Tag Archives: information

How every detail counts in large amounts

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

I owe my co-blogger Jussi Jalonen thanks for the superb job placing last month’s massacres in Norway in the context of an increasingly unhinged and conspiracy-minded ideology, Internet-based but spreading, whose protagonists claim that Muslim are taking over Europe (at … Continue reading →

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Two links on trouble with databases

Posted on April 8, 2011 by

An encyclopedia and the institution of the academic library, actually. Martin Wisse writes (“Wikipedia finally notices it’s in trouble”) that Wikipedia’s famously open system of volunteer editors is collapsing, only a hard-core rump of the initial editor population remaining. As … Continue reading →

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On “How We Know”

Posted on March 25, 2011 by

I owe blogger Dan Hirschman thanks for linking to Freeman Dyson’s “How We Know”, a review essay of James Gleick’s new book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood in the 10 March 2011 issue of the New York … Continue reading →

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On information and speed and mind’s problems

Posted on March 22, 2011 by

Canadian Tim Maly’s blog Quiet Babylon–”A website about cyborgs & architects”–is a blog examining the intersections between humanity and high technology, about trhe ways in which human thinking and identity will be altered by increasingly potent information technologies. A string … Continue reading →

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The patterns of pi

Posted on March 15, 2011 by

It’s still Pi Day here in Toronto, 3/14 according to North American notation. π–an irrational number, roughly 3.14159…, a mathematical constant with the value of the ratio of any Euclidean plane circle’s circumference to its diameter–seems to be an object … Continue reading →

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On the problems of planning for chaotic/complex futures

Posted on February 3, 2011 by

Perhaps reflecting this week’s theme about the confusing pasts and future of sports team, and reflecting Dan Gardner’s writing about the perils of futurology, sociology blogger Daniel Little has at his blog Understanding Society a “review of an interesting book … Continue reading →

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Pets, mind

Posted on January 27, 2011 by

Over at A Bit More Detail, I have 94 separate posts with the tag “cat”. I have 37 posts tagged “shakespeare”, all but one relating to my wonderful cat of a bit more than two years. I’ve managed to vex … Continue reading →

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On the singularity, the real one (2)

Posted on January 2, 2011 by

My post yesterday about real singularities got nice response, here and in my link post at my own blog. I agree with The Oberamtmann’s suggestion here that the 19th and early 20th centuries saw a sort of singularity, a qualitative … Continue reading →

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Some notes on the Internet’s fluid, incoherent archives

Posted on December 20, 2010 by

When my friend Pierre showed me his account at Delicious (then the domain-hacked del.icio.us) some years ago, I was interested by the idea that there was a service out there which would give users the ability to create and to … Continue reading →

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Wikileaks as a historical source

Posted on December 6, 2010 by

The Baseball and Futility series is taking a one-week hiatus because of a lack of time. It should return next week. On another note, there was a post on H-Net asking about using Wikileaks as source material for research. I … Continue reading →

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