Dave Weinberger was never short of web hype (eg in the Cluetrain Manifesto), but that doesn't mean he's wrong. Far from it, this quote about the web in his latest book [Quote] Why has this simple technology sent a lightning bolt through our culture? It goes far beyond the Web's over-hyped economic impact: 500 million of us aren't there because we want a better "shopping experience." The Web, a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are - and is undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings about what it means to be human in the real world. [Unquote]
Undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings in a world of pure connection.
Not read the book yet, but this perspective and those of his many celebrity reviewers (Tom Peters, Lawrence Lessig, Don Norman) reflect my own manifesto and research proposal for being in this space. (Ha, space - yeah, what is it like to be a bat ?) Some of the deepest ingrained issues about how people make decisions in the world, are thrown into stark and immediate relief by the ubiquity and speed of the web. They were always there, nothing new under the sun, just inescapable in a world of pure connection.
The same book also includes a Chapter on "perfection" with this quote from TBL [Quote] The Web will always be a little broken says its creator, Tim Berners-Lee. Just like us mortals.[Unquote] I've been debating with MOQ Philosophers on the MOQ Discuss board, about whether or not a Metaphysics which includes its own definition can ever be complete without some absolute underlying reality beyond its own description. My perspective is that an "ideal" description of perfection can only ever be a vision; something to aim for; something whose representation can be used as a tool, but which can never actually be seen as an end or reality in itself. To use the language of MOQ, that would make reality a static pattern, whereas we surely know it is dynamic quality - pure connection. (Connection, like information, knowledge and awareness, is rooted in a dynamic, transitive verb.)
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