good day for vBoat (linkblog)
'plus box' = structured search result (GgOs via Waxy)
Steven Millhauser story (NYer-long)
NYer fiction archive (GgW-searchpattern)
New Sy Hersh on Iraq (NYer-long)
Belated vDay toon (Sinfest-sweet)
Huey Lewis bonds with the retarded (sfWkly via Utne)
"She's all kinds of polite." (oDinny)
Chimps use spears hunting bushbabies (SciBlog via eAard)
Short Terence Malick bio (pSang w/link, vid)
...a husband’s worth / of love... (short via pSang)
Thoughtful Chgo linkblog (pSang)
Freakishly long tongue, w/macaroon (oDinny-no-pic)
Wrong Font Chosen For Gravestone (Onion-vfriv)
Cool pic (mlCookies-arcane)
Real-estate bubble moves to Iowa cornfields (iGreed-vshort)
"It’s over. You lost." (new Riverbend)
Discussion of Flickr's structured 'machine tags' (flickr-searchpattern)
Ellen DeGeneres Prepares To Host Academy Awards By Spending Eight Hours A Day In Oscars Simulator (Onion-tsia)
New UN radiation symbol/cartoon (infsthtcs-pic)
Little boy: Evil brain? (oDinny)
Iraqi refugees in USA (Onion-mots-bleak)
Congressional zionists hoedown (Xym)
Backgrounder on defense contractor SAIC (vFair-long via Sam)
New visualisations of pre-humans (NatHist-2pg w/pix)
FBI loses 160 laptops, 160 guns (Onion-mots)
Baby sloth settles into uncanny valley (yTube-1min via eAard)
Hillary vs Rudy... or else (Sam-longish)
Photoshopped statistical visualisations (1pg-phat via infsthtcs)
Al Qaeda stronger than ever? (aAard)
Short funny crime fiction (dYeti)
Cuuuuute baby (flickr-2005)
Bush Cuts Off Diplomatic Relations With Congress (new Onion) [also]
'chiefing' = drawing/writing on sleeper's skin (dTongue)

[older]

05 March 2007

The filetype storycycle

in robotwisdomese translation
the 'mirror neurons' meme
looks like:

robot views (external) video of robot action

robot refers to
reflects on
subjective (internal) knowledge
of how and why
any robot might act that way

but while aristotelian
euclidean newtonian
hierarchies of features
work smoothly for external views

they don't
for internal
subjective reflexive views
of actions-in-action

every opcode or function call
in whatever context
changing some particular values
among all possibilities

so instead of aristotelian hierarchies
we need instead
joycean storycycles
like finnegans wake (or solace)
tracking an everyman's
usual universal
branching storypath

and unexpectedly
this can be neatly illustrated
using the aristotelian 'filetype' category

filetype: text
filetype: image
filetype: audio
filetype: video
filetype: data
filetype: code

and a filetype storycycle

file-consumer
bored curious ignorant interested

knows repertoire of search strategies
(peculiar to each filetype)
engines archives indexes blogs forums fringes
searchpatterns query-etiquette

accessing textlists of file urls
(with brief descriptions)

using file-viewing tools peculiar to filetypes
formats metadata compression bundling
internal structures and sequencing

winnowing useful from useless
identifying masters and wastedumps
retracing others' search skills
comparing their ratings
sharing one's own skills and ratings in forums

identifying gaps among useful files
of a given filetype
and choosing to author a new file
to fill that gap

using file-authoring tools also peculiar to filetype
skills standards practices masters
structures objects sequences

and finally file publication
injecting into others' searchstreams
for free, or not
maximising visibility
monitoring feedback channels...

[fill in the blanks]





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