experience

'But I'm getting off the point. The point is, you came to ask me about something that really is important. So why be ashamed and deny it? You see, I know you through and through. I know exactly what you want. You want me to tell you what I know --

'Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, believe me - there's nothing I'd rather do! I want like hell to tell you. But I can't. I quite literally can't. Because, don't you see, what I know is what I am? And I can't tell you that. You have to find it out for yourself. I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about --

'You could know what I'm about. You could. But you can't be bothered to. Look - you're the only boy I ever met on that campus I really believe could. That's what makes it so tragically futile.

Christoper Isherwood, "A Single Man", p144, Vintage Books, London, 1964 (2010).

---

So desperately wanting to pass on experience to those around us, especially our children, those closest to us, those that we feel for. And yet can't. There is no reading of the book. No time to be had, just to read. Lives to be led, experiences to be had, to write one's own book, no reading of someone else's. The need and the tragedy of unrequited desire. The futility - on and on.

Naming representations of oneself

It never ceases to enwonderment me (did you like my New New English) the representations of oneself that repeat from years gone by. Names set the scene for when and who - expanding a thin slice of one's life - but is it me?

Robert Heinlein - Our Noble, Essential Decency

"I am not going to talk about religious beliefs but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them. I believe in my neighbors. I know their faults, and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults.

Take Father Michael, down our road a piece. I’m not of his creed, but I know that goodness and charity and loving kindness shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike. If I’m in trouble, I’ll go to him. My next door neighbor’s a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat—no fee, no prospect of a fee. I believe in Doc.

I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town, say “I’m hungry,” and you’ll be fed. Our town is no exception. I found the same ready charity everywhere. For the one who says, “The heck with you, I’ve got mine,” there are a hundred, a thousand, who will say, “Sure pal, sit down.” I know that despite all warnings against hitchhikers, I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride, and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, “Climb in Mack. How far you going?”

I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime. Yet for every criminal, there are ten thousand honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime.

I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses, in the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land. I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones.

I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman, there are hundreds of politicians—low paid or not paid at all—doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the Thirteen Colonies.

I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in—I am proud to belong to—the United States. Despite shortcomings—from lynchings, to bad faith in high places—our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.

And finally, I believe in my whole race—yellow, white, black, red, brown—in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability, and goodness of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth—that we always make it just for the skin of our teeth—but that we will always make it, survive, endure.

I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching oversized braincase and the opposable thumb—this animal barely up from the apes—will endure, will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets—to the stars and beyond—carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage, and his noble essential decency. This I believe with all my heart."


Robert A. Heinlein won four Hugo Awards during his 50-year career as a science fiction writer. Born and raised in Missouri, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929 and did aeronautical engineering for the Navy during World War II. Heinlein’s books include "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land."

the think-machine gods, whose cult has one dogma, we cannot make a mistake

Everybody is informed of everything. George glances through them all and then tosses the lot into the waste-bucket, with one exception: an oblong card slotted and slitted and ciphered by an IBM machine, expressing some poor bastard of a student's academic identity. Indeed, this card is his identity. Suppose, instead of signing it as requested and returning it to the Personnel Office, George were to tear it up? Instantly, that student would cease to exist, as far as San Tomas State was concerned. He would become academically invisible, and only reappear with the very greatest difficulty, after performing the most elaborate propitiation ceremonies; countless offerings of forms filled out in triplicate and notarised affidavits to the gods of the IBM.

George signs the card, holding it steady with two fingertips. He dislikes even to touch these things, for they are the runes of an idiotic but nevertheless potent and evil magic; the magic of the think-machine gods, whose cult has one dogma, we cannot make a mistake. The magic consists in this, that whenever they do make a mistake, which is quite often, it is perpetuated and thereby becomes a non-mistake. . . . . Carrying the card by its extreme corner, George brings it over to one of the secretaries, who will see that it gets back to Personnel. The secretary has a nail-file on her desk. George picks it up, saying, 'Let's see if that old robot'll know the difference' and pretends to be about to punch another slit in the card. The girl laughs, but only after a split-second look of sheer terror; and the laugh itself is forced. George has uttered blasphemy.

Christoper Isherwood, "A Single Man", p30-31, Vintage Books, London, 1964 (2010).


The above was written in the early 1960's in America (the original book was published in 1964), yet, unfortunately, the sentiment behind the piece is as applicable today as it ever was at that time. It appears to be a social verity - large organisations become impervious to people - an individual not longer counts, and is treated not even with disdain - they are treated as abstract commodities, which if they do not conform to the idiotic strictures placed on them by organisational design and control (hegemony), are then severely punished and sacrificed in their attempts to either: rejoin the organisation, or exert their right to live as an individual outside the bounds of organisational rigidity.

