✖ Via Techno Tuesday: “How Far We’ve Come”
Previously on Skandalon: Andy Rementer
• Sep 24, 2010 link notes tagged: art illustration illustrator critic evolution technology apparatus human time perspective universe
• Sep 24, 2010 link notes tagged: art illustration illustrator critic evolution technology apparatus human time perspective universe
✖ Via Tom Gauld: “Two Rocks Converse”
• Aug 18, 2010 link notes tagged: art cartoon illustration illustrator humor world time universe evolution past future conversation perspectivism
 | I have registered the arbitrarities of Wilkins, of the unknown (or false) Chinese encyclopaedia writer and of the Bibliographic Institute of Brussels; it is clear that there is no classification of the Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is. “The world - David Hume writes - is perhaps the rudimentary sketch of a childish god, who left it half done, ashamed by his deficient work; it is created by a subordinate god, at whom the superior gods laugh; it is the confused production of a decrepit and retiring divinity, who has already died” (‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’, V. 1779). We are allowed to go further; we can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, it’s aim is not conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God. |
This very short essay contains the famous reference to the bizarre animal classification allegedly listed by an unknown Chinese encyclopedia. Learn more about the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’s taxonomy on Wikipedia.
The extent to which we do not understand very well what is taxonomy (we all experience certain difficulties when comes the time to classify things : think of your fridge for instance, or the desk you’re sitting at right now) certainly will be reflected in the ways bloggers are going to handle the new custom taxonomy user interface as well as custom post type capabilities within the upcoming WordPress 3.0. For a fun approach of the problems to come, read about Content Post Madness.
• May 29, 2010 link notes tagged: book author list encyclopedia order epistemology taxonomy classification chaos universe Borges animal God religion Hume
| [A “cosmology episode” is] An incident in which “people suddenly and deeply feel that the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system”. “People…[generally] act as if events cohere in time and space and that change unfolds in an orderly manner. These orderly cosmologies are subject to disruption. And when they are severely disrupted, I call this a cosmology episode (Weick, 1985: 51-52)…What makes such an episode so shattering is that both the sense of what is occurring and the means to rebuild it collapse together. Stated more informally, a cosmology episode feels like vu jàdé—the opposite of déjà vu: I’ve never been here before, I have no idea where I am, and I have no idea who can help me. |
“The purpose of this article is to reanalyse the Mann Gulch fire disaster in Montana described in Norman Maclean’s (1992) award-winning book Young Men and Fire to illustrate a gap in our current understanding of organizations. I want to focus on two questions: Why do organization unravel? And how can organization be made more resilient?”
About the author: “Karl E. Weick (born October 31, 1936 in Warsaw, Indiana) is an American organizational theorist who is noted for introducing the notions of “loose coupling”, “mindfulness”, and “sensemaking” into organizational studies. He is the Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Wittenberg College in Springfield, Ohio and his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Ohio State University in 1962.” (wikipedia)
• Apr 29, 2010 link notes reblogged from leftoverfest [via] tagged: communication community organization disaster order sense cosmos universe lost catastroph human anxiety
| According to Websence Security Labs the majority of what we see online and receive through email has links to spam and contains malicious code. In fact, 95 per cent of user generated content is generally spam or dangerous links and 85 per cent of emails sent are no more than 419 scams. |
Let’s do a quick recap :
1) 95% of user generated content ‘is spam’
2) About 95% of the human genome has at one time been designated as “junk” (Wikipedia with reference to Nature Reviews Genetics vol. 8 issue 8).
3) About 75% of the universe is dark energy, that is “a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space” (Wikipedia, with numerous references).
Things that appear to be missing (the missing mass problem), lost, wasted, rejected (such as junk mail) or unknown (junk DNA) sure seem to shape our lives in many ways.
• Feb 09, 2010 link notes reblogged from infoneer-pulse [via] tagged: technology communication spam code junk lost reject DNA universe waste
