Ah, I mis-understood. My apologies. ••• Sent Mobile •••
On Feb 3, 2014, at 10:53 PM, Alan Sondheim <[email protected]> wrote: > > That refers to canons, not listservs or majordomo - email lists - which I've > run both moderated and unmoderated for years. The quote is completely out of > context. > > On Mon, 3 Feb 2014, Bishop Zareh wrote: > >> See [2] below, I copied the exact quote. >> You said you hate them, and for good reasons. Lists have problems with >> sustaining heterogeneity. >> ??? 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 > > == > 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
