I think some of the eternal enemy of human beings, given our finite space and time, are the infinite. And to beat the enemies that are on a metaphysical plane will require a collaborative and many unusual instruments produced by the intellect, as well as a great awareness.
( note: go to bottom of page if you want a soundtrack while you read)
We OndaRock and its editors. Every year thousands of record companies bring out a disgusting amount of records are all different (more or less) for a number of hours and music that probably (actually, I do not want to look up numbers but I'm almost certain) exceeds the amount of hours contained in a year. As for physical boundaries no one will listen to all that music, it makes clear the need for a selection process to separate the shit from chocolate, then chocolate orders on the basis of taste (in general), and then based on the percentage of ingredients (blah), and finally summarizing all judgments in limited, well-structured so as to be readily accessible.
In my iPod there are 6 and a half days of music, and filled only a very small and careful selection of post-punk, a choice based on the intellectual work of others - if I had to work that I do not I just would steal time and did hear a lot of useless crap, but that probably would not have been able to do without first listening to each other, and so on up to fundamentals.
For those working in mathematics, the update is fundamental - mathematics is a field that is progressing continuously and never stays still for a second - but need to be updated to read new articles on your field of study, and to read and understand an item, just spend some time. The problem arises when the number of items produced surpasses human capabilities, and read them all would take too long and prevent production of new tools in turn. One tries to counter this avalanche of reading the articles most important magazines, which select the results according to their importance and then publish only a small number, but the article that can serve us for our work may not be substantial enough to appear in the prestigious journal, then we will inevitably go to get our hands dirty, and so on.
If one wanted to be a culture of cinema, should begin to watch movies that have shaped the history of cinema, which have revolutionized the cinema next to them, the cult film, milestones, and so on. If you noticed, I have implicitly referred to a work of careful selection, a film is a milestone because of the skilled people it has defined that the motivating thing, we can say that this film genre / these directors have been influenced by a particular film if someone did an analysis in this sense to arrive at this conclusion, etc.. In short, the product "cinema" was refined, stripped of unnecessary licenses, edited with bold and italics where we were going, etc.. There is a whole work - human - behind which required a number of hours that often reaches the size of a lifetime. This selection work has been done by those who call themselves "intellectuals" (no quotes derogatory), which are in fact - or should be - people who care to decipher the human product and to provide a structured classification: thus the Dictionary Film Mereghetti, books on post-punk by Simon Reynolds, the Abbagnano philosophy, etc.. These people are always needed, because the raw information is a product of low value, and if I can not make out a shopping list of Pericles Odyssey I'm constipated the shutter time reading crap and my culture, and with it the ability to decipher the world, will inevitably be compromised. The information needs to be refined and structured, or what passes from the cable with which you are connecting to the Internet will only be a sequence of 0 and 1 without any meaning, instead of turning into this post and many cards you have open youporn next to this card.
's not all: even the pure world of information - newspapers and journalists - are suffering from this problem. The volume of information is increasing, more and more newsrooms gather more news from the worlds increasingly diverse. Luttazzi said in a joke "is not extraordinary that happen every day just just enough things to fill a newspaper?". The work of selection of news is important, because too many things happen every day to keep up with them all. Arises in people's decision then select according to your taste: those who read only the gossip and do not want to know anything about politics, those who read only the scandals of Berlusconi and enjoy (not that for me there is no difference between the two characters ), who informs you of economy, only those of the geopolitical news, which of crime, etc.. Why this? we do not have time to stay all day to absorb news and also work and live in general. Among other things, too many news also tend to be harmful, but that's another story.
The point is that it is increasingly necessary in the figure of the journalist / intellectual which is a summary of the news that we can not keep up, and I mean NO synthesis summary (if you think you close the page immediately and do not get see again), but the union of many facts to reconstruct something unified and structured, easily understandable and contain all the properties of the most important things. The news in itself are so many small unconnected Ansa, somebody has to put a skeleton structure in order to make them facts. This is a job that journalists are no longer simple because they have turned into reporters uncritically reported that all the news that the pass hand. Possible that for a week if I lose an important fact I have to go read newspapers for the last 7 days to reconstruct the story? the capacity of synthesis is not optional, is your work.
this picture has no relation to the rest of the post and serves only to awaken from its torpor
However, even the intellectuals today find themselves in difficulties. I do not know whether it is due to a decrease in quality or both for the reason set out in this post, but surely it will come to the crisis if we have not already, so we should point out the problem.