It is people conveniently forgetting that they are people, because they are now a factotum of this mysterious "god" and thus above and separate from being individually and responsibly human. They have no responsibility any more - they can claim the "These are the procedures (rules / processes / instructions / etc)" Nuremberg defence. And the lure of conformance (to authority, and/or power) is far too strong for most to resist (the Stanford Prison Experiment - Zimbardo, after "Obedience" - Milgram, 1963 - see http://www.integratedsociopsychology.net/milgram_experiment.html).

So we now find that organisations continue to act as "think-machine gods", who can not make mistakes, and if anything resembling a mistake is notified to them, they simply need to "apologise" and deny that anything further can be done ("it is out of my power", "I have now authority", "We don't recompense for any of those reasons", "What more do you want me to do?", "I have apologised, what more can be done?"). There no longer is a mistake, there is nothing to be further addressed (the "apology" has been issued) and the organisation can continue without change - gods don't change, gods sacrifice people.

the life of the philosopher, the life of scientific and philosophic contemplation

Pleasure is, therefore, a necessary element in the best life, but it is
not the whole of it nor the principal ingredient. The value of a life
depends upon the nature and worth of the activity which it involves;
given the maximum of full free action, the maximum of pleasure necessary
follows. But on what sort of life is such activity possible? This leads
us back to the question, What is happiness? In what life can man find
the fullest satisfaction for his desires? To this question Aristotle
gives an answer which cannot but surprise us after what has preceded.
True Happiness, great satisfaction, cannot be found by man in any form
of "practical" life, no, not in the fullest and freest exercise possible
of the "moral virtues," not in the life of the citizen or of the
great soldier or statesman. To seek it there is to court failure and
disappointment. It is to be found in the life of the onlooker, the
disinterested spectator; or, to put it more distinctly, "in the life of
the philosopher, the life of scientific and philosophic contemplation."
The highest and most satisfying form of life possible to man is "the
contemplative life"; it is only in a secondary sense and for those
incapable of their life, that the practical or moral ideal is the best.
It is time that such a life is not distinctively human, but it is the
privilege of man to partake in it, and such participation, at however
rare intervals and for however short a period, is the highest Happiness
which human life can offer. All other activities have value only because
and in so far as they render _this_ life possible.

But it must not be forgotten that Aristotle conceives of this life as
one of intense activity or energising: it is just this which gives it
its supremacy. In spite of the almost religious fervour with which he
speaks of it ("the most orthodox of his disciples" paraphrases his
meaning by describing its content as "the service and vision of God"),
it is clear that he identified it with the life of the philosopher, as
he understood it, a life of ceaseless intellectual activity in which at
least at times all the distractions and disturbances inseparable from
practical life seemed to disappear and become as nothing. This ideal was
partly an inheritance from the more ardent idealism of his master Plato,
but partly it was the expression of personal experience.

- from J. A. Smith, Introduction to "Ethics", Aristotle,
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ethics, by Aristotle
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/7ethc10.txt
also available as paperback - see http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Aristotle/dp/1406806056
Publisher: Echo Library (August 7, 2006)
ISBN-10: 1406806056
ISBN-13: 978-1406806052

When Ulysses talks of the immeasurable sea and boundless earth

I recollected so well how I used formerly to watch the course of that same stream, following it with inquiring eagerness, forming romantic ideas of the countries it was to pass through; but my imagination was soon exhausted: while the water continued flowing farther and farther on, till my fancy became bewildered by the contemplation of an invisible distance. Exactly such, my dear friend, so happy and so confined, were the thoughts of our good ancestors. Their feelings and their poetry were fresh as childhood. And, when Ulysses talks of the immeasurable sea and boundless earth, his epithets are true, natural, deeply felt, and mysterious. Of what importance is it that I have learned, with every schoolboy, that the world is round? Man needs but little earth for enjoyment, and still less for his final repose.
-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Once more I am a wanderer

Once more I am a wanderer, a pilgrim, through the world. But what else are you!
-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

The brilliant wretchedness, the weariness

Oh, the brilliant wretchedness, the weariness, that one is doomed to witness among the silly people whom we meet in society here! The ambition of rank! How they watch, how they toil, to gain precedence! What poor and contemptible passions are displayed in their utter nakedness!

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

I am filled with thoughts of death and futurity

It was a glorious sight, and was rendered more striking by the darkness which surrounded the spot where we were. We remained for some time silent, when Charlotte observed, "Whenever I walk by moonlight, it brings to my remembrance all my beloved and departed friends, and I am filled with thoughts of death and futurity. We shall live again, Werther!" she continued, with a firm but feeling voice; "but shall we know one another again what do you think? what do you say?"

