Re: [Fis] testing ---From Rafel Capurro
, that a message's destiny, i.e., its received understanding and pragmatic impact, depends on its receivers' pre-understanding. Perhaps leisurely and impatient (deses et impatiens) readers would believe they have retrieved obscure (obscura) or little knowledge from a long message (pauca reperta putet) while others think they have discovered much more on their own. Terentianus believes that this will not be the case with his own readers, to whom he attributes love and prudence (amor et prudentia) as well as tireless work (labor in studiis semper celebratus inhaeret). I can find no better words to express what this collection of messages aims at and to thank readers in anticipation for messages to come. Karlsruhe, June 2011 Rafael Capurro Dear colleagues, My paper entitled Meaning as a sociological concept: A review of the modeling, mapping, and simulation of the communication of knowledge and meaning http://www.leydesdorff.net/meaning.2011/index.htm, Social Science Information 50(3-4) (2011) 391-413; pdf-version http://www.leydesdorff.net/meaning.2011/meaning.pdf now appeared in print at http://ssi.sagepub.com/content/50/3-4/391.full.pdf+html . In this paper -- grately inspired by discussion on this list -- I distinguish analytically first among the communication of information, meaning, and knowledge (e.g., in scholarly discourse) and then proceed to discuss how these three layers can interact (recursively and incursively). Perhaps, this gives us some common ground for further discussions across disciplinary divides. Best wishes, Loet Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ -Original Message- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 11:59 AM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] testing Dear Bob, Stan and colleagues, Thanks a lot for the off line comment, and the willingness to share these reflections. I quite agree with you. At the bottom of the problem there seems to be a physicalist misconception of information that at the time being has not been properly solved, perhaps because the biological paradigm of information has not been integrated yet. best wishes ---Pedro Robert Ulanowicz escribió: Stan, Pedro, Sorry, but I somehow missed the comments on an algorithmic society. The danger is enormous, and transcends even ideology. Algorithms are monistic in their goals. Nature, as I have long argued, is transactional (dialectic-like). Pursuing a monistic goal in a transactional mileu is *guaranteed* to lead to a bad end! An example is the monistic pursuit of maximal profits and the tyranny of the efficiency of the market: http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan/pubs/Goerner.pdf http://www.cbl.umces.edu/%7Eulan/pubs/Goerner.pdf. The best to you both, Bob -- Prof.em. Dr. Rafael Capurro Hochschule der Medien (HdM), Stuttgart, Germany Capurro Fiek Foundation for Information Ethics (http://www.capurro-fiek-foundation.org) Director, Steinbeis-Transfer-Institute Information Ethics (STI-IE), Karlsruhe, Germany (http://sti-ie.de) Distinguished Researcher in Information Ethics, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA President, International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE) (http://icie.zkm.de) Editor in Chief, International Review of Information Ethics (IRIE) (http://www.i-r-i-e.net) Postal Address: Redtenbacherstr. 9, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany E-Mail: raf...@capurro.de Voice: + 49 - 721 - 98 22 9 - 22 (Fax: -21) Homepage: www.capurro.de ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] testing
Dear Bob, Stan and colleagues, Thanks a lot for the off line comment, and the willingness to share these reflections. I quite agree with you. At the bottom of the problem there seems to be a physicalist misconception of information that at the time being has not been properly solved, perhaps because the biological paradigm of information has not been integrated yet. best wishes ---Pedro Robert Ulanowicz escribió: Stan, Pedro, Sorry, but I somehow missed the comments on an algorithmic society. The danger is enormous, and transcends even ideology. Algorithms are monistic in their goals. Nature, as I have long argued, is transactional (dialectic-like). Pursuing a monistic goal in a transactional mileu is *guaranteed* to lead to a bad end! An example is the monistic pursuit of maximal profits and the tyranny of the efficiency of the market: http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan/pubs/Goerner.pdf. The best to you both, Bob Quoting Pedro C. Marijuan pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es: OK, Stan. Seemingly the list is working well. By the way, I want to thank you about the contents you sent me off line a few weeks ago. See for instance the risks of the algorithmic society (see below). Quite intriguing a piece... best ---Pedro Stanley N Salthe escribió: I am having problems communicating with lists, So I am trying to see if this gets through. STAN ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128260.400-game-developer-beware-algorithms-running-your-life.html? New Scientist 2826 http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2826, 22 August 2011 *Game developer: Beware algorithms running your life* by Alison George /Our decisions, our culture, even our physical landscapes are being shaped by computer algorithms, says *Kevin Slavin*. He tells *Alison George* why we should be worried/ *You claim that our lives are ruled by algorithms. In what way?* Put simply, an algorithm is a set of instructions that a computer uses to make a decision about something. They are like an invisible architecture that underpins almost everything that's happening. The way Wal-Mart prices its goods, the movies you rent on Netflix, the contours of the car you drive - they can all be traced back to an algorithm. Seventy per cent of trading in the US stock market is algotrading - executed autonomously by computer algorithms. *Why should we be worried about this?