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February 29, 2004
Bootstraping
听到这个词许多次了，在CITRIS的会上听到Douglas Engelbart的介绍，才知道他的研究所名字就是"Bootstrapping"。
今天世界的问题变的越来越复杂并且紧迫，个人和组织需要提升对这些问题应对的能力。如果组织的常规工作是A活动, 一般性的学习改进是B活动, 那么提升其改进能力的工作称为C活动, 就是"Bootstrapping"。C活动是提高组织的集合智能，所以是是组织运行和管理的核心。而“经验”和“演进”是集合智能的发展的另外两个核心概念。
Posted by Xiao at 09:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 26, 2004
Luncheon Talk
During the lunch at CITRIS, you had a conversation with Ruzena and her friend from HP about the chips. He finally agreed on there are lack of sufficient considerations for consequences of THESE developments.
Posted by Xiao at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yellowman
Has anyone really believed her/his individual psychology could be somehow divorced from history? Tonight's play has made it so clear, that how much are our thoughts, feelings and behavior related to the larger social forces that surround and move through us.
You also first time learned about the issue of colorism, and how deeply it is entrenched in American Black culture. It is an intense, poetic and very focused play, yet everyone can see so many layers of his/her own life through the prism of Alma and Eugene.
Posted by Xiao at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 25, 2004
”意识形态“
这是个老词了，其实应当指这样一种知识，在其”自然“，”通行“的背后，其社会性来源被压抑，隐匿，或视为不相干了。也可以指这样一种过程，是对意指和话语领域内不平等的社会关系进行再生产的过程。
意识形态是将个体变成主体的机制。有的结构主义者强调一切知识都是再语言中产生的，真相属于语言的产物而不是语言的动因。没有什么话语可以脱离意识形态。另外，它也不是一元化的媒介，不同的意识形态以及在同一意识形态之间，也充满了抗争、控制、冲突和抵制，其结果不仅建构知识，而且也建构权力。
由此想想数字文化的几个根源：六十年代的反文化运动，科学研究的平等开放合作精神，技术静英主义，加州的商业文化等等。Gage不是很典型吗？
Posted by Xiao at 01:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
”意指“
费斯克的《关键概念》远远不是一本“词典”，其多层相关，应和参照的文本提供的是一种复调，有机，开放的阅读经验。
... ...
一方是符号（或符号系统），一方是指涉之现实(referential reality)，两方之间的关系就是“signification。"（被翻译成”意指“，甚不清晰。）
意指的三个序列：
第一序列是外延(denotation)，就是符号和所指对象的字面关系，无涉价值。纯粹的外延关系难找，大概数学公式可以算。第二序列的内涵(connotation)和神话(myth)就丰富极了，因为编码／解码者都是在深深嵌入具体特定的文化价值系统之中的存在。比如：物理学家，或者：白领消费者。内涵是评价性的，诉诸感情的，在能指层面发挥作用。而神话则是意指关系的另一面，是将主题概念化的文化方式，在所指层面发挥作用，也
是无所不在的。
不过意指还有第三序列，因为内涵和神话还只是显性符号，其背后还有隐形的组织化原则，这就是意识形态。
Posted by Xiao at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 20, 2004
The Anathema
"This idea that the brain might be assembled in much the same way as the rest of the body—on the basis of the action of thousands of autonomous but interacting genes (shaped by natural selection)—is an anathema to our deeply held feeling that our minds are special, somehow separate from the material world. Yet at the same time, it is a continuation, perhaps the culmination, of a long trend, a growing-up for the human species that for too long has overestimated its own centrality in the universe. " ----Gary Marcus, "The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought" "Copernicus showed us that our planet is not the center of the universe. William Harvey showed that our heart is a mechanical pump. John Dalton and the 19th century chemists showed that our bodies are, like all other matter, made up of atoms. Watson and Crick showed us how genes emerged from chains of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus. In the 1990s, the Decade of the Brain, cognitive neuroscientists showed that our minds are the product of our brains. Early returns from this century are showing that the mechanisms that build our brains are just a special case of the mechanisms that build the rest of our body. The initial structure of the mind, like the initial structure of the rest of the body, is a product of our genes."Posted by Xiao at 10:51 AM
The Reichstag
Christo and Jeanne-Claude rapped the Reichstag on June 23, 1995. You were there seven years later, quietly entering those sober gray walls, the dark and silent witnesses of a century of tumultuous German history. You saw the details. But the two artists took a different approach: by wrapping it, hiding all the details they allow you to focus entirely on the form. This is "revelation through concealment. "
Posted by Xiao at 12:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2004
Augment Reality
How many efforts are there to mingle virtual and physical worlds? Media linked to location, adding information and communication to physical objects, manipulating the virtual world by manipulating physical objects, and what else? Wearable computers.
And, ultimately, the wetware.
