Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of Salon and the author of Dreaming in Code, has posted at Salon an interview with me about Everything is Miscellaneous.

At his blog, Scott adds some “out-takes” from the interview, and recommends the book. Thanks, Scott. [Tags: salon scott_rosenberg everything_is_miscellaneous folksonomy taxonomy tagging]

Google has posted the video of my talk there.

Here it is an iPod compatible download. (Try renaming it to .mp4 if your player thinks it can’t play it.)

Yahoo has posted a video of my discussion with Bradley Horowitz at Yahoo on Thursday. It’s also available in an iPod compatible form.

(Note: I should have credited Neil Degrasse Tyson for the Titan example. I usually do.)

I had the good fortune to have a long talk with Scott Rosenberg yesterday. Putting together two pieces of the book, he asked me how Eleanor Rosch’s prototype theory applies to the planets, since I’ve been pointing to the row over Pluto as an illustration of our ancient desire to think there is a “real” order of the universe.

I stumbled around for an answer. I think now maybe the right answer is that we take one of the “normal” planets as our prototype — Jupiter is too big, Venus is too hot, Saturn has fancy-dancy rings — and use that as our idea of what a “real” planet should be like. We therefore want to call similar objects circling the Sun planets, in which case we’d end up with about 900 of them (according to one scientist I talked with). But, we also don’t want to have that many because we’ve been taught that planets aren’t a type so much as a particular set. Sort of like the Kennedy clan: No matter how much you make your hair look like JFK’s, even if your initials are JFK - are you listening, John F. Kerry? - you are not a member of  the Kennedy clan.

Which is to say that prototype theory isn’t the only theory we need. We sometimes need precise, Aristotelian definitions, as when we have to decide whether a boat trailer needs a vehicle license plate or not. And sometimes we have groups the membership of which is not governed by prototypicality.

I'm still sleep-dprived, but I've had a day to think about what I posted yesterday about truth being a property of networks.

It would have been clearer for me to say understanding is a property of networks. Then I wouldn't have left the impression that I think facts are a matter of majority opinion. Facts are facts. That's pretty much their essence. Understanding, however, is plural, at least in many domains — less so in the sciences, more so in the humanities.

On the other hand, our age should be embarrassed that we've reduced truth to mere facts.

[Tags: truth philosphy everything_is_miscellaneous]

It's three in the morning in the US. I am in the Zurich airport, waiting for my flight to Helsinki. I am high on Dramamine. All of which will help explain why at the moment it seems plausible to me to say: Truth is a property of networks.

I can only guess at what I mean, starting with the obvious: Rather than thinking that truth is a relationship between the propositions we believe and the way the world is, such that the propositions represent the world, in the networked world the truth is argued for and connected via links. For all but the most mundane of truths, the network of conversations gives us more shades, nuances, and reasons to believe. Which leads me to think that if truth isn't an emergent property of networks, then understanding is.

It is, of course, an unowned, self-contradictory, unsettled truth that is too big to be contained by any individual. It is outside of us and among us. It is gained not by trying to contain it but by traveling through it.

Of course, the fact that I'm traveling at the moment has no effect on my choice of metaphors.

And the fact that I'm dog tired has no effect on my decision to post this instead of letting it melt in the light. [Tags: truth philosophy networks wrong_in_public everything_is_miscellaneous ]

I did the "wrapup" at BeyondBroadcast, and tried to talk about the thought I keep coming back to but am never able to articulate. At least it was brief - under 10 minutes, I think. Here's the outline of what I said:

1. What's the thread between participatory culture and participatory democracy? Why think one has to do with the other? How can participatory culture be "transformative," as Henry Jenkins suggested in his terrific opening talk. (Digression: The mainstream media are focused on including "user-generated content" on their sites as their response to participatory culture, but that's not transformative.)

2. Well, what is democracy. There are bunches of definitions: Majority vote, society of equals, government that gets its authority from the people. But most important, it's ours. The government isn't theirs, the way it was the king's.

3. So, what does "ours" mean? Again, there are bunches of definitions: What the law gives you control over, on our side, of our nature or essence. But, when it comes to culture, look at the difference between your study of a foreign culture and your participation in yours. Culture is ours because it makes us who we are; we are indistinguishable from it.

4. But, participatory culture is changing the nature and topology of ours. It's ours in a different way. We can create works with strangers, with anonymous crowds, and in all the other ways we're inventing. This is a very different sense of ours. And it's not just that we can build Wikipedia or Flickr streams. We also get to make these works matter to one another: That we can surface and pass around the video or the prose so that it becomes a shared cultural object also changes the nature of the ours. 5. So, how does this new ours affect democracy? (And it's more likely to affect democracy before it affects politics since those folks have a death grip on power.) How does this ours get turned into an us that operates politically? I dunno. I.e., this talks makes no progress on the question it raises :( [Tags: beyondbroadcast07 culture politics democracy media everything_is_miscellaneous ]

danah notes:

Many teens are content (if not happy) to start over with most of their accounts in most places. Forgot your IM password? Sign up again. Forgot your email address? Create a new one. Forgot your login? Time for a change.

This is so fascinating. Us middle-aging bloggers who think blogs are about building selves in the new public are apparently not speaking for anyone other than us middle-aging bloggers. Maybe Web presence for the young’uns has little to do with building selves or maybe the nature of that public self is so different from the corporeal one the middle-agers have imported from the real world, or maybe something else entirely is going on. And maybe—although I think this is less likely—when the young’uns age to the middle, they’ll feel about their Web selves the way us current middle-agers do.

Damn, this is an interesting world. [Tags: danah_boyd self web everything_is_miscellaneous ]

Slashdot has a thread about a debate over whether Internet abuse counts as a true addiction. (Yet another taxonomic question!) Here’s what I posted in response. Since it was rated 1 (out of 5), you’re not going to stumble across it unless you have your filter set to “Masochist.”

Thank God!

I myself have been showing disturbing signs of being compulsively human. I’ve noticed that I feel an urge I simply cannot control to be social. This really began to scare me when I tried not to talk and found that after a mere seven hours - seven hours! — I said, “Howya doin’?” to the bagger at the supermarket. I didn’t want to. It just slipped out. I couldn’t control myself. Ever since, I’ve given in to my urge - yes, I know, I’m sick - answering the phone when it rings, responding not only to questions but to mere pleasantries, and even initiating conversations when they weren’t strictly required.

It’s a nightmare. And it gets worse.

it’s not just that when I’m with others, I - ugh! - participate in destructive social rituals like caring what people are saying. Even when I’m alone, kind thoughts about other people invade my consciousness. I feel an impulse to wonder what they’re thinking and what matters to them. I try to focus on computing pi or to remember the 1955 Dodgers starting lineup, but I just can’t shut out those images and feelings.

Sometimes - and I’m so ashamed to admit this - I use the Internet to sate these shameful urges.

Admitting all this in public is, I can only hope, the first step towards healing. [Tags: internet addiction humor everything_is_miscellaneous taxonomy ]