* The pernicious thing about algorithms is that they have the mathematical quality of truth - you have the sense that they are neutral - and yet, of course, they have authorship. For example, Google's search engine is composed entirely of fancy mathematics, but its algorithms, like everybody's, are all based on an ideology - in this case that a page is more valuable if other pages think it's valuable. Each algorithm has a point of view, and yet we have no sense of what algorithms are, or even that they exist. *You believe that algorithms are starting to shape our culture. How so?* Take Netflix, which is used by 20 million people to rent and watch movies. Of the movies rented in the US, 60 per cent are chosen because Netflix recommended them. It does this using an algorithm called Pragmatic Chaos http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17823-photo-finish-for-the-1m-movie-prediction-prize.html, which takes into account other movies you like and how many movies you rated before you rated your most recent one. The algorithm is taking ideas about human behaviour and coding them and reinforcing them. The danger is that such an algorithm can create a monoculture. But this is not the way culture works - it is actually much spikier, much less predictable. The movie /Napoleon Dynamite/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374900/, for example, always breaks the Netflix algorithm: people who really should love this movie hate it, and people who should hate it, love it. *Why is it so important that we be aware of algorithms' impacts on culture?* If you know that machine control is part of the picture, you might behave differently. Once you are aware that most of what you are renting from Netflix is based on a very specific model of the human brain that might not correspond to reality, maybe you would start asking your friends what they recommend - which is what we used to do. It is also important to understand how algorithms shape what you learn and know. There's a quiet war in the US between Google and a company called Demand Media http://www.demandmedia.com/, which generates content that is optimised for Google searches. When Google changes its algorithm, Demand Media's output becomes worthless until it can figure out what Google has done and rewritten its content to
Re: [Fis] testing
Dear colleagues, My paper entitled http://www.leydesdorff.net/meaning.2011/index.htm Meaning as a sociological concept: A review of the modeling, mapping, and simulation of the communication of knowledge and meaning, Social Science Information 50(3-4) (2011) 391-413; pdf-version http://www.leydesdorff.net/meaning.2011/meaning.pdf now appeared in print at http://ssi.sagepub.com/content/50/3-4/391.full.pdf+html . In this paper grately inspired by discussion on this list I distinguish analytically first among the communication of information, meaning, and knowledge (e.g., in scholarly discourse) and then proceed to discuss how these three layers can interact (recursively and incursively). Perhaps, this gives us some common ground for further discussions across disciplinary divides. Best wishes, Loet Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111 l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ -Original Message- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 11:59 AM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] testing Dear Bob, Stan and colleagues, Thanks a lot for the off line comment, and the willingness to share these reflections. I quite agree with you. At the bottom of the problem there seems to be a physicalist misconception of information that at the time being has not been properly solved, perhaps because the biological paradigm of information has not been integrated yet. best wishes ---Pedro Robert Ulanowicz escribió: Stan, Pedro, Sorry, but I somehow missed the comments on an algorithmic society. The danger is enormous, and transcends even ideology. Algorithms are monistic in their goals. Nature, as I have long argued, is transactional (dialectic-like). Pursuing a monistic goal in a transactional mileu is *guaranteed* to lead to a bad end! An example is the monistic pursuit of maximal profits and the tyranny of the efficiency of the market: http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan/pubs/Goerner.pdf http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan/pubs/Goerner.pdf. The best to you both, Bob Quoting Pedro C. Marijuan mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es: OK, Stan. Seemingly the list is working well. By the way, I want to thank you about the contents you sent me off line a few weeks ago. See for instance the risks of the algorithmic society (see below). Quite intriguing a piece... best ---Pedro Stanley N Salthe escribió: I am having problems communicating with lists, So I am trying to see if this gets through. STAN ___ fis mailing list mailto:fis@listas.unizar.es fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128260.400-game-developer-beware-al gorithms-running-your-life.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128260.400-game-developer-beware-alg orithms-running-your-life.html? New Scientist 2826 http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2826 http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2826, 22 August 2011 *Game developer: Beware algorithms running your life* by Alison George /Our decisions, our culture, even our physical landscapes are being shaped by computer algorithms, says *Kevin Slavin*. He tells *Alison George* why we should be worried/ *You claim that our lives are ruled by algorithms. In what way?