Posted by Xiao at 06:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 09, 2004
The Fog of War
Still digesting the event of last week: McNamara in Berkeley. When all is said and done, only the voice of a poet remains:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
----T.S. Eliot, No.4 of "Four Quartets"
Posted by Xiao at 05:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
星期六的下午
在Peets的外面久坐，重读列维－斯特劳斯的“神话结构”。
阳光暖暖地斜射下来，照在脸上。
蓝色贝雷帽的女子，怀抱着吉他轻唱。(十五年前，电报街头，也是这样的阳光。)
Posted by Xiao at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 05, 2004
Theoretical Questions
What particular features of digital information networks, like presence of email groups and online communities, and the propensity of individual users such as bloggers to connect across them, most favored the growth of a initial meme into a global coverage?
How ought one to go about seeding such information transmiting and agenda setting phase transition? Does digital information networks has "weak points" such that if they were "hit" in precisely the right way, a small shock would explode like an epidemic, each successive decision generating the conditions for the next? If so, could one exploit that knowledge to enhance the likelyhood of a information cascade? Or alternatively, to prevent one. Could firewalls be inserted in networks to contain an information blaze? How does political control and censorship work and under what conditions they remain effective? And finally, how does information translate into action? (Keep on reading Duncan's book.)
Posted by Xiao at 01:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 04, 2004
Two Visions of Cosmic Destiny
This is from yesterday's New York Times. One is the Hubble Telescope detected the Pillars of Creation. The other is Capt. Bruce McCandless tested a nitrogen-propelled backpack.
.
Posted by Xiao at 09:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 03, 2004
Eve's Play in Shanghai
This poster is from Yezi's blog. Are you surprised?
Congradulations, Eve.
Posted by Xiao at 08:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
网络四步曲
普适互联属于物理层面，应用计算、社会软件属于知性层面，虚拟社区和网路行动族属于社会层面，而涌现智能则属于精神层面。在这数位，互动，对等，社区，局域，多对多或者任意点对任意点传播的文化背后，是人的自主和创造的价值。
新文化是普适的，并且将人际交流回归到局域关联场去，但不再全能，不再环绕单一吸引子如意义（宗教），理性（哲学），实验（科学）或者受众（媒体）而决定身份，这是和书写有深刻不同的地方。（艺术不能等同于书写。）
而一些后现代哲学家们将普适和全能混爻为一，一反全反，面对新文化，则会迷了心性。
Posted by Xiao at 04:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 02, 2004
说文解字片段
"仓颉之初作书，盖依类象形，故谓之文。其后，形声相宜，则谓之字。文者，物像之本也。字者，言孽乳而浸多也。“
"依类象形", 则文是抽象的符号。而字同时有声有形。利用形声相宜的手段，字可以滋生，从单体的语言单位（按照规则）滋生为复体。许慎在几乎两千年前，观点已经暗合简简致繁的思想。
Posted by Xiao at 07:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Different Epistemologies
Different discipline has different epistemologies.
What is knowledge? What is research? What’s good work? What is adequate? What is interesting? How are these judgments being made?
There are profound differences in epistemologies. Within a field, people often accept arguments which other field people do not accept. What’s good work is what you learn through “profesionalization”
In Science and Technology Studies. (STS), we often say: “it could have been otherwise.”
We must be refletive on epistemologies.
IS212-2.4
Posted by Xiao at 07:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Continues partial attention
Being two places at once, having two conversation at once is disruptive. Does this break social order? But new norms of behavior are also being developed.
How about this “continues partial attention “?
“If my continues partial attention is too partial to you, then you are too old.” :-)
Posted by Xiao at 07:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Technosocial Situations
"The new kind of social settings enabled through mobil communication that differ fundamentally from prior settings such as workplace, restaurant, face-to-face interaction, or landline telephony." Mazuko Ito called "technosocial situations and settings" in her paper.
Social identity and practice are embedded in and contingent on particular social situations, including technosocial situations.
More and more, social orders are built through the hybrid relation between physically co-located and electronically mediated information systems.
Social order is continually being created and recreated. Why is important to concern about construction of social order? Identity is constructed and varies in situations.
Posted by Xiao at 07:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ethnographic Research
What is ethnographic research? Case studies.
Traditional positivist view of research: objectivity -assumption of “the view from nowhere”
In social sciences, we are more talking about “Situated knowledge”, there is no “the view from nowhere.”
To be insider is to be corrupted”?
White male anthropologists are “objective”?
Insider vs outsider. Observer vs Participant. Embodied knowledge vs Intellectual knowledge.
“To make the familiar strange. “
“Recording your fresh impression, because things will disappear.”
etc.
Posted by Xiao at 06:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Etech 2004
Danah told me this conference is in San Diego next week.
Posted by Xiao at 04:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Clay Shirky's theme
"If I had to describe what I write about, it would be “Systems where vested interests lose out to innovation.”
Or maybe “Systems where having good participants produces better results than having good planners.”
I now recognize in my writings an interest in any systems undergoing an influx of new participants -- the need to avoid mandated design standards on the web ; the tremendous increase in internet use outside the US ; the new voice of previously mute consumers ."
"More than once, new technologies have held out the promise of wider participation by citizens, only to be corralled by a new set of legal or economic realities, and the net, which threatens many vested interests all at once, will be no exception.
Nevertheless, despite a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ progression, we are living through a potentially enormous shift in the amount of leverage the many have over the few. It is my aim to chronicle these changes as they happen, and to provide a framework, built from observation, which aids both interpretation and prediction. "
Posted by Xiao at 09:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack