Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

I thought (and still do think) that WOE was mainly about the technical architecture that enables humans to make connections and create value.

Clearly, alternative structures and processes are needed to allow the full range of humanity to express itself and make things "better" for the human system - the way it's being helped along these days, within the exisiting assumptions and structures, is kinda like watching a real-time science fiction movie write itself.

I think WOE is not unlike the oceans of the planet - a connecting and connected medium full of currents, swells, stormy, beautiful, cold, warm, deep...and ultimately a supporter of life.

People can fish on its shores, they can set sail for new lands, they can play on it and in it, they can build new ways to use it better.

Maybe WOE is the means to help a human ocean evolve - what will we see when looking at it with 20 or 30 more years of experience, but a vast human ocean of thoughts, desires, intentions, connections in which patterns are carved by time and the tides?

The end is here.
And here. And here. And here.

And...

Who knows how many ends?

;)

I think that, though he had a rather individualist view of individuality, Kant's kingdom (or realm) of ends is precisely the sort of community in which individuals are respectfully and supportively involved with one another.

John, it wasn't an accident. I was aware of the resonance of "World of Ends" with Kant's "Kingdom of Ends."

I knew that you saw Kant in the background. I guessed as much when reading the original World of Ends piece, and then you made it explicit in the entry on which I've posted these comments. However, it seemed (and still seems) to me that AKMA's suggestion that "it's not a World of Ends, it's a World without Ends, all the more so on the Web, where we're so persistently joined with one another" misses the echo of Kant. AKMA seems to me to set up a dichotemy between being a world of ends, on one hand, and being a world without ends, on the other. I was thinking yesterday that the Kantian echo, when made more explicit, undercuts this dichotemy. That's not to say -- and this is the dissatisfaction to which I alluded in passing in my posting above -- that I'm fully or even half satisfied with Kant's notion of individuality. But I think his notion of the realm of ends brings community into the in ways that are inconsistent with other elements of his position.

I guess I was moved to make my first post in part because I really liked the dual play of the term "ends" in the World of Ends. I would have been less inclined to comment had AKMA's point been that it's a world of ends (in one sense) and without ends (in another sense) -- leaving Kant out of it altogether. Or that it's a world of ends, not only in the sense that what's on the edges is crucial but also in the sense that human beings in community with one another are humans beings who see and appreciate each other as ends in themselves. I thought that if the implicit Kantianism were made explicit, then the talk about ends would be less misleading. (I have to admit that there are students in my past who would chuckle at the suggestion that bringing more Kant into a discussion would be a clarifying move.)

John, in earlier drafts, I pushed for talking about the "edges" of the Net in addition to the "ends" because "end" sounded too terminal. But we thought that mixing metaphors was worse than going with one that might imply "dead end."

So, the confusion came about through intellectual sloppiness on our part. "WoE" doesn't have a well-defined sense of what an end is, other than in the technical way it's used in the "End to End" paper. We liked "end" because it makes a nice oingy-ommmmmm sound when you flick your finger against it, and it's a gesture in the right direction. But we didn't think through what the direction was. Hence the messiness.