Disqus - Latest Comments for cgerrish

Re: Phil Windley's Technometria

cgerrish — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:11:14 -0000

I'd suggest printing them all out and putting them in a shoebox. It's a technique that's stood the test of time.

Re: Facebook Domination Isn't Inevitable—It's Not Even Likely

cgerrish — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:02:40 -0000

Decentralization on a network can also look like a power law curve with some large nodes benefitting from preferential attachment (The rich get richer through the Network effect). Everyone is on Facebook, because everyone is on Facebook. The opposing force is articulated by Yogi Berra: "nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded."

A centralized network would mean that the vendor *is* the network. AOL functioned in this way-- there is no outside. The Web provided an "outside" to AOL. There's already an outside to Facebook, but not an outside that provides equivalent switchboard power. So in that sense, Facebook already operates within a decentralized Network and makes use of its protocols.

Scripting the barter between silos on a network may well create a higher level experience that emerges as a personal cloud. +1 level of indirection...

Re: Checking for a Pulse

cgerrish — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:13:34 -0000

Hey Aron, have you listened to Wolves in the Throne Room? They're a variant of black metal created by some former Earth First dudes. I'm enjoying their latest...

Re: The Time of Pattern Recognition

cgerrish — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:44:36 -0000

It's an interesting question, once a public gesture is recorded and patterned, can a person recall the data? Can one pre-recall the data? In essence it's anonymity, invisibility in public. Baudelaire is eloquent on the advent of urban anonymity, it wasn't alway something we enjoyed.

Re: The Politics of the Message and the File

cgerrish — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:55:06 -0000

Once the individual platforms have sufficient scale to create positive economics, there's little motivation to federate with other platforms. Email seemed to mimic the telephone network, the new platforms look back to AOL, the bulletin board on steroids. It may require an architectural innovation like a P2P messaging network to create change. P2P originally rode on the back of the MP3 and popular music to establish network scale. Since that time, the central platforms have managed to blacken the name of the P2P architectural form.

Re: A Ring Cycle For The Anthropocene

cgerrish — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:42:39 -0000

Thanks for the kind words. I'm very familiar with Anna Russell, she's a good antidote when things get too stuffy in Wagner-world. Summarizing the Ring is a bit like Monty Python's 'summarize Proust' bit. And while I'm a big proponent of taking large-scale art seriously, part of that has to be seeing the humor in it. Even the humor in taking it seriously. Cheers. cmg

Re: Sleepers Awake: Grains of Sand

cgerrish — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 01:54:21 -0000

Unequivocal but not serious. We feel uncomfortable at the margins, so we make jokes.

Re: Sleepers Awake: Grains of Sand

cgerrish — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 01:28:24 -0000

The form of exploration consisting of a question that has a true or false answer has an oddly narrow range.

Re: Sleepers Awake: Grains of Sand

cgerrish — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:52:41 -0000

Interesting that Wolfram weighs in on metaphysical questions.

Re: Contra Optimization: 4th Time Around

cgerrish — Wed, 11 May 2011 01:31:27 -0000

Duplication that isn't duplication, a net for catching errors, listening for signal in the noise.

Re: Screen and Cloud: Wrong Way Round

cgerrish — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:56:02 -0000

Kurtz's last words in 'Heart of Darkness' or 'Apocalypse Now' -- "the horror, the horror." It's always on, whether the power switch is on or not.

Re: A World of Infinite Info: Flattening the Curvature of the Earth

cgerrish — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:14:52 -0000

The road back from the infinite to the finite involves creating some limitations. I've described it as drawing a new horizon line. But another way to describe it would be the drawing of circles, and how my circle connects to and harvests the resonances and differences of your circle.

We also describe these kinds of limitations as lists and portfolios. In the curation model, we seek to hire portfolio managers to find the most productive set of people to follow.

Notice in this model, it's not pages or feeds from pages that are being followed but people.

Re: A World of Infinite Info: Flattening the Curvature of the Earth

cgerrish — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 11:35:26 -0000

Crowd-based 'intelligence' may simply cause conforming views -- generally, what's popular is not what's most interesting. Track no longer exists in a real-time form -- and this gets to the point of whether or not an infinite tool is possible. Most of the tools out there draw horizon lines, they create a finite set to process. This is done through keyword, identity, affinity group, etc. Ev seems to suggest there's a possibility of a tool that can draw a circle around infinity. That's where the question begins to become interesting.

Re: PLATO: The Seed Of The Social Computing Fabric

cgerrish — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 09:26:46 -0000

I hope you were able to attend the PLATO rewind at the Computer History Museum. They played all the hits.

Re: PDX Principles

cgerrish — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:35:33 -0000

Your comparison to the liquidity and portability of cash needs more context. While cash is liquid and portable, not all investments are. Bonds, commodities, equities, private investments -- these have varying degrees of liquidity and there can be a loss or gain on transfer from here to there. Identity assets are similar, they can be moved easily, or there's a cost to moving them.

Re: Poindexter, Jonas and The Birth of Real-Time Dot Connecting

cgerrish — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:43:28 -0000

The interesting bit is that everyone has the same problem, it's cheap and easy to collect dots-- but it's expensive and hard to connect them. If the pattern holds, we should expect that technology to come from DARPA or In-Q-Tel rather than the Silicon Valley.

Re: Gluttony: Total Information Awareness, Personal Edition

cgerrish — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:41:51 -0000

I'll definitely take a look.

Re: Gluttony: Total Information Awareness, Personal Edition

cgerrish — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:05:42 -0000

Seems like contextual information is the *only* possible thing. It's how language works.

Re: Gluttony: Total Information Awareness, Personal Edition

cgerrish — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:04:37 -0000

I'd wait to see if you hear about these concepts from a few other people. The post itself is only a container for the ideas.

Re: Gluttony: Total Information Awareness, Personal Edition

cgerrish — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:02:26 -0000

HAMM:
I love the old questions.
(With fervour.)
Ah the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!
(Pause.)
http://www.samuel-beckett.n...

Re: Permanent Markers: Memory And Forgiveness

cgerrish — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:10:06 -0000

Mutation is one of the ways language works. Lera Boroditsky has done some interesting work on how language shapes thought: http://www.edge.org/3rd_cul...

Re: As Machines May Think…

cgerrish — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 20:28:21 -0000

'Machines that think' or 'machines who think.' The difference in those two phrases encapsulates the problem.

Re: As Machines May Think…

cgerrish — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:51:46 -0000

Perhaps we should call it 'intelligent design.'

Re: As Machines May Think…

cgerrish — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:57:01 -0000

I'd prefer to leave out the words "artificial" and "intelligence." Can't we just say that "better" is better than worse?

Re: Banks, Walled Gardens And Metaphors of Place

cgerrish — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:01:02 -0000

Banks don't stop at national borders, although their regulation does. Financial instruments, excessive and otherwise, have an international circulation. But I'll grant you that American banks do have an excess of creativity.