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

The flowers of life are but visionary

The flowers of life are but visionary. How many pass away, and leave no trace behind -- how few yield any fruit -- and the fruit itself, how rarely does it ripen! And yet there are flowers enough! and is it not strange, my friend, that we should suffer the little that does really ripen, to rot, decay, and perish unenjoyed?

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Tears flow from my oppressed heart

In vain do I stretch out my arms toward her when I awaken in the morning from my weary slumbers. In vain do I seek for her at night in my bed, when some innocent dream has happily deceived me, and placed her near me in the fields, when I have seized her hand and covered it with countless kisses. And when I feel for her in the half confusion of sleep, with the happy sense that she is near, tears flow from my oppressed heart; and, bereft of all comfort, I weep over my future woes.

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature

It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my eyes, and, instead of prospects of eternal life, the abyss of an ever open grave yawned before me. Can we say of anything that it exists when all passes away, when time, with the speed of a storm, carries all things onward, -- and our transitory existence, hurried along by the torrent, is either swallowed up by the waves or dashed against the rocks? There is not a moment but preys upon you, -- and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring.

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

She dances with her whole heart and soul

You should see Charlotte dance. She dances with her whole heart and soul; her figure is all harmony, elegance, and grace, as if she were conscious of nothing else, and had no other thought or feeling; and, doubtless, for the moment, every other sensation is extinct.

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

The human race is but a monotonous affair

If you enquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere." The human race is but a monotonous affair.
Most of them labour the greater part of their time for mere subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every exertion to get rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man!

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Knowledge has no dignity or severity

Because how can someone be a good teacher when he has an inborn drive towards the abyss? We may deny it and gain dignity, but it still attracts us. We do not like final knowledge, because knowledge, Phaedo, has no dignity or severity: it knows, understands, forgives, without attitude; it is sympathetic to the abyss, it is the abyss. Therefore we deny it and instead seek beauty, simplicity, greatness and severity, of objectivity and form. But form and objectivity, Phaedo, lead the noble one to intoxication and desire, to horrible emotional transgressions rejected by his beautiful severity, lead to the abyss. Us poets, I say, it leads there, for we are unable to elevate ourselves, instead we can only transgress. And now I am leaving you, Phaedo; stay here until you no longer see me, then leave also.

-- Thomas Mann - Death in Venice

A tale of a fateful trip

Just sit right back
And you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailin' man,
The Skipper brave and sure,
Five passengers set sail that day,
For a three hour tour,
A three hour tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost.
The Minnow would be lost.

The ship set ground on the shore
Of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan,
The Skipper too.
The millionaire
And his wife,
The movie star,
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.

(Ending verse)

So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.

The first mate and his Skipper too
Will do their very best,
To make the others comf'terble
In their tropic island nest.

No phone, no lights, no motor car,
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Crusoe
It's primitive as can be.

So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to get a smile,
From seven stranded castaways
Here on Gilligan's Isle!

---

I totally feel like Gilligan at the moment - no doubt about it.
My apocalypse is bleeding, mythologising the future when not applicable!

I have a tale to tell, not such a great tale, about what should have been a three hour journey into the world of cloud computing and servers on demand, which has turned into an epic journey of unwanted adventure after another.

In the episodes to come, a chiaroscuro of the nether-land of virtuality - of blind Sancho Panza in the land of unwritten and illiterate, searching for a Book of Kells and finding - used rolls.

About to go shopping

About to go shopping - more birthday presents

Information Attention and Herbet Simon

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
- Herbert Simon
(http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/herbertsim181919.html)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/09/where_attention.php
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2005/11/the_looming_att.html
http://sapventures.typepad.com/main/2005/11/the_looming_att.html
http://scientific-presentations.com/2009/10/10/learning-from-herbert-simon/
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/08/wealth-information-takes-attention-patient.html




Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.
- Herbert Simon


Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.
- Herbert Simon


In the computer field, the moment of truth is a running program; all else is prophecy.
- Herbert Simon


Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.
- Herbert Simon


The proper study of mankind is the science of design.
- Herbert Simon


The world is vast, beautiful, and fascinating, even awe-inspiring - but impersonal. It demands nothing of me, and allows me to demand nothing of it.
- Herbert Simon


There are no morals about technology at all. Technology expands our ways of thinking about things, expands our ways of doing things. If we're bad people we use technology for bad purposes and if we're good people we use it for good purposes.
- Herbert Simon

Software Engineering Is Dead

There are a number of unanswered questions implicit in what DeMarco has written:

1. How does one actually choose the projects? How does one know that Project A will eventually cost $1million and deliver value of $1.1m versus Project B costing $1m and delivering $50m. What if both cost $1m and deliver value of only $500k each? What if both eventually end up costing $20m each and deliver value of $1.1m each? How many of the last type of projects could a company afford (a normal company - not a company like Google which earns so much from other sources that the cost of failed projects is almost irrelevant). Most organisations do not have unlimited funds, and so must somehow choose between projects. That choice is usually couched in economic terms (the cost of projects versus the benefit (ROI) of a project) but we all know that mostly the real decisions concerning projects are political (of one sort or another. So one could argue that the economics don't count - except that most of the "politics" has the economic impact as one criteria of the politic decision (people want to know the numbers - even if they ignore them!) and thus, the basis of actually knowing how much a project will cost BEFORE it starts needs to be considered. Once again, how does one do this?

