Link to: Knowledge
Technologies and the Asymmetric Threat
Meditation on the Conflict between Cultures
November 20, 2003
I woke up this morning thinking about the newly arisen situation. There are many aspects to think about. Characterizations of the people involved come to mind. Some of these characterizations I had seen before. Software engineers who are allowed and do take a position of complete blankness in regards to any recognition of the inappropriateness of the solutions being created. The process of ignoring the needs of principals at the FCC whose work flow and document management system is at least a decade behind those that my wife uses at her private sector job. Program managers whose role is to represent obscure cultural resistance to any increased informational transparency over the work processes of the Federal government. I reflect on the deceit implicit in both of these cultural practices, and on the cultural acceptance of this deceit by those involved.
I reflect on the stop work order, and how this stop work order came with an instruction that I cannot continue to work on the concepts and issues that I was working on – just yesterday morning. I reflect on my reply to this instruction. I could see no way that the FCC could not pay me for my twelve weeks of contracted effort, while at the same time enforcing a Non-Disclosure Agreement having to do with that work effort. I said so in full knowledge that legally there was an enforcement mechanism to my not discussing something – but what exactly is this mechanism and what is it that I am no longer to do. Where is the dignity regarded a learned professor, teacher and scholar?
I reflect on the complexity of the science of memetics, compared with the simplicity of the mass media and the viewpoints of the many types of fundamentalisms openly and blindly expressed in our culture.
It is six in the morning. Late last night I developed the text for the grievance I have filed to H. Walker Feaster III, Inspector General of the Federal Communications Commission. I reflect on the day’s schedule that has me walking about downtown DC looking for someone to talk to.
As I reviewed in my mind these things, the phrase “conflict of cultures” emerged as a mental event. I could see the origin of this mental event from many causes. I could see a certain conceptual invariance in my discussion with Bob Stone the previous day, at the occasion of his book signing in downtown DC. I could see the collision between Eastern philosophy and Western fundamentalisms. I remember the conversation with a young PhD student from England on reform processes in the United States and England. I remember Bob Stone’s advice to me.
I reflect on the on-going discussion in one of my favorite e-forum on Charles Sanders Peirce, the great American pragmatist. I review the position that one of the authors is taking on analytics and synthesis. I look back at my Outlook inbox and ritualistically delete the two new spam elements that have freshly arrived. Carefully I avoid thinking about how easy it would be to characterize the spam if only the Outlook software had the functionality of the Stratify concept extraction technology that I had demonstrated to the FCC program managers only yesterday.
I take three minutes to manually edit the UNIX type end of line ASCII characters and change the font of a message in the e-forum
“Paul,
I've been looking for a more user-friendly way of representing Peirce's categories for data representation and thought I might try the following to get your opinion.
“Peirce
Domain Name
3 -
Thirdness Heaven Knowledge
2 -
Secondness Man Relation
1 -
Firstness
Earth Information
“as well as Peirce Types
3 - Category/Hypothetical Object
2 - Truth condition
(correspondence/coherence)
(deduction/induction)
1 - Real world object
(word/number )
“You can see that going from top
down is analytic and going from bottom up is synthetic.”
And yes, I see this metaphor. But how is this relevant to trying to show the FCC program managers that concepts are expressed within complex patterns of linguistic variation, and this variation can now be and is measured using off the shelf software. I experience the conflict, and the inability to draw on considerable scholarship and science in addressing the FCC program managers in my role as an outside consulting scientist. I try not to reflect on the personal hurt, and professional insult, on being summarily fired from this position.
I reflect on the learned timidity, and repeated economic punishment we have all received. The learned timidity characterizes all of the leading minds in the obscure field of the knowledge sciences. I review in my mind the details of the BCNGroup.org’s call for a National Project to establish the knowledge sciences as an academic discipline with a uniform curriculum. I reflect of on the Charter of the BCNGroup and on my not having handed a copy of this charter to Bob Stone as he was signing a copy of his book for me. I reflect on the many regrets that I have about life.
I see in my experience of a private and personal conflict the nature of some of the troubles that our American society is self aware of, but cannot find the words to talk about. I reflect on my years teaching college mathematics to an unwilling and resistant generation of young minds. My mind reviews my thoughts on the uniform rejection of mathematics by schoolteachers and students, on the agreement and social pact that mathematics is unlearnable and of no real interest to all but a few odd people. I reflect on the phenomenon of learned disability to learn the basic elements of arithmetic or algebra. I reflect on my deep and inaccessible, unpublishable, work on the limitation of formalism and the failures of logical positivism as a grounding of the social sciences.
It is early, and I am not sure whether or not my youngest daughter will come into the room and wake me, informing me that it is my day to drive her and her friend to school. I experience for a moment the unknown processes that decide this, having long ago given up on my seeing any regularity to this set of causes.
I then again experience that complexity which is my thoughts about the clash of cultures. I get up and microwave the Starbuck’s coffee my wife made an hour ago before her leaving for her work. The house is empty, except for me.
The Outlook software is opened and I see the twenty or so spam emails and notice that again the dates are randomly off by 24 hours either way so that new messages are scattered in my inbox. I wonder why the Congress cannot stop this spam phenomenon. I reflect on the conflicts in a democratic market economy. I think about Nash’s elegant theorem on non-measurable values in optimal economy systems. I look for a real message to me and find one, carefully deleting the rest while trying not to read the idiotic messages about buying expensive designer drugs to increase one’s sex drive.
I open a note from a linguist friend.
“Paul,
“I'm truly sorry for the difficulties you're
encountering with some FCC folk.
“Probably easy for me to say, but hopefully this
is not something to take personally, as it sounds like a collision of business
and research orientations. And I know
you're not one to hold back from rocking the boat when you perceive a better
way.
“Hoping you
feel better mentally and physically.”
There it is again. Someone else sees the conflict between civilizations, but which civilizations? I reflect on compassion and words my father told me were spoken to him, so very long ago.