Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
So instead of the universe being an atom in the left pinkie of some
stoner, it's really a bit in a mega-computer somewhere?  How cool!
  

    
David, I assume you're talking about Stephen Wolfram's _A New Kind of
Science_, but I don't get that he's saying exactly that - that the
universe _is_ a computer. He saw that you could get complex results from 
simple algorithms when you write code, and he decided that the universe 
works that way: simple rules, complex effects... the computer is one 
possible analogy, and it happens to be the one that was on his mind 
because it was the source of his 'aha!' moment.  I recall hearing 
something similar from Brian Eno some years ago, and he was speaking in 
the context of art/music (though he was also influenced by computers).

When you talk about the universe, isn't the real problem that it's so 
immense and immeasurable that we can never quite figure out how to 
approach it? Like trying to pour an ocean into a thimble?
  

    
Talk about difficulty in finding containers!

It's also really hard to analyze something you can't get outside of.
  

    
Jon (#52), I haven't read Wolfram. I was a humanities major, after
all. But Kevin Kelly certainly makes the strong claim (i.e., the
universe is a computer) for Wolfram and others in last month's Wired.
And, I heard Wolfram speak about 6 months ago, and it sure sounded like
he was making the strong claim, but perhaps he was just simplifying
(slumming) for the audience.

As to your last paragraph about the universe being too big to be
understood, I'm with you, pal. I can't understand how we make ball
bearings. But isn't Wolfram's (et al.) point that  in fact the universe
can be understood as being generated by a handful of simple
algorithms?

Anyway, I make no claim to understanding this stuff. But I do think it
is *fascinating* both as science and as a type of cultural deviant
psychology :)
  

    
I tend to assume it's another instance of a science writer using
metaphor in ways that aren't entirely accurate.  (Otherwise, nobody
would read their books.)
  

    
Maybe so... though I tend to think it's the witch doctor explaining the 
universe in terms of his own magic. He's not much of a witch doctor if he 
says it's beyond his grasp.

I'm still trying to figure out how form is emptiness and vice versa.

David, the war is everywhere in the mediasphere, so maybe we should talk 
about it. Can you make sense of it? 
  

    
Brian, that would be the charitable way of understanding it. But I'm
not convinced that that door is open to us. Wolfram and others propose
solving problems in physics by understanding the universe as consisting
of algorithms operating on bits. And then there's that Kevin Kelly
article in Wired. But maybe I am getting exercised over a straw man.
Wouldn't be the first time.
  

    
Jon, I can't make any sense of the war that is different from anyone
else's attempts. I wish I could. And you? Have you figured out what's
actually driving the administration's perseveration on Iraq?
  

    
I've imagined a set of scenarios, but no scenario makes more sense than 
any other.  Tonight I'm wanting to believe we'll see convincing evidence 
that this was, after all, the right thing to do. 

The day that the Cuban missile crisis was peaking, my science teacher 
wanted to wring my neck because I said I didn't believe the powers that be 
would let "it" happen. Her husband was an Air Force pilot and he'd flown 
to Florida with all the other pilots from the Air Force Base. She expected 
the worst, and I just refused to believe it could happen.

Now I'm not so sure.
  

    
Getting back to _Small Pieces_, you talk about the "new lines between 
public and private" that we have to deal with as we coordinate our 
"virtual" and "real" lives. Are you struggling with that in your own life? 
When you're blogging, do you feel any tension between the 'circle of 
friends' audience vs the anonymous crowd of readers reflected only in 
statistics for your site?
  

    
Jon, by coincidence I blogged about the Cuban Missile Crisis this
morning: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/001346.html

But I speak with no special authority or insight. I don't feel right
about my mouthing off about politics in this forum.
  

    
Jon (#60), I usually don't feel the tension but only because it's not
much of an open question for me. I'm set in my ways: I err on the side
of privacy. I rarely talk about my family or about events in my life
unrelated to technology or politics. And I may feel less tension than I
should because I'm used to writing for publication and thus have
already defined my limits pretty well. 

I'm fascinated by people who push the limits for themselves, though.
Halley Suitt, for example (http://halleyscomment.blogspot.com/)
sometimes writes about stuff I would never talk about in public; it
helps that she's such a good writer. And then, of course, there's
RageBoy whose writing has always been knowingly transgressive:
http://www.rageboy.com/blogger.html. But also Joe Mahoney, a real world
friend, who frequently reflects on his family life:
http://joemahoney.net/blogger.html. And there lots more.

I am, of course, acutely aware of how my words will make me look to
others. That's one reason I'm not a very good participant in the many
mailing lists I'm on or in discussion boards like, um, this one.
  

    
There's a question as to whether someplace like the Well, or certain
parts of the Well, are "performance art". Do you think VCs in general
are performance art, and it that a good thing or a bad thing?
  

