Hi all,
I'm waiting David Nobles's book to be delivered, which talks about the
two forks in the road that technology could have taken. One was to
increase managerial control; the other was to put tech in the hands of
skilled workers. We can see which path tech obviously took; many
companies would forego short-term (or even long-term) profit to not be
managerially dependent on workers.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195040465/002-3851349-3240830?v=glance
Does anyone know other such things to read?
Obviously, Lisp is one thing that might strike people when looking at
his point. If you scroll down a tiny bit, you will find a really
interesting talk by David Nobles:
http://smccd.net/accounts/onlineed/bios.htm
http://www.cvc4.org/AudioClips/davidnob.ram
Thanks for any pointers,
Tayssir
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> I'm waiting David Nobles's book to be delivered, which talks about
> the two forks in the road that technology could have taken. One
> was to increase managerial control; the other was to put tech in
> the hands of skilled workers. We can see which path tech obviously
> took; many companies would forego short-term (or even long-term)
> profit to not be managerially dependent on workers.
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195040465/002-3851349-3240830?v=glance
[...]
> Obviously, Lisp is one thing that might strike people when looking
> at his point. If you scroll down a tiny bit, you will find a really
> interesting talk by David Nobles:
> http://smccd.net/accounts/onlineed/bios.htm
> http://www.cvc4.org/AudioClips/davidnob.ram
Correction: his name is "David Noble", not "NobleS," which of course is
an embarrassing mistake coming from someone who should know what it's
like to have his name misspelled.
And the talk above which I recommended was more about education than
anything else; so while I find it very interesting, I can't promise
everyone else will. ;)
From: K. Ari Krupnikov
Subject: Re: Managerial-oriented tech? David Nobles.
Date:
Message-ID: <86actw9i7k.fsf@deb.lib.aero>
···········@yahoo.com (Tayssir John Gabbour) writes:
> I'm waiting David Nobles's book to be delivered, which talks about the
> two forks in the road that technology could have taken. One was to
> increase managerial control; the other was to put tech in the hands of
> skilled workers. We can see which path tech obviously took; many
> companies would forego short-term (or even long-term) profit to not be
> managerially dependent on workers.
Put means of produc^W^W^W tech in the hands of the workers...
> Does anyone know other such things to read?
Das Kapital.
Also, Homage to Catalonia.
Ari.
--
Elections only count as free and trials as fair if you can lose money
betting on the outcome.
On 05 Nov 2004 12:03:27 -0800, K Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>> Does anyone know other such things to read?
> Das Kapital.
Don't bother with that rubbish. Read /Human Action/ instead.
--
I have stopped reading Stephen King novels. Now I just read C code
instead. -- Richard A. O'Keefe
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Paul Foley wrote:
> On 05 Nov 2004 12:03:27 -0800, K Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>
>
>>>Does anyone know other such things to read?
>
>
>>Das Kapital.
>
>
> Don't bother with that rubbish. Read /Human Action/ instead.
>
Who's the author?
Cheers
--
Marco
Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
> Paul Foley wrote:
>> On 05 Nov 2004 12:03:27 -0800, K Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>>
>>>>Does anyone know other such things to read?
>>
>>>Das Kapital.
>> Don't bother with that rubbish. Read /Human Action/ instead.
>>
>
> Who's the author?
Who would you think? von Mises is the author. You can read it on the
web or download it. A quote by him:
"Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is
decided by the interpretation and explanation of facts, by the ideas
and the theories".
This would explain why language wars are so hopeless.
In any case, reading his stuff with the above quote in mind is good
for a few laughs.
On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 19:41:53 +0100, Mario S Mommer wrote:
> Marco Antoniotti <·······@cs.nyu.edu> writes:
>> Paul Foley wrote:
>>> On 05 Nov 2004 12:03:27 -0800, K Ari Krupnikov wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Does anyone know other such things to read?
>>>
>>>> Das Kapital.
>>> Don't bother with that rubbish. Read /Human Action/ instead.
>>>
>>
>> Who's the author?
