Open Source
I am coming more and more to the conclusion that philosophy is useless without praxes, as Heidegger so beautifully called the art of doing. Theory for the sake of theory alone is a recipe for disaster -at least when one aims to influence one's life-world with such theory- for only the environment of the mind will put the mind's children to the test.
In my particular case I -apart from being me in the world- am also a software engineer and electrotechnical engineer, although I do not often use the latter experience that often, except maybe when something does not work at home.
My (professional) praxes are therefore mainly that of programming, and has given me first hand experience in the developments in IT since the Eighties of the previous century.
One interesting change that happened is that programming developed from a mainly solitary activity to -if one chooses to- a team effort that spans the entire globe. Especially if one is an open-source enthusiast.
I currently host three projects through the World-Wide Web. One is a framework that has quietly being developed in the past four years called Aieon-F, another -my first- is a now dormant attempt to create a framework for artificial intelligence, and a third is basically a 'had-to' project that became important when I started to adapt Aieon-F to work in a peer-to-peer environment, that is provided by JXTA. This project, called jxta-eclipse, aims to integrate JXTA with Equinox, one of the most promising programming frameworks of the moment.
It is quite funny to see that lately this somewhat mandatory project has been keeping my quite busy. Different people from all over the world suddenly post me with questions or remarks about the project. It makes me realise that open source development is an historically unique phenomenon that deserves more attention that -just- as a (pain in the ... of ) business models.
I tend to be quite Nietschean in my (albeit good-natured) cynisism, so you won't hear me saying that open-source is a model for humankind -international, egalitarian, usually respectful to others and somewhat blind for cultural and societal differences. But...
...having said that...
...it does come close to achieving at least some of those ideals in a practical being 'in-the-world' with others.
I have always thought it remarkable that technology seems to have that trait of bridging gaps between (technically oriented) people. When I still travelled the world to install machines at customers, I always liked the relative ease in which I could connect to the techies at the customers. Somehow technology is quite a strong connecting force and shared interest in technology makes strong bonds.
Anyway, I'll be posting more here on the practical issues of my little projects here!
maandag 28 juli 2008
zondag 27 juli 2008
After the holidays
Well, a conference and holidays and before you know it a month has passed!
The conference was a good one. KGCM 2008 in Orlando, Florida on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management aims to bring researchers together from Systems Theory, Cybernetics and Engineering, but attracted a much more diverse audience.My own presentation was on the last day of the conference in the afternoon, but luckily I ended up talking to a larger audience than just my wife. I had written a somewhat abstract methodological article called "Complex Systems and Patterns" where I aimed to argue that we can research complex systems by expanding the classical -but very successful- paradigms of (general) systems theory (GST) with the paradigms of (design) patterns. However, this synthesis requires a number of changes on the base premises of GST that would need careful consideration. Most notably, I consider that our everyday notion of information to be fundamentally incorrect. The idea of information as a package that can be transported from a sender to a receiver is only possible when both the sender as the receiver already know how to intepret the message. Basically only patterns are communicated and this can be reconstructed into information when the receiver has the means to perform the reconstruction. Information -in the sense of its classic meaning of 'having taken up form'- therefore denotes a relationship between availability (of pattern) and acceptability (of the receiver). Only if these two conditions are met, then pattern can become information. This notion correlates very much with an embodied notion of information that coincides with the pioneers of the second cybernetic wave (see Katherine Hayles' "How we Became Posthuman") but also the work of Niklas Luhmann reflects this.
I think that my presentation went quite well, and managed to make the abstract story a bit more understandable. the only thing that I regretted later is that I missed an opportunity to give a very simple advice afterwards that could immediately make clear how patterns can be used to improve cross-disciplinary scientific communications, therefore I'll just do that over here...
It is really quite simple,
If you are preparing an article and you're adding a table, drawing or schematic to elucidate the point that you're making, just take a moment to reflect if this table or schematic is specific for your work, or if it looks like something you've seen or read before. For in that case you might have found a pattern!
I often find myself finding patterns in popular scientific books on topics that are not quite related to my own research, in which I suddenly see a graph or description that resembles something I read elsewhere, and in which the equivalence seems to go beyond that of an analogy. Now I tend to yell "PATTERN!!!" when that happens...
...it makes me feel a bit like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in "Men in Black", where they scanned the gossip tabloids for the presence of aliens...
The conference was a good one. KGCM 2008 in Orlando, Florida on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management aims to bring researchers together from Systems Theory, Cybernetics and Engineering, but attracted a much more diverse audience.My own presentation was on the last day of the conference in the afternoon, but luckily I ended up talking to a larger audience than just my wife. I had written a somewhat abstract methodological article called "Complex Systems and Patterns" where I aimed to argue that we can research complex systems by expanding the classical -but very successful- paradigms of (general) systems theory (GST) with the paradigms of (design) patterns. However, this synthesis requires a number of changes on the base premises of GST that would need careful consideration. Most notably, I consider that our everyday notion of information to be fundamentally incorrect. The idea of information as a package that can be transported from a sender to a receiver is only possible when both the sender as the receiver already know how to intepret the message. Basically only patterns are communicated and this can be reconstructed into information when the receiver has the means to perform the reconstruction. Information -in the sense of its classic meaning of 'having taken up form'- therefore denotes a relationship between availability (of pattern) and acceptability (of the receiver). Only if these two conditions are met, then pattern can become information. This notion correlates very much with an embodied notion of information that coincides with the pioneers of the second cybernetic wave (see Katherine Hayles' "How we Became Posthuman") but also the work of Niklas Luhmann reflects this.
