RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds - infotropism

Dear Pedro,

You wrote

<Some of the essence of information belongs to the boundaries with which we have to surround it.

That insight, consiliently, applies to the Hegelian dialectic of limits and horizons, to fractal boundaries or to cloud regulation by the DMS of phytoplankton in the Gaia hypothesis.

An interesting example of horizontal consilience I came across recently was the use
of the term 'infotropic' in an article on astrocytic networks http://www.antanitus.com/hypothesis/ .

'Infotropism' was invented by Ronald Reagan's favourite IT guru George Gilder
to describe (on the analogy of phototropism) networks which turn towards
data and clients (the Internet itself may be seen as an infotropic organism).
The term comes with the posthuman anti-Darwinian 'philosophy' that carpetbagging George
espouses but in the cited article it is used to describe the movement of astrocytic glia towards a neurotransmitter, guided by synaptic activity. Does infotropism provide a clue to 'operations of thought' and the informational dynamic as well as a possible explanation of epilepsy?

Loet's recent comment about postmodern 'vapour' is also reflected in Gilder's view that computing is moving away from hardcoded systems towards 'vapourware' - the input changes the hardware, minds cobble brains. Our plane has finally landed in...Cloud Cuckoo Land at the Norbert Wiener Airport where 'information' has become uninformation, infotropic glial clouds.

Continuing the meteorological metaphor, it would seem Ted Goranson's original concept of 'brainstorming' (with his lightning flash of insight) might turn out to be pretty close
to the neurological truth.

Cheers,

John H

PS If you're looking for a keynote speaker for the Thursday session of the Paris
Conference - what about Erik Sveiby? http://www.sveiby.com/articles/Information.html#Cybernetics

-----Original Message-----
From: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es
[mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es]On Behalf Of "Pedro C. Mariju�n"
Sent: Wednesday, 1 December 2004 3:46
To: fis-listas.unizar.es
Subject: RE: [Fis] Consilience: Writing on the Clouds

Dear FISers,

Thanks to Heiner, Stan, Aleks and others for their new aspects of the
metaphor. Clouds are perhaps the most subtle part of the Goddess GAIA --her
divine circulation through the giant water cycle that runs on the planet...
And in the globalized society of today, the knowledge clouds become the
subtle maintainers of the global circulation of goods and manufactures.

Somehow, we should try to ensemble a new view uniting the God's view needed
for the intracloud phenomena (analytical philosophy, theoretical structures
and developments) with the terrestrial processes of ascent and descent,
where applying the God's view immediately destroys the whole intellective
limitations that surround our actions and perceptions (not our idealized
concepts). Let me repeat Whitehead's comments about the cipher 'zero' and
its consequences for modern science: "Civilization advances by extending
the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking
about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle
--they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must
only be made at decisive moments." Some of the essence of information
belongs to the boundaries with which we have to surround it.

Living in the cloud, we only consider "fresh horses" which infatigably
gallop from discipline to discipline, always towards the "frontier". While,
helas, in the earth we become very tired workhorses. For instance, what is
the average conceptual size of a disciplinary filed (just as a network of
citations)? In how many citations we may run from an extreme to another? Is
is another "small world" case?

I unjustly summarize too much, but reductionism, taken by Wilson as a leit
motiv or as a preferred tool to extend Whewellian consilience, obliterates
the most interesting aspects of the social problem of knowledge
(interdisciplinary dynamics & closure). Science has provided societies with
an enormous range of new actions / perceptions (distinctions, measurements,
computations, instruments) which may be obtained by means of quite
intriguing communal aspects, that transcend the individual limitations in
an extraordinary way, both in the creation and the application aspects. But
stringent individual, institutional, social, national, etc., limitations do
persist. Just lets look around, how do we treat poor GAIA.

A new "cloudology" needed!

best regards

Pedro

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Received on Thu Dec 2 02:01:03 2004