    
Eleanor, virtual communities aren't performance art by my
understanding of PA, not unless you think every social encounter is PA.
On the other hand, the "performance" part gets at the distance between
what's being said and the person saying it, a distance present in
every conversation but perhaps more so in typewritten ones since we get
to cogitate and spellcheck. That would seem to mean that VC
conversations are less "authentic" and less "sincere" than RW ones, but
I long ago gave up trying to make sense of the view of the self that
says that the Real me is the inner one that no one sees. Self is play,
or something like that.
  

    
You mean that you're not just a meat-vessel, with soul poured in?
  

    
TFTP, Jon.

David, I'm still hung up on the performance art thing, but I'll have
to think it through some more before formulating another question.
  

    
We're having this conversation within a world-famous virtual community, 
the WELL, which has actually become more a platform for many communities 
formed around various subjects of interest. It's a compelling social 
space, and there are others like it; many people live much of their lives 
- not so much online, but at least via connections they've made online in 
communities like this. The VC thing makes me think of your statement that 
"Reed's Law locates the value of the Internet squarely in the presence of 
groups." Can you say a bit about Reed's Law, and connectedness in 
cyberspace?
  

    
Reed's Law is David P. Reed's observation that the value of a network
is not dependent on the number of nodes that can be connected 1-to-1
(which is Metcalfe's Law) but depends on the number of groups that can
be formed. That's a much steeper curve. Forgetting the math (which I
suppose I would have to understand before I could forget it), the point
of Reed's Law is that the Internet isn't about connecting me to you
and you to her. It's about our ability to form groups together. And
that strikes me as profoundly right.

The Internet gives us connections to everyone else on the Net, just as
the phone system does. Unlike the phone system, the Net lets us form
groups (always subject to getting permission from David Reed, of
course). But the Web doesn't have any connections built in. Every
connection is there on purpose. That makes the links far more valuable
and meaningful than the linkedness that is the Internet. That's
probably what's most interesting to me about the Web.
  

    <scribbled by jonl Fri 21 Mar 03 19:01>
  

    
As I recall, you wrote in the book that reality is flexible, it bends to 
context. Isn't our social reality conforming to the shape of the Internet, 
which is all decentralized nodes and connections? 
  

    
Jon, that's the central question. People like McLuhan stress the ways
in which we conform to our technology. And while that was a really
important thing for us to hear, we have to be careful not to "overhear"
it as if there's a determinism built into our tools. This is
especially true with the Net because -- to go back to your very first
posting here -- it's not clear what it's *for*. It enables us to
connect, and there are certainly some characteristics of how it
connects us that are both limiting and enabling, but it's there for us
to build what we want.

So the question becomes: what about what we've made of the Internet
was built into it as a technology and what have we brought to it? How
much does it reflect us and how much does our use of it reflect its own
nature?

"Small Pieces" points to ways in which the Web's architecture reflects
something basic and good about human sociality, but one of the weakest
aspects of the book is its inability to make the connection firmly.
How exactly does the Web's nature (its linkedness, its intermittency
and constancy, etc.) "determine" our use of it? There are two reasons I
can't answer that. First, I'd need a General Theory of Material
Determinism which I don't have. Second, we're talking about how what
emerges in an emergent system reflects its preconditions, but the point
about emergent systems is that you can't tell beforehand what will
emerge. (I loved Steve Johnson's book, by the way.)

So, instead all I did was point out some relationships, waved my hand,
and said, "Coincidence? I think not!"
  

    
Ah, so you're a magician!
  

    
How does emergence on the web relate to political group-forming? I'm 
thinking about 'emergent democracy' 
(http://joi.ito.com/static/emergentdemocracy.html)...
  

    
Oy veh! Jon, can't you ask me something simple like who's my favorite
Beatle or how bosons interact? (I actually do know the answer to the
latter question. It's "Ask David Reed.")

I of course love Joi's observations and conclusions. What I can't see
is how online democracy affects RW democracy. There is a "governance
gap": The people increasingly use the Net as a second public world in
which new forms of democracy are emerging, but the actual goddamned
government uses the Net as a way to reduce paper printing costs. Name 5
public officials at the state or federal level who have a weblog. Name
one credible presidential candidate who has one, other than Howard
Dean, and is it overly cynical of me to suggest that it's no accident
that the first one with a blog is a dark horse? So, I just don't know
what has to happen for gov't to be governed by the democracy that's
emerging on the Web. 

I'd love to hear what others think, especially if they're optimistic
since I'm so depressed these days.
  

    
Maybe this isn't about government? Somebody once asked Gary Snyder how to 
deal with 'the establishment,' and as I recall, his answer was to ignore 
it. If democracy truly emerges via the web (no doubt in combination with 
"real world" parallel developments), won't there be an inevitable impact 
on governance?

Part 2 of this question:
Who is your favorite Beatle?