On 10/4/13 2:45 PM, glen wrote:
Steve Smith wrote at 10/04/2013 08:52 AM:
I think this is (finally) the nut of the discussion? But isn't the
attention given to an artifact/idea precisely what gives it value in
a marketplace? I admit that the market is a fickle bitch sometimes
and some of the best ideas or artifacts likely get ignored forever.
The very phenomenon of artists (and sometimes writers) not being
"discovered" until after their death is one example.
Isn't the actual attention given something like the kinetic energy
with a latent attention it deserves being more like potential
energy? This is all relative of course... many ideas (and the
artifacts grown from them) are perhaps before their time or out of
cultural context.
To me, this puts the cart before the horse ... the horse is the thing
and the cart is thought about the thing. Of course, I sound like a
broken record. Thought is useless. It's action that matters. Along
those same lines, what allows artists to be discovered after their
death is the fact that they constructed tangible, lasting artifacts.
And, further, it seems to me that the good artists I know refuse,
almost on principle, to corrupt the artifact by yapping about it the
way art critics do. I infer from this that they consider the
art[ifact] primary and any attention it may [not] receive secondary.
Now, the ur-meaning of openness relates fundamentally to this sense of
the artifact. I know some artists who object strongly to the kind of
"post-modern" funging of Art(TM). Somehow, the artifact they call art
is supposed to be sacred... it is as the artist designed it and should
remain so. But most of the younger artists (and many of the older
ones) tend to be more dynamic. They enjoy it when some other person
comes along and adds to what they've done, even if it changes the
sense of the artifact entirely.
It's in this light that I see most of the maker community and a large
portion of the open software community. If you take time to fork my
product, then I'm flattered by the fork, not offended because you
didn't follow my vision or preserve my use cases.
Anecdotally, I feel the same way about graffiti. It's stigmergic, and
way more interesting than something static or "artificial" (in the
denigrating sense of the word).
The work I have done in scientific collaboration was at least partly
about unlocking some of that potential by helping practitioners in
normally disjoint fields find common language and models to exchange
their best (or most latent?) ideas.
Right, but if I may be so offensive, I'll suggest that you're not
doing what you think you're doing. ;-) You're not helping them
exchange _ideas_. You're helping them do stuff and make stuff. It's
the stuff that matters, not the ideas. I know you know this. But I
have to practice stating the obvious, otherwise I might lose my
certification.
I am probably not doing what I think I'm doing... and yes, we were
helping them do stuff, but the mechanisms of their doing stuff included
pattern recognition and alignment between linguistic constructs
(theories, best practices, etc).
I think I agree about your first point as well regarding carts and
horses... but a cart without a horse is a bin and a horse without a cart
is an eating machine that if you are clever and persistent might also be
a friend and a personal mount/conveyance.
- Steve
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