* Put simply, an algorithm is a set of instructions that a computer uses to make a decision about something. They are like an invisible architecture that underpins almost everything that's happening. The way Wal-Mart prices its goods, the movies you rent on Netflix, the contours of the car you drive - they can all be traced back to an algorithm. Seventy per cent of trading in the US stock market is algotrading - executed autonomously by computer algorithms. *Why should we be worried about this?* The pernicious thing about algorithms is that they have the mathematical quality of truth - you have the sense that they are neutral - and yet, of course, they have authorship. For example, Google's search engine is composed entirely of fancy mathematics, but its algorithms, like everybody's, are all based on an ideology - in this case that a page is more valuable if other pages think it's valuable. Each algorithm has a point of view, and yet we have no sense of what algorithms are, or even that they exist. *You believe that algorithms are starting to shape our culture. How so?* Take Netflix
Re: [Fis] testing
OK, Stan. Seemingly the list is working well. By the way, I want to thank you about the contents you sent me off line a few weeks ago. See for instance the risks of the algorithmic society (see below). Quite intriguing a piece... best ---Pedro Stanley N Salthe escribió: I am having problems communicating with lists, So I am trying to see if this gets through. STAN ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128260.400-game-developer-beware-algorithms-running-your-life.html? New Scientist 2826 http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2826, 22 August 2011 *Game developer: Beware algorithms running your life* by Alison George /Our decisions, our culture, even our physical landscapes are being shaped by computer algorithms, says *Kevin Slavin*. He tells *Alison George* why we should be worried/ *You claim that our lives are ruled by algorithms. In what way?* Put simply, an algorithm is a set of instructions that a computer uses to make a decision about something. They are like an invisible architecture that underpins almost everything that's happening. The way Wal-Mart prices its goods, the movies you rent on Netflix, the contours of the car you drive - they can all be traced back to an algorithm. Seventy per cent of trading in the US stock market is algotrading - executed autonomously by computer algorithms. *Why should we be worried about this?* The pernicious thing about algorithms is that they have the mathematical quality of truth - you have the sense that they are neutral - and yet, of course, they have authorship. For example, Google's search engine is composed entirely of fancy mathematics, but its algorithms, like everybody's, are all based on an ideology - in this case that a page is more valuable if other pages think it's valuable. Each algorithm has a point of view, and yet we have no sense of what algorithms are, or even that they exist. *You believe that algorithms are starting to shape our culture. How so?* Take Netflix, which is used by 20 million people to rent and watch movies. Of the movies rented in the US, 60 per cent are chosen because Netflix recommended them. It does this using an algorithm called Pragmatic Chaos http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17823-photo-finish-for-the-1m-movie-prediction-prize.html, which takes into account other movies you like and how many movies you rated before you rated your most recent one. The algorithm is taking ideas about human behaviour and coding them and reinforcing them. The danger is that such an algorithm can create a monoculture. But this is not the way culture works - it is actually much spikier, much less predictable. The movie /Napoleon Dynamite/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374900/, for example, always breaks the Netflix algorithm: people who really should love this movie hate it, and people who should hate it, love it. *Why is it so important that we be aware of algorithms' impacts on culture?* If you know that machine control is part of the picture, you might behave differently. Once you are aware that most of what you are renting from Netflix is based on a very specific model of the human brain that might not correspond to reality, maybe you would start asking your friends what they recommend - which is what we used to do. It is also important to understand how algorithms shape what you learn and know. There's a quiet war in the US between Google and a company called Demand Media http://www.demandmedia.com/, which generates content that is optimised for Google searches. When Google changes its algorithm, Demand Media's output becomes worthless until it can figure out what Google has done and rewritten its content to match. It used to be that you wrote news for how people read - now it's written for how machines read. Imagine if we all had to change our handwriting to a certain style so that computers could recognise it. That is effectively what is happening, but inside our heads. It is shaping our expression and behaviour. *How else are algorithms changing our world?* They are changing the infrastructure and the terrain. Take New York as an example. Wall Street became a market centre because this is where the ships and goods came in. Later, the Western Union building became the communications hub in part because that was where the telecommunications infrastructure was. Today, however, the network hub for Wall Street is in this little town called Mahwah, New Jersey, because this was the safest place to put the critical infrastructure - within 10 miles of Wall Street but as far as possible from nuclear power plants, geological fault lines and flight paths. All the buildings going up in the area house and refrigerate the servers that run the algorithms -
[Fis] testing
I am having problems communicating with lists, So I am trying to see if this gets through. STAN ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
