Comments on: Networked truth

By: David Weinberger

David Weinberger — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:18:32 +0000

As many others have pointed out, facts are odd constructions, stripped-down beliefs designed to be impervious to doubts — and the social reasons for doubting. They do what they do. But to make them the bedrock of truth seems to me to paralyze truth. That’s why in the next post I amend this one by talking about understanding instead of truth.

By: Ben Tremblay

Ben Tremblay — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:13:57 +0000

I don’t normally point to individual documents in my “Website” URL, but given your “Truth is a property of networks” resonates at a number of levels.

There’s a potential confound at hand here that isn’t as insididious in French; there’s a dramatic difference of tone between “véritée and fait that isn’t similarly tangible with “truth” and “fact”. (I think Solzhenitsyn touched on that in “Gulag” … something about pravda.) And we almost never use “facticity”, so that’s no use.

With natural systems there is a fact or there is not … the nuance of “truth” really doesn’t enter in at all.

The reason I bring this up is that 6 times 7 is 42, but 42 is … well … depending on how one reads “Hitchiker’s Guide” … and that’s my point: “fact” is a matter of sheer facticity but “truth” depends on complexities of meaning that are comonplace (inescapable) in human affairs but never present in a spreadhsheet.

As I’ve essayed, truth is the product of sentience. Fact is a matter of sheer existentials. The truth matters because we care … things have meaning for us. When we lose our sense of meaning, when we don’t care, only facts come into play and we are finally reduced to spreadsheets.

Hint: “discourse” surpasses “debate” because its processes hinge on valuation of subjectivity and narrative. I got onto this tangent while working on “taxonomy of movement” in ethology … facts are points, but “truth” is more like a constellation of trajectories around some shared strange attractor. Or something.

“Sleep is for the weak”, I read recently. heh …

By: The Waving Cat » Blog Archive » David Weinberger on networked understanding

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:17:00 +0000

[...] David Weinberger articulated some thoughts of truth understanding being a property of networks. In his own words: Truth is a property of [...]

By: adrian chan

adrian chan — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:18:00 +0000

david,
i dont know much of truth, but i believe it exists in airports!
i think michel foucault once said that truth was nothing but the opinion of the majority. insofar as networks seem to prevent the emergence of institutional power, centralized power, the “truth” they give rise to emerges on the basis of its own claims, rather than on a claim to authority. but there is a problem with networks and truth i think: speed. speed foreshortens our ability to weigh, to measure, judge, etc…. crowds have speeds, mobs have speeds, airplanes have speeds. thought travels with speed, and in networks, can spread mighty fast–regardless of its value, or claim.
airports are good. they are good for reflection. thanks for reflecting!

cheers!
a

By: lars

lars — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:06:24 +0000

I really don’t think the cluetrain is quite dead, yet, ten years later.
Quite the contrary. They were 50 years early.
Let’s fill the void.
http://www.cluetrain.com/
lars

By: vaspers the grate

vaspers the grate — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:59:57 +0000

I like poetic posts like this, and when I do it, the more abstract symbolic, oracular posts, I get a lot of compliments and encouragement.

Have been seeing some “cluetrain is wrecked” verbiage out there on Twitter and blogs, that the “promise was based on ideals that have not come to pass” and other lame whining and misunderstanding.

Some complain that blogs and Twitter decrease their humanity or whatever they think they have, by being so shallow, trivial, etc.

Wankers all. I defend and fight for Cluetrain All The Way.