BangTheRocksTogether

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Context : OnGranularity,

(ReadWith) SystemEvolvingTowardsMoreSmallerSpecialistComponents

A news report brought to you here on the Sub-Etha waveband, broadcasting around the galaxy, around the clock. We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together guys ...

DouglasAdams https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg20026800-900-infinite-improbability/

Bang the rocks together, and pulverise them. And they become more numerous and smaller, fragments.

Can everything be handled by smaller, simpler, more numerous, fragmentory, massively parallel, massively redundant things? Why not? Works for chemistry. And ants. And cells. And cities.

A vision

Today I got the very first version of SpittingCobra working. And I had a vision. That thousands might install little code generating scripts on their computers and sites. All minor variants, customized for their own particular languages and situations and purposes. That cranking the handle of these thousands of little code generators will spit out thousands more scripts. That the cell learns to reproduce. That, just as the blogosphere is a rich, dense, weave of discussion and opinion and knowledge. So we'll create a rich, dense weave of software customization and authoring. That "programming" will be swamped by spitting scripts. That "design" will be an argument, flowing across weblogs and wikis. That we'll bang the rocks together harder. And split the atoms into smallers pieces.

See also :

Otlet

After evaluating the classification systems then in use, such as Dewey Decimal and the British Museum system, Otlet concluded that they all shared a fatal flaw: they were designed to guide readers as far as the individual book—but no further. Ranganathan had voiced the ethos of modern cataloging when he said: “every reader his or her book, and every book its reader.” But once book and reader were matched, they were left pretty well to their own devices.

Otlet wanted to go a step further. He wanted to penetrate the boundaries of the books themselves, to unearth the “substance, sources and conclusions” inside.

Counter

NickCarr InDefenceOfLongSpecificDocuments and vs. LiberationMythology : http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/05/long_player.php

See also :

  • WikiIsaCauldron

CategoryDesign, CategoryComputerScience, Category