The world's population travels to the 7 billion (or perhaps is already here, waiting for the census should be completed later this year or next to know), and many of these people make "things" that spread in networks distribution. There is no way to keep up with all the production, even in their specific field of research as it is. Once there were mathematicians who had knowledge in all fields of mathematics and produced works in all these fields. The last of these mathematicians Henri Poincare was probably, and you start talking about 900, today the spin doctors no longer exists, and no longer exists because it can no longer exist. If today a music critic decides to analyze all the music produced by myself in the last century, the results would be embarrassing (Scaruffi stuff), because objectively could not have put in plays as long as necessary for all, otherwise he would not have time to write a fuck.
The size of the population and the ubiquity of distribution networks (the side entrance) will inevitably cause a system overload, an excess of information. Today it is easy to edit / rsi a disk, it is objectively a much easier time because the tools and investment needed cost less and are more accessible, it is also easier to publish an article, or spread it on the internet, etc.. Perhaps one of the few areas not impacted by what is printed paper, not because it produces little but why be selected for publication by a publishing company with national resources is very difficult as I read around - and in general among those who we can come shits absurd. I think it's due the idiocy of those who work for selection, but with the release of the ebook that will change a bit 'and I hope I will cry tears of blood.
I said, the distribution networks are much more efficient (only to their primary task) than in the past ie distribute a higher percentage of production over the past; In addition, the exponential growth (yes, in general was really exponential) of the production itself. The result will be an avalanche of unstructured information that we are not quite able to refine as individuals we do not have time because our lives are limited and do not want to waste a selection. Time is too little for everyone, even for those that work of selecting and refining work as it wants, that is critical, intellectual, reviewers, referees and friends singer. Output growth towards infinity poses a huge problem, a problem of survival: do not be crushed that rolls on the mountain all the time. When there are too many records to be reviewed, we hear a good percentage of crap to find something beautiful, and when we find a result that we need to work on mathematics, we will have to sweep hundreds of articles without getting anything, because the article we need is lost in the midst of chaos, will look to film to capture the event without any influence or quotation, because we have not had enough time to watch movies you have seen the film to be influenced.
The Italian school (do not know how they are made overseas but I do not think better) is a common problem with regard to the humanities, ie programs contain too much stuff than you can teach without doing forced marches, and without sending students to the asylum. So every teacher feels free - after all, it should do - to cut the parts they want, or to follow the letter of the program and died there. So you end up to five years having had time to see pastures and Montale, we have seen in the history of Picasso's last day of the year, the last philosopher of which has been reported is Hegel and others have been appointed too fast to even remember their names.
Well, imagine then the school in 300 years. When there are at least another 200 years of stuff old enough to please those who fill school programs. If you already now it is collapsing, what will happen? we have people that reported to date, you know something about the world only to the beginning of 1700? clearly be necessary to cut out parts of the previous program to make us feel the new ones, unless you want to study people up to 22 years by sending the nation to economic and social collapse. And who has the authority to decide what to cut and what not? the corpus that will be enough staff to justify itself and be self-sufficient, which is no small request. This work always belongs to the intellectuals, it should occupy them. But even they will find themselves in difficulty because of the ever-increasing amount works and the various movements and cocks.
Ok, now let's try to make an extra effort: try to imagine the school of 10,000 years. I can not bring into a school program 2500 years of production, imagine when they are five times as much. Imagine having to teach history - well-documented history eh! History of art! Latino! no, we're fine with the Latin, the language is dead lol.
this picture has no relation to the rest of the post and serves only to awaken from its torpor
I think the problem now introducing these quantities "infinite" (compared to our capacity) mind you.
Now that we have framed the problem, what are the solutions? There's a lot to discuss.
One way would be to organize and divide the tasks. As we tend to do in the fanzine editors of music: there is one that deals with metal, that takes care of pop, jazz, etc.. Everyone is an expert in his field (perhaps also in others, the important thing is that it is his) and is limited to analyze and review what pertains to his little corner of heaven. His selection process helps me decide what to listen to when I want to hear the kind that are dealt.
This model of cooperation must be strengthened and extended to all possible fields: structured collaboration.
