My characterization of Rob's quote is a bit off too. Maybe something more like: Rob backs away from a slippery slope. See [1] below.
••• Sent Mobile ••• On Feb 3, 2014, at 9:01 PM, Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> wrote: > > I reject lists? I don't; I've run some for decades - I'm not sure what you > mean. > > - Alan > > On Mon, 3 Feb 2014, Bishop Zareh wrote: > >> Hey yall, >> I am not online as often as you, so apologies in advance for not being more >> timely. >> Cucumber (http://cukes.info) is definitely my favorite code to read. Jasmine >> (https://github.com/pivotal/jasmine) can sometimes be a 'close second', >> despite the overbearing assertions and 'be' verbs. It all depends on the >> author. >> Behavour-driven-development may be just another blip on the >> natural-language-code timeline, but then again, it may not. >> I echo the many thanks going around for references, dialogue and >> perceptiveness by all involved. There are two threads that I would like to >> tease out a bit, as I felt they got sidelined along the way. >> [1] Late modernist literature as it relates to code wurk. Rob's defense of >> an instinctual off-hand comment. Some wit from me. >> [2] Jimmy Wales daughter. Alan's rejection of Lists in general. >> Wiki-literature and collaborative writing. >> Let me know your ideas! >> Bz >> ======================================================== >> >> > <I loathe "Infinite Jest" > do you? it always rather a shock >> when >> > *someone* one respects & admires hates *something* one loves. >> I do. I know I'm in a miniscule minority here. I have read the whole >> book, read reviews and discussions of it, and read about its genesis >> and >> production but this is a largely visceral reaction that I'm not >> particularly proud of. It wasn't germane to the discussion so I really >> shouldn't have mentioned it. I'm sorry. >> [1] Late modernist literature as it relates to code wurk. Rob's defense and >> dismissal of an instinctual and off-hand comment. Some wit from me. >> Of course we all must respect the brilliance set down in word by giants of >> contemporary literature like David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon. Many >> followed in their tradition, and I have spent much of my waking life >> marveling over their foldings of language. >> Yet, after reading more Marx, Foucault, Lacan, I came to believe that this >> genre called "post-modern literature" missed some very fundamental mark. >> Their hearts were in the right place, but when the future story of past >> thought is told, I felt these authors would be found in the narrative of our >> era's growing, extreme, and almost baroque excesses. That in-fact Wallace >> was an example of well-crafted late-Modernism, and not what comes next. >> That said, I think it is exactly this breakdown-in-transition IN Literature, >> or at least in popular academic literary analysis, that prevents Alan and >> Rob's critique to spread/permeate into places like Yale. >> I'll give one example of why I think this. Save for very few practices an >> author rarely concedes crafting the social affect of their literature, nor >> do most academics publicly study the social function of literature as >> part-in-parcel with linguistic accomplishments. Not that the two fields >> don't sometimes overlap, but the idea of Einstein's Proofs being an example >> of code that is worthy of literary analysis, falls so completely flat to >> someone that has never considered the physical universe as a prosthetic of >> language. >> Most bookworms gots distracted by the bindings; forgots that the words have >> the powers, because the words have the peoples. Maybe Lot 49 was crying >> because it forgot its point, or its peoples? I always felt like Pynchon was >> leading me on a wild goose chase toward red herrings, but then there would >> be these plateaus of sense-making, all too inconceivably arranged. >> ======================================================== >> >> Or another ugly way of putting it, I hate lists, however defined >> (again) - on a personal level because someone or some group is >> always excluded, and since I'm more often than not in that >> group, I see them, themselves, as hegemonic in function, >> although not in intention. >> [2] Jimmy Wales daughter. Alan's rejection of Lists in general. >> Wiki-literature and collaborative writing. >> I played legos with Jimmy Wales' daughter one time. I showed up to some >> random Hackathon in an attic of an old office building and there was a >> five-year-old playing in the corner. So I helped babysit, since there seemed >> to be a lack. Only to find out that the father, inventor of Wikipedia, had >> been mobbed and absconded in the green room, prior to his presentation to >> twenty or less completely unprepared "bar-camp" >> participant+volunteer+organizers. Childcare was not the only thing they had >> failed to provide, but the event is not the important part. >> Along the way, Jimmy uttered this amazingly concise statement on network >> technology; he said that wiki was the only technology that brought people >> together in agreement. Forums and mailing lists like this, have >> statistically demonstrable problems with sustainable agreement. Usually the >> loudest and most extreme voices push out the meager marginal voices, >> approaching both hegemony and harmony, and eventually banality as a room >> full of bullies agreeing with e'chotha'. >> Don't get me wrong; I love this list and I think Alan does too. None the >> less, Lists in general, have issues. My critique is that if, if the source >> code of both a forum and a wiki were fun to read, it would be the wiki that >> best responds to literary analysis. I believe there must be some >> 'functional' requirement that cannot be explained computationally, >> mathematically or linguistically. In this way, a wiki is more functional >> than a forum or mailing list, and thus its source more literary. >> Now, the word "function" has 15 different meanings in these contexts, so let >> me be specific. I am using "function" as a User Experience designer would, >> to mean the eventual social affect of the work. I am not talking about >> "functional mathematics" and I definitely am attempting to discredit "code >> quality". If we consider software as literature, one could write the most >> efficient program ever, but if it does not change someone's life or show >> them something special, then it has failed as literature. Imo, code as >> literature has even more qualifications: achievement in linguistics, >> readability, computational artistry, mathematical relevance and functional >> evocativeness. >> But even this 'functional' becomes its own little rabbit hole (read: >> problematic). Wikis are a collaborative writing engine, so to measure the >> social ramifications of this technology, we would have to compare all of the >> literature that the technology begot. Additionally, the source code, Media >> Wiki, has it's own lineage of forks, each of them enabling reams of >> derivative, affected works, ripe for analysis. Mathematically, some Media >> Wiki forks do super advanced shiznit with "distributed" updates and their >> "eventual synchrony" though this comes more from cloud computing than wiki >> technology. The Media Wiki source code is pretty well commented, but of >> course it could be more poetic if somebody had half-a-mind to write it that >> way. >> Even then, Authorship takes a nose dive into oblivion (read: existentialism) >> say when you consider wiki-fan-fiction to be a derivative work relevant to >> the reading of the source. Collaborative Writing then bares it's ugly head, >> and the whole situation starts to feel like families of fungi popping >> up, disparate yet globally connected through a vast underground (read: >> imperceptible) root system (read: diaspora). >> Then what do we have? A big ball full of yarn? notin' but electrons and >> economics I guess. >> ======================================================== > > == > email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/ > web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 347-383-8552 > music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/ > current text http://www.alansondheim.org/sj.txt > == > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
