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April 13, 2007

Networked truth

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 ]

Posted by D. Weinberger at April 13, 2007 02:51 AM


Comments

"It [the logos, naturally] 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."

-Heraclitus

Posted by: Convivial | April 13, 2007 07:39 AM


So Dave was Heraclitus in a previous life and Dramamine caused a past life regression!

I have a problem with this premise: "Truth is a property of networks.". Maybe because of yours and Heraclitus idea that Truth can be self-contradictory and still be true. If everything is "true" then how can there be a "truth"? There could be "truths". OTOH, I am not a philosopher; my roots are as a technician and getting results.

To me a network just "is"; the "truth" thing seems like a value judgment. A network simply joins nodes which may or may not interact. It doesn't integrate them into something larger than the sum of the nodes. To make it more seems too metaphysical for me to swallow. Like a library is more than a collection of books.

This is the same reason I ignore the guys at HalfPastHuman: I can see no evidence that the collective population of the WWW has some ability to forecast the future.

Or, are you defining "network" differently than I (hinted at in the previous paragraph)? To me the network is the wires, servers, and databases. Maybe you see it as the people staring at monitors and banging on keyboards. I still don't see that concept getting to "truth" unless "truth" simply means "everything" ("logos" or knowledge might work).

Or maybe I'm just blind to the Truth!

Posted by: Charlie Green | April 13, 2007 12:15 PM


Michael Schrage (when he was at MIT, may still be) once said "networks make (organizational) culture and politics explicit", from which one could extrapolate ...

Posted by: Jon Husband | April 13, 2007 01:29 PM


Michael Schrage (when he was at MIT, may still be) once said "networks make (organizational) culture and politics explicit", from which one could extrapolate ...

Posted by: Jon Husband | April 13, 2007 01:29 PM


"If patterns of ones and zeros were 'like' patterns of human lives and death, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?"
---Thomas Pynchon

Posted by: Howard | April 13, 2007 01:34 PM


Reality is just what we all agree to call reality.

Posted by: Michael | April 14, 2007 07:32 AM


Michael, then we should do a better job of it :)

I think there's some truth in what you say - we are not passive recipients of Reality Reays - but the "just" makes it sound as if it's something we can control. Rather, we are (imo) inevitably situated in and by our history, culture, language and biographies.

Posted by: David Weinberger | April 14, 2007 07:38 AM


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