If leaving thousands of items up to a year which I work, it takes an editorial in the magazine that carries a great selection procedure, to reduce redundant information, and ordering by relevance productions. It is something that needs to be done as work, that is, it takes dedicated people. Too often, referees are famous professors who have much more work to do and always receive many more items than can select. We need more people to deal specifically with the problem "select and sort". Be coordinated and the work must be divided, and this requires a vertical organization with authority Central strong. This
in other fields does it involve? for example, involves the disappearance of the solitary figure of the critic, because that figure is only meaningful if put in the context of a "writing" that has given - having regard to its jurisdiction - a certain range. There must be no more critical that you take the time to review the whole case for themselves and clogging up the system. Maybe produce something uniquely beautiful and useful, but overall is a damage to the system. Information is not managed, unstructured, and requires an extra effort on my part, it is as if the information had more access time. It is not a trivial matter that the access time: I choose address to which magazine, I open the magazine, go to the section that interests me, I read a review of a group that would interest me. Retracing the path behind the scenes on the contrary, this review is written by a music critic / editor, who has chosen to review that particular disc, among others he has heard, which are part of a current of which he has chosen to deal with, because it covers the preparation entrusted it to him based on his skills. This mode of access to information is efficient and has a touch of algorithmic, which is an advantage because the automated system used to reduce the execution time. If every time you walk you should think "take your foot, move the center of gravity to stay balanced on one foot, you move the raised foot, put it, moved forward a little, lift the other foot, move the center of gravity "and so on, would not have time for anything else. Instead, the brain has structured to make this task - which was computationally heavy when you were little more than babies, so much so that walking was an achievement and cadevate more often - make that task an automatic action, whose execution processes do not occupy the cerebral cortex which used to think, but are performed silently in the background, allowing for example to walk absorbed in your thoughts. Try to remain engrossed in your thoughts as you walk on a beam suspended over the void and tell me if you can.
We got to talking about the brain. I do not have to empty out the adjective "human" several lines above. The problem at issue arises specifically from our human nature, limited not only physical but also in capacity. But then, if as humans we are not able to cope with this challenge ... we must turn to something inhuman.
The selection process has in itself something of an algorithm that is part of the work is done in a mechanical way by ourselves so we can work faster (the price is always a small loss of information, but we are having to solve a problem global concerns us all we need to think in terms of overall benefit). For example, if I know that a certain band has always produced work of shit, down to relevance in the queue of things I need to hear. If an item is a problem already solved before adding details, I know I will hardly something fundamental. If an article of Biology public the results of a search with a poor formatting (ie the data are bad), must be worth little because the rest of this dirty dirty data. If an item is clearly accidental, contribute to forming a comprehensive explanation of what is happening. And so on, consider yourself to other examples - as I approached you to ask that kind of work.
can be a good idea then to actually mechanize the algorithmic part of the analysis and selection, and then take the output of our algorithm and work on it instead of directly on information that was our raw material . This is a first job to do that - probably very crude but very useful - from refining to afford to work on a restricted set of productions, thus restoring the artificial production to a level humanly unacceptable.
Who is a Member of the performance of these algorithms? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Not your film thinking computer, but one that in reality, or computer that is running some human cognitive processes using methods typically non-human (1). I'm not saying that to make this transition from work to work human hybrid human-machine will be easy, but I think it will be essential, necessary and inevitable. Only a machine execution times short enough to combat the scale of production of 7 billion humans. And I bet that many self-styled "intellectuals" today's fiercely oppose that idea, say that a machine can not do the work of a man and that is impossible and degrading treatment and a lot of other stuff. I think that intimately know their selection work today is worth little or nothing, and rightly feel threatened by a machine that could do their work of poor quality without asking to be paid. But, I repeat, I think the problem is unavoidable, and these people will have less voice better.
I am perfectly aware of being led in transhumanism (although I know little or nothing, but it interests me and inform me), and this was inevitable because it is the same technology that requires other technology to be managed, as well as the development Internet has necessitated the search engines - who would have thought that an algorithm would be able to select the sites for relevancy? It is not a purely human task to decide what is relevant and what is not? a search engine does not produce a job as would a human, but I think many will agree with the fact that they do well enough.
If anyone prefers to deal with their bare hands with the infinite face as well, but do not come and complain that he was inevitably crushed: did you know that was bigger than you, and if you did not know I just said I .
(1): as an airplane flies without using methods such as the weight of birds and feathers, but the plane never imitate the bird because the attorney is not "food" alone; and the birds do not fly at 10,000 feet altitude.
ps I have to make a mandatory Mea Culpa: The same length of this post helps to clog your daily reading, rubandovi timeless and - probably - there is no one who came to say "read this and this." True, you could have done more, listen to music, watch a movie, go out, read a book, work. The only hope is that he can fulfill other shit written clogged, and that it was worth it for you to read it.
pps to apologize here is a bit 'music:
For those who like the dark stuff that smells of folk
For those who like the dark stuff that smells of folk
and for whom we like stuff sweetest
0 comments:
Post a Comment