ORB Visualization
Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process
3/17/2004 5:52 PM
William Benson,
I reviewed the few emails that I have gotten from you and see many things about your work on which an agreement can be forged. In one of these emails you said:
“I've thought about ontology a good bit over the years, though never published on it beyond an encyclopedia article. Whatever the ultimate nature of the universe -- on which I am agnostic -- I don't believe human thought works in terms of a single unified ontology.”
The problem of bringing together a new school of thought is foremost on our minds. We hope that you and others will help this bead game refocus on technology innovation and the adoption of innovation when the innovation causes great social change.
We thank you for your earlier communication.
We need, we believe we need, a large item on the US budget ($60,000,000 over two years) in order to make a curriculum to focus both the academics and industry on a number of unifying concepts. {*}
The problem of universals is one of those unifying concepts, as you recognize. I have my own viewpoint that there is both an organizational stratification of physical processes, and the localization of layers of processes associated with autopoiesis (Maturana’s term). This viewpoint suggests that the problem of universals can easily be misstated. Universals, or persistent invariance, may in fact be relative to the organizational strata.
For example, universal physical law governing “beables”, Bell’s word for “unmeasured quantum mechanical state”, may not be the same as the laws of classical physics. The laws of mechanical physics may be emergent phenomenon and caused by things “larger” and smaller” than the observable universe. Any belief that this is NOT so, is a belief even if the mainstream says this is not a belief.
Many hold the opposite view, and this is a type of fundamentalism - in my opinion. The definition of self and not self is extended into a social reinforcement mechanism.
This may be mere physics rather than something that should be called a "meme" (Blackmore and Dawkins term). Perhaps more should be said about this notion that physics is the “cause” of fundamentalism. But all of theses types of discussions require a maturity of mind that is missing in the social debate, at least as reinforced by the television and mass media. So we cannot easily go into a theory of cause in this case.
However, Michael Lissack's notion of catalytic indexical would be a useful one in measuring the text from social discourse s a means to understand the nature and origin of fundamentalism. This is being done by businesses and by the intelligence communities, but done poorly and with little understanding of what should be a process of open science. In American, the people cannot allow a hidden government to be created, and maintained, as a result of the asymmetric threat.
Memetic technology should also not lead to a private measurement of social discourse, as this leads to the destruction of trust between people and business and people and government. I think about the new company Intelliseek Inc. Intelliseek is invested in by CIA’s venture capital group (In-Q-Tel) and the wonderful branding that they have about branding philosophy. The business model is targeted at replacing the stupid and wasteful and harmful advertising industry with technology that maps the social discourse and assists manufactures in placing product with those who actually have an informed need. I mean that the need is not the result of an addiction to something unhealthy. The ontology stream’s proposal for a Rural America “SafeNet” is consistent with this business model. {^}, {#}
But many hold their form of fundamentalism tightly, and will act - even with individuals who hold radically different fundamentalisms to oppose the social acceptability of holding that more than one ontology exists. This is what we have talked about as collusion between fundamentalisms, and why this Administration’s far right and religious right political base is wrong for America. The collusion is not understood by anyone except a few, and is what some of the terrorist groups depend on to amplify their intent. Crony capitalism and the hiding of the actions of the military and intelligence community also amplify the intent of the terrorism cells. It is the only way that the asymmetric treats can win.
I digress into private thought. It is easy to be mistaken by those who will not think about the consequences. A general principle, seen also by the seemly complete agnostic view of the software engineers that populate the IT standards committee’s, as may be evident from Bernard Vatant to this bead game.
In fact the mere discussion of multiple ontologies immediately shows the problem with much of the work in the machine ontology community.
I remember being scolded by Jim Hendler on putting Cyc ontology and RDF/OWL ontology into the same category. This type of behavior is hard for me because it illustrates the failure of the IT academic interface to align computer science with natural science. {+}
In "reality" there is many problems with saying "there is only one reality", and yet a type of accepted common sense supports the social re-enforcement of the active view that there is only one reality.
In religious beliefs the “only one way” or only One God” viewpoint is fundamental to the binding together of a community, and the separation of this community from the non-believers. Again, I do not think that this belief should be regarded as a meme, as the physics seems to indicate that there is an underlying set of causes that are not “for” replicating anything as Blackmore and Dawkins discuss.
Fundamentalism arises from a set of causes. The nature and composition of these causes is beyond our understanding at this point. But a National Project to define the knowledge sciences, openly and not just for use by the intelligence community and businesses, must come to some deeper appreciation of these causes.
Well, I have already said to much to respond to. My applogies for my imperfections.