Small Pieces: The Gang Blog

• Small Pieces From 2002-06-14 •

The point is that the links on the web are created by people, so they can be as allusive or nuanced as you like. Connotative connections are harder to represent,a s they need more description, but as we can all create and promulgate our own taxonomies now, the chances of something subtler being found is higher. The kinds of links you are talking about are more likely to show up as an essay describing the links between two hard-linked works. What woudl show up as a classical allusion for the literary elite can now be directly connected to a telling of the tale, whether by an explict link or through the emergent intrasubjective indexes of Google.

What we need is a good way to express collections rather than links.

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 00:13 UTC

• Small Pieces From 2002-06-12 •

Dave, I could probably come up with something, but would it be authentic? I'd hate to pollute this discourse with Dave-baiting asides.

AKMA, Dorothea & Burningbird have been writing a lot about identity and categorising people.

One of Bloggers lapses a few days back lost a post I wrote on this kind of thing, referring to Richard Bartle's Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit Muds . Bartle wrote the Essex MUD - which was my introduction to network-mediated communication in 1985 (GROGGS and Bolo came shortly afterwards). Available only between 2am and 7am, it probably helped associate staying up late with enjoying computers for me).

Bartle divides the kinds of players into:

Achievers (Diamonds) who try to score the most points in the game
Explorers (Spades) who dig for obsure features and details
Socialisers (Hearts) who play to meet people and chat
Killers (Clubs) who use the game to impose on others

He goes on to decribe how to construct your games to attract a sustainable and stable mix.

Mapping these categories into weblogs, email and so on is worth a try...

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 19:34 UTC

Will you bastards please say something I can disagree with?

Loosely joined by David • 13:59 UTC

• Small Pieces From 2002-06-11 •

The Shock of the Virtual
I stood in the stairwell. I looked at the few-very impressive-fossils. I thought to myself, "Let's get back to my office computer, so that we can link to http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/expo/dinoexpo.html and see the real University of California Museum of Paleontology."

"The real museum," I thought, "has audio narration by the discoverers of dinosaurs. The real museum has many more bones--a Diplodocus skeleton, for one thing. The real museum has detailed exhibits on dinosaur evolution and geology..."

"No-wait."

"This is the real museum. The Internet Web site http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/expo/dinoexpo.html is just the 'virtual' image--an electronic reflection--of this place."

And that was when I felt I needed a consulting philosopher. I needed a consulting philospher real bad...

Well, it took 7 years, but David is here...

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 08:20 UTC

• Small Pieces From 2002-06-10 •

Well, I finished Wolfram's book today (the front of it anyway- the back is the same thing with exhaustive footnotes, as befits 10 years work that aims to overthrow scientific thought).

If you take his closing claim at face value, the rule 110 1-d cellular automaton is equivalent in complexity to human thought (and the rule 30 one could do your trick instead of pi too).

However, you can't use them as a shortcut,as they would take as long to run as thinking it up in the first place...

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 08:20 UTC