I think that my presentation went quite well, and managed to make the abstract story a bit more understandable. the only thing that I regretted later is that I missed an opportunity to give a very simple advice afterwards that could immediately make clear how patterns can be used to improve cross-disciplinary scientific communications, therefore I'll just do that over here...
It is really quite simple,
If you are preparing an article and you're adding a table, drawing or schematic to elucidate the point that you're making, just take a moment to reflect if this table or schematic is specific for your work, or if it looks like something you've seen or read before. For in that case you might have found a pattern!
I often find myself finding patterns in popular scientific books on topics that are not quite related to my own research, in which I suddenly see a graph or description that resembles something I read elsewhere, and in which the equivalence seems to go beyond that of an analogy. Now I tend to yell "PATTERN!!!" when that happens...
...it makes me feel a bit like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in "Men in Black", where they scanned the gossip tabloids for the presence of aliens...
woensdag 18 juni 2008
Hello World
Hello World,
It's funny the way things go. About four years ago, I was just finishing my Masters thesis in computer science, on a subject on artificial intelligence, and I was quite sure that this would be the end of my studies. I had been doing the study besides a full time job in robotics and software engineering -yup, I'm a geek! I do a lot of programming in JAVA and .NET and quite enjoy doing that!
However fate pushed me into the slipstream of Harry Kunneman, my supervisor for my Ph. D. research that I have been working on at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht, the Netherlands in, you might've guessed it, 'humanistics'. Now for those who haven't got the foggiest clue in what 'humanistics' is -I used to be one of them myself-, the short and quick answer is that it is something like applied philosophy. For the past four years I've therefore been digging into the 'lingua democratica' between technology and philosophy. In other words, I've been looking into ways to come to a form of synthesis between the worlds of technologists and the humanities.
Now, don't get me wrong here, I know that there are a lot of philosophers who reflect on technology, and there are also -as I found out- researchers from the humanities who have certain opinions on technology and technologists. These opinions are not always friendly, and sometimes their critique justified. There are obviosuly also a lot of techies who like philosophy and don't mind reading Kant, Heidegger or the 'ole Greek thinkers.
However, it is my experience that techies normally don't have too much patience for anything that, or anyone who, doesn't give straight answers to issues, or makes life more complicated than necessary. These personal experiences on this particular issue get some credibility as 'fact', if one takes into account that the 'unlikely bedfellows' of engineers and philosophers are getting their own scientific workshops nowadays!
It is also my experience that we engineers usually have two stances towards philosophy; either we're cool with it and take interest, or we ignore it because we've got better things to do.
While this may be okay in general, it does not stop others thinking about technology (and technologists!), and as the impact of technology in our modern times is raising some concern, there is a chance that decisions about technology are made by those who least understand it.
Maybe we technologists have to admit at some point that we don't get it either...
Anyway, this little space in the wide, wide virtual world of the Internet is taking a geek's perspective on technology, philosophy and ethics.
As I progress in my own search for synthesis, I hope to share some of my thoughts, books, articles, and ongoing programming activities with some lonely travellers who are heading in the same direction of perpetual technological novelty.
It's funny the way things go. About four years ago, I was just finishing my Masters thesis in computer science, on a subject on artificial intelligence, and I was quite sure that this would be the end of my studies. I had been doing the study besides a full time job in robotics and software engineering -yup, I'm a geek! I do a lot of programming in JAVA and .NET and quite enjoy doing that!
However fate pushed me into the slipstream of Harry Kunneman, my supervisor for my Ph. D. research that I have been working on at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht, the Netherlands in, you might've guessed it, 'humanistics'. Now for those who haven't got the foggiest clue in what 'humanistics' is -I used to be one of them myself-, the short and quick answer is that it is something like applied philosophy. For the past four years I've therefore been digging into the 'lingua democratica' between technology and philosophy. In other words, I've been looking into ways to come to a form of synthesis between the worlds of technologists and the humanities.
Now, don't get me wrong here, I know that there are a lot of philosophers who reflect on technology, and there are also -as I found out- researchers from the humanities who have certain opinions on technology and technologists. These opinions are not always friendly, and sometimes their critique justified. There are obviosuly also a lot of techies who like philosophy and don't mind reading Kant, Heidegger or the 'ole Greek thinkers.
However, it is my experience that techies normally don't have too much patience for anything that, or anyone who, doesn't give straight answers to issues, or makes life more complicated than necessary. These personal experiences on this particular issue get some credibility as 'fact', if one takes into account that the 'unlikely bedfellows' of engineers and philosophers are getting their own scientific workshops nowadays!
It is also my experience that we engineers usually have two stances towards philosophy; either we're cool with it and take interest, or we ignore it because we've got better things to do.
While this may be okay in general, it does not stop others thinking about technology (and technologists!), and as the impact of technology in our modern times is raising some concern, there is a chance that decisions about technology are made by those who least understand it.
Maybe we technologists have to admit at some point that we don't get it either...
Anyway, this little space in the wide, wide virtual world of the Internet is taking a geek's perspective on technology, philosophy and ethics.
As I progress in my own search for synthesis, I hope to share some of my thoughts, books, articles, and ongoing programming activities with some lonely travellers who are heading in the same direction of perpetual technological novelty.
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