Re: [-empyre-] archiving + preservation

[ben syverson <ben@bensyverson.com>]

On May 6, 2004, at 5:48 AM, Kenneth Fields wrote:

> Illusion is important for ontology making. that is why, immersion, 
> involvement and sustainability were my early conclusions.

Ours as well, but immersion in as many different senses as we could 
muster. I think some people want a real-time convo, some want an RSS 
subscription, and some just want a webapp. And maybe what they want one 
day isn't what they want the next.


> The translation aspect (into chinese - I'm in Beijing) is more 
> interesting still. Wiki words, or ontology classes can get pretty 
> bizarre, LiquidTangibleThing, InanimateThing-Natural, 
> BiologicalLivingObject . As chinese is character/pictorial based, it 
> may turn out to be a less cumbersome language for ontologizing.

Ooh, that's spicy. In some ways, English as a language is less-suited 
for [wikis/likis]. The amazing thing about supporting [Chinese/Kanji] 
is that not only would you get a pop-up for complex terms like "Dan 
Sandin's Image Processor," but also simple terms like "computer." I 
don't know about the Chinese construction, but in Japanese Kanji, 
"electricity" is a construction of two Kanji -- lightning + dragon. 
"Computer" is lighting + dragon + machine. So "computer" could be a 
popup with at least four items (one for each component 
[character/concept], and one for the overall concept).

What an interesting thought to imagine nearly every word becoming a 
self-deconstructing menu. I imagine that not only would it serve the 
same purpose as a [liki/wiki], but could also aid in the understanding 
of the language, as a hyperlinked dictionary.

> I'm not too sure that your 2d matrix will show this. It might have to 
> be 3d; it needs to be able to stretch out and dance in order to shake 
> itself into positions of greatest potential for mutation when critical 
> thresholds are reached.

I agree -- at the simplest level, there could be a map which looks the 
same as the nodemap from the top, but when it's rotated, you can see 
that [stronger/more popular] nodes are raised above the surface of the 
map.


> Education was modeled on the first car factories; education, at least 
> starting in the digital arts, could afford individualized paths. More 
> modular (one week in the WavePhenomenon Node) that is shared by visual 
> and aural artists as well as physicists.

I think wikis (and especially likis) are ideal for self-directed 
learning and research. The ability to click on just about any phrase or 
concept which is not fully understood eclipses even Google for sheer 
ease of access.

Coupled with a robust, tested alternative assessment model, maybe the 
two could save education before it descends even further into the hell 
of rote memorization and standardized testing. My mother happens to be 
heavily involved in one popular alternative assessment  model, the 
Learning Record:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~syverson/olr/contents.html

- ben