Ludwig von Mises
> Who would you think? von Mises is the author. You can read it on the
> web or download it. A quote by him:
http://www.mises.org/humanaction.asp
> "Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is
> decided by the interpretation and explanation of facts, by the ideas
> and the theories".
Quote, or paraphrase? Google can't find it, and it sounds like a
paraphrase of something you haven't properly understood.
> This would explain why language wars are so hopeless.
> In any case, reading his stuff with the above quote in mind is good
> for a few laughs.
If you have a theory -- let's say "if I dance around and wave my arms
in the air for a while, it'll rain the next day" -- so you dance
around, and it does in fact rain the next day. What Mises is saying
is that the fact that it rains doesn't lend any validity to the theory
that your rain-dance caused it.
Einstein meant much the same thing by "as far as the theorems of
mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they
are certain, they do not refer to reality."
--
Felix qui potuit de rerum cognoscere causas.
-- Virgil
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Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> writes:
>> "Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is
>> decided by the interpretation and explanation of facts, by the ideas
>> and the theories".
>
> Quote, or paraphrase? Google can't find it, and it sounds like a
> paraphrase of something you haven't properly understood.
I found it on
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises
(url correct up to typo - no copy and paste here right now)
>> This would explain why language wars are so hopeless.
>
>> In any case, reading his stuff with the above quote in mind is good
>> for a few laughs.
>
> If you have a theory -- let's say "if I dance around and wave my arms
> in the air for a while, it'll rain the next day" -- so you dance
> around, and it does in fact rain the next day. What Mises is saying
> is that the fact that it rains doesn't lend any validity to the theory
> that your rain-dance caused it.
I disagree. What this sentence is saying is that, in your scenario, it
is irrelevant whether it rains or not, as long as you have a theory
that interprets and explains that fact. That all fits very well with
the impression I get when reading stuff from mises.org.
Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> writes:
> If you have a theory -- let's say "if I dance around and wave my arms
> in the air for a while, it'll rain the next day" -- so you dance
> around, and it does in fact rain the next day. What Mises is saying
> is that the fact that it rains doesn't lend any validity to the theory
> that your rain-dance caused it.
I disagree with this statement. (or maybe I'm not sure by
what you mean by the phrase "lend validity")
If it _doesn't_ rain the next day, then clearly you theory
is wrong (or incomplete) e.g. maybe you didn't the dance quite
right, etc. But if it _does_ rain, it lends _some_ validity
to your theory.
Lending _some_ validity isn't the same thing as _proving_, however.
This is where experimental design, statistics, double blind methods,
and a host of other paraphernalia developed as the "scientific method"
over the last 3 centuries come in.
In modern parlance, our Shaman might be justified in asking NSF
to renew the his grant to further study the effects of homosapien
gyrations on local short time weather patterns.
And if NSF is smart enough not to give him the grant, our shaman
can always turn to industrial lobbies... hey, it worked for the
cold fusion guys.
On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:11:57 +1100, Alain Picard wrote:
> Paul Foley <···@below.invalid> writes:
>> If you have a theory -- let's say "if I dance around and wave my arms
>> in the air for a while, it'll rain the next day" -- so you dance
>> around, and it does in fact rain the next day. What Mises is saying
>> is that the fact that it rains doesn't lend any validity to the theory
>> that your rain-dance caused it.
> I disagree with this statement. (or maybe I'm not sure by
> what you mean by the phrase "lend validity")
> If it _doesn't_ rain the next day, then clearly you theory
> is wrong (or incomplete) e.g. maybe you didn't the dance quite
> right, etc. But if it _does_ rain, it lends _some_ validity
> to your theory.
Only if you have some sort of (meta-)theory about why it should be so;
otherwise it's just belief in magic. But you can only interpret the
meta-theory through a meta-meta-theory, and so on. It's turtles all
the way down.
[If he does it once, it's coincidence. If I tell you he's 98%
accurate over a period of months or years, you might think there's
something to it...but what if I tell you that he listens to the radio,
and only does the rain-dance when the weather report says it's going
to rain tomorrow?]
