digitaldust

Weelll, I’ve just managed to install MTAmazon and MT-Bookqueue and it’s all going well. This Amazon web-api is pretty cool. The flexibility of their XML API is nice. I took MTAmazon and hacked it to use amazon.co.uk data instead of US data, handy as I’m in the UK and most of the books I buy are from amazon.co.uk. There were a few tricky bits as the docs on amazon and their xml error messages were at time a little misleading. Go to amazon.co.uk/webservices and it redirects you to amazon.com, then the localisation options they give you on .com dont work properly. Simple enough though all you need is to use the amazon.co.uk URL with a locale=uk tacked on the end (if you dont use this extra parameter then it defaults to US and throws an error, duh!).

Worth watching I think. The Alphaville Herald a news paper for reporting the seedier underbelly of one of the Sims city servers, and there’s plenty of it. It’s run by a philosophy professor and part time TSO investigative newshound. Worth keeping an eye on for the nascent virtual community forming and storming it’s way into existence. I’m especially fond of the interview with a BDSM initiate. Some bits of it are straight out of the early 90s communities research but there’s an extra element to it. The aspect of lots of kids online - especially as it’s a game - is interesting, 18+ areas and child friendly attitudes, etc are mentioned, also that TSO is 13+ which I didn’t realise.

It’s also made me want to look out for Sociolotron the worlds first R-rated MMO. For academic purposes only of course.

I’ve just had a bit of an epiphany. It’s probably not something new, but it’s a new thought to me. I’ve always been a bit more of the reductionist school of thought in the old reduction versus emergence fight. If you understand the elements in a system well enough then the so called emergent properties will become apparent due to the detailed understanding of these elements. Though I’ve always been careful to say that a thorough understanding of these elements includes how they relate to the other elements in the system. That the connections between elements or nodes in a system/network is just as important as the nature of the nodes themselves. If you understood this then you could understand the entire system from first principles.

However I now see that this is not always true. In the case of a network/system that grows with some random factor then you cannot truly predict the emergent principles. So if there is no determinism, which I wholeheartedly disagree with on an emotional level as much as any thing else then you cannot truly predict the result of the system.

Now in most real world cases of this the system does not grow truly randomly. Take the human brain. There must be some degree of predictivity of the growth of that as a system, otherwise the vast majority would be stupid lumps of flesh, and only in exceptional circumstances would the mind occur. So there must be some generally predictable outcome from first principles.

So I don’t think much different than before I now realise after writing this. I’m still in that mode of thought that wants to treat the individual elements as important as well as the links between them, sort of in the same way as light is both a particle and a wave. Emergent properties are important, but as much of the network theory research explosion is proving, that emergent properties are not magic gestalts, but predictable properties of various arrangements of connections.

I was just thinking about messageboard moderation and reputation. I’m off sick so I actually get the chance to think things through. Actually I was thinking about moderation, reputation, the Soham murder case - Ian Huntley’s history is now coming out, privacy, big brother states, anonymising democracies and the possibility of open reputation based, whuffie style societies.

There are two schools of thought as far as reputation and message moderation goes. One goes “You should moderate every message based on the content of the message alone” and there is the other that says that “You should moderate each message within the context of it’s poster’s history.�
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I’m sick today so I was lying in bed listening to the Today Programme on radio4 and there was this piece about selfish Christmas carol choirs. This guy was on complaining about the fact that Christmas choirs are hogging all the carols. He was saying and the presenter was agreeing that when one goes to a choir service - not that I do - the choir now sings most if not all and the congregation doesn’t sing. They had a representative from St Paul’s choir service who was on saying that it’s not a big change and that the congregation still participate by quiet prayer and contemplation. Whereas the presenter and the other guy were lamenting a lost time when everyone came and sang their heads off out of tune.

This seems to me more of the whole bowling alone phenomena. Organisations of participation (which the Church used to be, and very good at it in it’s time) are divorcing themselves from these small rituals of participation. Even though I might not be going to a carol service I find myself angry and appalled at the thought of not allowing a group of people to sing along with traditional carols, or marginalized by creating new ones that no one can actually sing along to. Not singing together to carols is a great example of the Putnam thing as well as the broadcast/performance mentality that grips the population.

It also brings to mind a documentary I was watching the other night on the origins of music. It seems that everyone in the “developed” world listens to more music than they used to, but the number of people making music is significantly less. This is all due to the mediation of recordable music. In “primitive” societies everyone makes music and they create rhythms all the time, music to work to, music to celebrate, music to communicate. The western world tries to make music professional and the non-developed world makes music participatory.

Hopefully we have reached the full pendulum swing to the small number of professional musicians and that advancing music technology is bringing the so called professional standard to the general public. The pendulum is swinging the other way and more people will be able to make music that others will take part in.

Just had a moments fun with DFILM. My piece de resistance is a small piece about first contact with a strange new culture. Cultural relativity and galactic innocence are the key themes.

Yay!! Finally got a broadband conection again. It’s been like having one hand cut off and an eye poked out. But now I’ve got the pipe back in and my mind is singing to the music of the wires.

For the month that we haven’t had it I’ve hardly touched the PC but still managed to fritter hours away in a wide variety of new and not so different ways. I’ve watched more TV and DVDs, and also managed to get confused and lost driving around looking for stuff with out the aid of findmynearest, google or streetmap. And confusion around trying to shop without epinions, amazon or any product research.

No longer to I have to get my fix at work, that scourge of the interwebbing class.