My favorite part of this posting on SF Craigslist is the very bottom line. Literally.
Now I'm sure that the author of the post will pay for these services if they can find this individual. But c'mon. You want me to market yet another insipid social networking site AND redesign the page? Get firkin lost, ahole!
OMG, this is funny. "Won't you blog about this song?" Yeah I think I will.
I just heard of TechCrunch a few days ago. Some dude all hyped up about "Web 3.0" -- looking for Rockstars of Web 3.0 no less.
So what is Web 3.0? I asked myself. Then I asked Wiki. She know so much more than I do! Dang, I was better off not knowing about it.
The problem that Web 3.0 is purporting to solve...or to attempt to solve...can be illustrated by Craigslist. I love CL. The last two jobs I've worked on have come from the Gigs section. I check it regularly.
A couple of days ago I was looking for an RSS feed so that I could work with the listings a bit more efficiently. Not very necessary, it was just a thought. But there is no such feed available on CL. So I looked at the source code, and sure enough it would be easy to parse out the HTML results to pull out the listings and their links and do whatever I want with that data. But I would have to do it myself, which wouldn't be big deal since I know what the HTML does and means.
What Web 3.0 supposedly does is standardize the use of tag attributes (if you don't know what that means, just smile and nod and don't ask any questions. You're welcome) so that a computer can search across the Internets and find meaning. Really. So that Craigslist job postings would be recognizable as job postings, not just HTML links, by a machine.
If that sounds like a pipe dream to you, I completely agree. That plan may produce some interesting coding and algorithmic developments, but ... well, the idea of abstracting meaning from metadata is just a load of Metacrap. FWIW...
I'm the guy along the wall who is scowling at the people on the dance floor. It appears as if I dislike them all quite a lot.
On the contrary, I wish I were more like them. I've had my eye on you for an hour, and I can't quite bring myself to walk over to you take a single step away from the wall. Hey, it's all warm and cozy now.
This is what blogging represents for me. It feels when I begin to dance or make an overture that I am courting rejection of the adolescent-horrific variety. I feel exposed and self-conscious. Maybe that's because that is exactly the domain of blogging: self-exposure and self-consciousness.
Some of this is the result of the shock of surf-by flaming from other denizens of the net. My, but people can be testy! And partly it's that I'm not that social to begin with a complete hermit. I don't care what you think. I don't need you to approve my thoughts.
On the other hand, relationships are important to me, as are your reactions to what I say. And oh, I desperately need your approval.
Sheesh. With this out of the way, maybe I can start to express myself here more. Because if there is a contradiction (I first typoed "contraction" hmmm) in this post, it is one that represents the central challenge of my life.
It is surprising that at this late date in the advance of civilizations that reason should come under such persistent attack from both Religion and Government. It makes one wonder, what constitutes an "advance"?
We have seen what corporations and governments do with computers. We have yet to see what philosophers may do with them. But the fact that they have done so little of popular note with this marvelous tool remains.
Here's a suggestion:
Automated parsing of spoken and written language for modal logic patterns laid out by Aristotle. We are innundated daily by propagandistic manglings of language by sophists with nefarious self-interests in play. But the philosophers have so far not availed us of this necessary tool. My GMail account knows how to parse a conversation well enough to target my conversational topics as advertising keywords. Are you telling me that all those Ph.D.s at Google are not philosophers? Pfeh.
I suspect that the reason lawyers do not appeal to a universally available and long known, even ancient, system of logical argumentation and analysis, is that they all want the leeway to lie and obsfuscate and mislead with fallacy when it next suits them; though they all know logic, they all have tacitly agreed not to use it in an obviously systematic way. This means we must rely on their gamesmanship as much or more than upon their construal of -- our -- arguments. Rather than the sparse rules of logic, we have a truly labyrinthine system of laws that requires their very expensive expertise to negotiate. Funny how that works.
Another obstacle is that modal logic has been one-upped among the academics by propositional logic ("Type Theory"). But it should not have been -- the two systems should not be competing at all, because they deal with different problems. Modal logic deals with human language and thought; Type Theory deals with abstractions useful to mathematicians and scientists. Keep them both, of course -- and use them both where they are needed.
It is the role of the philosopher to step into the void created by corporate-lackey Doctors of Philosophy and the academic camp-followers of the engineering schools. The academics and Ph.D's exclude themselves from being iconoclasts, going along to get along; but when the institutions have all been corrupted by greed or politics or both, iconoclasism is the last refuge of the lover of the vision of the truth; who is, if it needs be said, the only Philosopher worthy of the title. Give me Logic, or give me Bush. Oh, you already did. Gee thanks.
Goggle made sense to me, but "Go ogle?" Really? Really. And it's appropos too:
Main Entry:
1ogle
Pronunciation:
\ˈō-gəl alsoˈä-\
Function:
verb
Inflected Form(s):
ogled; ogling\-g(ə-)liŋ\
Etymology:
probably from Low German oegeln, from oog eye; akin to Old High German ouga eye — more at eye
Date:
1682
intransitive verb:to glance with amorous invitation or challenge transitive verb1: to eye amorously or provocatively2: to look at especially with greedy or interested attention