> This is where experimental design, statistics, double blind methods,
> and a host of other paraphernalia developed as the "scientific method"
> over the last 3 centuries come in.
Exactly -- the meta-theory that the universe works in such a way that
your statistics are meaningful. But that too is just a theory derived
from experience; there's no /a-priori/ reason to believe it, just the
a-posteriori experience that it does appear to work. In Mises words,
"Every experience is an experience of something passed away; there is
no experience of future happenings. But the experience to which the
natural sciences owe all their success is the experience of the
experiment in which the individual elements of change can be observed
in isolation. The facts amassed in this way can be used for induction,
a peculiar procedure of inference which has given pragmatic evidence
of its expediency, although its satisfactory epistemological
characterization is still an unsolved problem."
http://www.mises.org/humanaction/chap2sec1.asp
--
[L]egislation is the manifestation of Evil in the world
-- Christian Michel
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"Paul Foley" <···@below.invalid> wrote in message
···················@mycroft.actrix.gen.nz...
> On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 16:11:57 +1100, Alain Picard wrote:
>>
> Exactly -- the meta-theory that the universe works in such a way that
> your statistics are meaningful. But that too is just a theory derived
> from experience; there's no /a-priori/ reason to believe it, just the
> a-posteriori experience that it does appear to work. In Mises words,
> "Every experience is an experience of something passed away; there is
> no experience of future happenings. But the experience to which the
> natural sciences owe all their success is the experience of the
> experiment in which the individual elements of change can be observed
> in isolation. The facts amassed in this way can be used for induction,
> a peculiar procedure of inference which has given pragmatic evidence
> of its expediency, although its satisfactory epistemological
> characterization is still an unsolved problem."
>
Are we wasting our time or what? I thought that Kurt Goedel had convincingly
formulated and settled once and for all the vanity of all of these
meta-language issues years before he died. Of course, someone may argue that
Goedel could not have heard about the .... metacircular evaluator, because
at the time of his death Abelson and Sussman were still toddlers and had not
yet written their enlightening SICP ... :-)
Panos C. Lekkas
In article <···············@corp.supernews.com>,
"xstream" <·······@attglobal.net> wrote:
> Of course, someone may argue that
> Goedel could not have heard about the .... metacircular evaluator, because
> at the time of his death Abelson and Sussman were still toddlers and had not
> yet written their enlightening SICP ... :-)
Check out pp. 444-449 of "Metamagical Themas" for Douglas
Hofstadter's interesting claim that "Godel /did/ invent Lisp!"
Paul Foley writes:
> Exactly -- the meta-theory that the universe works in such a way that
> your statistics are meaningful. But that too is just a theory derived
> from experience; there's no /a-priori/ reason to believe it, just the
> a-posteriori experience that it does appear to work.
>and ... [SNIP]
> ... induction,
> a peculiar procedure of inference which has given pragmatic evidence
> of its expediency, although its satisfactory epistemological
> characterization is still an unsolved problem."
I see. Well, I guess that I disagree on philosophical principles;
I'm more aligned with Einstein, who said
"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
and
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is
the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is
a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
I think he meant that this belief was in fact at the heart
of religion in the truest sense of the word. The only way to
stop the infinite recursion of the turtles all the way down, if you will.
Still, I can't deny that that's just an improvable a-priori,
and Mises' characterization is more "agnostic", or impartial,
if you will.
Thanks for pointing me to some very interesting material.
···········@yahoo.com (Tayssir John Gabbour) writes:
> Does anyone know other such things to read?
From your short description, yes. I find these to be very interesting
reads:
* A better mythology for system design
<URL:www.pliant.org/Better-Mythology.pdf>
* Beyond Formalisms: The Art and Science of Desiging Pliant Systems -
A Talk with Austin Henderson and Jed Harris.
<URL:http://www.pliant.org/Beyond-Formalisms.pdf>
--
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld
Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm waiting David Nobles's book to be delivered, which talks about the
> two forks in the road that technology could have taken. One was to
> increase managerial control; the other was to put tech in the hands of
> skilled workers. [...]
