Joho the Blog
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November 02, 2006
I've been using a quote from Umberto Eco about there being many ways to carve a cow, but you won't find many cuts that have the snout and tail attached. This is a direct reference to Plato saying that a wise person knows how to carve nature at its joints. But I'm keynoting the combined KMWorld and Taxonomy Bootcamp conferences this morning and realized that I'm not very happy with what I've been saying. Eco is right that not every way of carving the cow works, but there are so many ways of carving it that the old structures of knowledge and authority—once required because of the limitations on how we preserved, communicated and presented knowledge—lose their right to be the sole hands guiding the knife. Nature is just about all joints. How we carve depends on our interests, intentions and culture. It doesn't depend entirely on us - Eco talks about nature having a "grain," which I don't find a very helpful metaphor - but the fact that there are ways we can go wrong does not mean that there's only one way we can go right.[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous umberto_eco plato taxonomy kmworld] Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 2, 2006 10:42 AM
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Comments
"but there are so many ways of carving it that the old structures of knowledge and authority -- once required because of the limitations on how we preserved, communicated and presented knowledge -- lose their right to be the sole hands guiding the knife."
Clearly, we need a carvesonomy from Wikirecipes using social chewing, so that new emergent modes of nutrition can supplant the former monopoly of mainstream cookery.
[I'm not nearly as good at this as you are ...]
Posted by: Seth Finkelstein | November 2, 2006 11:49 AM
Oh, Seth, you're doing just fine. (You should trademark "carvesonomy" ASAP :)
Posted by: David Weinberger | November 2, 2006 02:39 PM
Yes, but knowledge is not a cow. You can carve knowledge one way, and it still remains carvable in another way, albeit perhaps at another historical time. Or, in keeping with neologistic nature of your blog (and comment stream), cows are carivalrous, knowledge is non-carivalrous.
Posted by: Mark Federman | November 2, 2006 09:38 PM
Epistemology and all the other crazy categories of philosphemes may or may not guide us much, but we can see that there are two cultures clashing: the Technological Imperative (what can be made must be made and we must adapt to it) vs. the Power Imperium (what can be controlled, for profit, must be controlled, for our profit, and they must put up with it).
So we lollygag around and whip up mashups and send out clients to Mars, but all we really want to do is be smart and active.
Business as Usual vs. Online Share Economy, Peer Trust vs. Marketing Hype, Free Thought vs. Domination Systems, Pricetags on Everything vs. Abundant Free Samples, DRM vs Universal Content Utopia, Digital Identity vs. Cyber Nomads.
Posted by: steven e/ streight aka [vaspers the grate] | November 3, 2006 02:08 PM
"...Eco talks about nature having a "grain," - ...but the fact that there are ways we can go wrong does not mean that there's only one way we can go right."
"Grain" can pertain to flesh or wood, but pointing out that butchers, surgeons, carpenters, and sculptors are well advised to consider the grain does not mean "that there's only one way [that they] can go right."
Posted by: johne | November 6, 2006 03:41 PM