2. The implication is that one should just do software until one decides to stop. When is a good time to stop? Once again, it appears that the implication is that one stops when the key decision maker(s) decides to do so - when the money runs out, or when there appears to be enough functionality to satisfice. Unfortunately, the second option requires serious understanding by the decision maker concerning the functionality and effectiveness of what has been produced (acapability not readily available in most organisations). And the first option may easily gazump the second. The money runs out with something that is barely useable, if at all. What then? Ask for more money? Typically yes, which leads to the next point.

3. If some software is needed strongly enough by an organisation, it usually ends up just keeping paying for it, month in, month out, regardless of the original estimates for costs. What starts out looking like a "standard" software engineering project (big plan up front, lots of process and control, big-end methodology, etc) turns into a never-ending "agile" project. Work continues unabated, withreleases popping out on a regular basis, based on the ability of a fixed team of developers to produce within that period, as prioritised by the business (if they are lucky) - and not based on any semblance of specific functionality planned for and controlled in a big-end development process. The afore-mentioned scenario occurs if the organisation is lucky. If it isn't, the software remains as is, under-delivering for the organisation until it is replaced by yet another attempt to get something useful for the organisation.

4. In all the available scenarios outlined above, the only real way of determining the usefulness for some software is after the fact, including determining the cost for the software and the value that it delivers. This does nothing to address the proper concerns of organisations in relation to managing expenditure and investment, and ensuring that the financial position of the organisation is managed and known in advance (particularly important for financial reporting for companies, especially public companies). This is also an important risk management issue for organisations.

5. Which brings one straight back to the question of reconciling the activity of "craftsmen" in a "managers" world - something which continues to be exceedingly difficult. Maybe this is the key question which really needs to be answered in relation to enterprise information systems.

Streams, Mirrors and Becoming

1) Internet = collective nervous system: OK
2) Web = collective brain: hmmm… the Web is an important part of the infrastructure of the global memory (collective brain is exagerated. It's only one of the first layers of it. Cyberspace is still in embryonic form)
3) Stream = global mind: definitely not. I understand the relation between the linearity or sequentiality of the digital stream and the linearity of the personal thought stream. But there is no “mind” without reflexivity or consciousness, and you know that. The “stream” has no reflexivity, it is not a mind, it is just the flow that will feed the future mind.
By the way, global reflexive collective intelligence needs full transparency. No global brain or global mind will be based on commercial secrets.

The reflexivity is already there – in the people themselves – who form a critical part of the Stream. The Stream is a cybernetic loop that includes people. Therefore it is effectively reflexively aware. Reflexive awareness will not come from software or machines or some kind of information, and it won't come from magical complexity either – it's already present, in us.

The global mind is a cognitive process, just like the human mind. The witness of the human mind is not “in” the mind, just as the witnesses of the collective mind (humans) are not “in” the Stream.

I agree with everything you just said, there is a misunderstanding here: I mean that there is still no “mirror” (or dynamic synthetic representation, if you want) of the global mind as such. Yes, as you say, the reflexivity will always be in the people, but the question is what is reflected? Any particular stream a is a very partial and tiny aspect of the global mind

I think about this question often too. We have several mini-mirrors already. For example, sites that reflect current trends – like Google Zeitgeist, or Technorati, or trending topics on Twitter, or services like Twitturl, Psyng, and others that map trends in real time. But those are partial views. Psyng is perhaps one of the most comprehensive, but still just a tiny slice. What would the comprehensive central mirror look like and do? Is it even possible or useful? Also – mirroring back to a user their own stream is possible, but no so useful perhaps – it seems that it would be more useful to see mirrors of others, or of large groups – views which might not be possible to know or see any other way…

I do think that mirroring back to the user (to oneself) is useful - provided that what is being mirrored back is the reflection of what one considered or planned to be the future (at a point in time) and that the mirroring happens in the “now”, when the planned future may or may not be about to bring itself into existence (to “become”, not just to “be”).

(the last paragraph is my comment)

Source: http://www.twine.com/item/128lzwnpc-5s/is-the-stream-the-next-new-metaphor - see the comments section. Paragraphs variously by Pierre Levy, Nova Spivack.