We are trying to do something in line with the latter. I am a member of,
and am employed by, The www.tech.coop Technical Services Co-operative.
We are a member owned, non-profit organization with the goal of
providing our members with superior technical services. (see
http://tech.coop for details).
Being involved with the tech co-op has been an interesting experience.
The idea of co-operation as a business model is one that really holds
well with me. And hopefully, in some way, our efforts will lead to a
better tech industry, and thus better technology.
And, i get to use common lisp wherever i want. Which is quickly becoming
everywhere. :)
> Does anyone know other such things to read?
If you want to know more about the tech co-op and how it relates to
programmers, i could send you a very rough draft of a presentation i
gave last month at a programmers meetup group here in vancouver.
If you'd like to know more about the co-op movement, i can recommend
starting at the international co-op association.
http://www.ica.coop/ica/info/co_opdef.html is a good place to start.
and the morks that K. Ari Krupnikov refered to in this thread are, of
course, recommended reading material :)
drewc (····@tech.coop)
>
> Obviously, Lisp is one thing that might strike people when looking at
> his point. If you scroll down a tiny bit, you will find a really
> interesting talk by David Nobles:
> http://smccd.net/accounts/onlineed/bios.htm
> http://www.cvc4.org/AudioClips/davidnob.ram
>
>
> Thanks for any pointers,
> Tayssir
On 2004-11-05, Tayssir John Gabbour <···········@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm waiting David Nobles's book to be delivered, which talks about the
> two forks in the road that technology could have taken. One was to
> increase managerial control; the other was to put tech in the hands of
> skilled workers. We can see which path tech obviously took; many
It's been a while since I've counted forks, but IMHO, there's only one fork
in that road.
The only time I've ever encountered two forks in one road, the other one
was behind me.
At any rate, my understanding is that two forks would be the exact
equivalent of a double bifurcation, 2 times 2 branches, or an error by the
take-out hostess.
···········@yahoo.com (Tayssir John Gabbour) writes:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm waiting David Nobles's book to be delivered, which talks about the
> two forks in the road that technology could have taken. One was to
> increase managerial control; the other was to put tech in the hands of
> skilled workers. We can see which path tech obviously took; many
> companies would forego short-term (or even long-term) profit to not be
> managerially dependent on workers.
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195040465/002-3851349-3240830?v=glance
>
> Does anyone know other such things to read?
Interesting book, thanks for mentioning it! I'm currently taking an
STAS (Science Technology And Society) course as an option, doing a
term project on alternative computing technologies. Very close in
purpose, but I'm focusing primarily on the alternative side. Some
books I've come across that are related to the dichotomy are
E.F. Schumacher's _Small is Beautiful_ (discussing alternative
technologies and economic models), Sherry Turkle's _The Second Self_
(best exposition on the psychology of computing) and to some extent
_Life on the Screen_ (I found the paragraph on the exchange between
Greenblatt and Dijkstra on programming styles particularly
enlightening). Seymour Papert's _Mindstorms_ (and AI lab LOGO memos
too) are an interesting look on a similar conflict in education. Smith
and Alexander's _Fumbling the Future_ covers the management style at
Xerox PARC under Bob Taylor (greater employee control, use of Rogerian
rhetoric at all meetings, and many other fascinating things). Alan Kay
(who worked there) also has a lot to say on the subject, variously
scattered in his talks and interviews. Ellen Rose's _User Error_ is
probably the best, most comprehensive criticism of current computing
practices, especially in the workplace.
> Obviously, Lisp is one thing that might strike people when looking at
> his point.
A little off topic, but I couldn't do my project without dragging a
whole lot of Lisp into it. From description of the LMI/Symbolics
schism in Levy's _Hackers_ it seems to me that LMI is a perfect
example of an alternative technology company, and I'd like to do a
case study on it (or at least the early stages before outside funding
had to be brought in). I think I'd like to interview Richard
Greenblatt about it. Does anyone here know his current contact
information?
Vladimir