Sunday, March 7, 2004

Earnshaw's Law

I was reading A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins this afternoon, and it mentioned www.edge.org. Later, by coincidence, I stumbled across a link to it in Dave Pollard's blog, which I had stepped into from... Ugh, I just lost the will to credit anyone else in the chain. They all had interesting content, but it wasn't relevant to the target of this entry, the Edge. Guess that means we need to modify the crediting rule to say that bloggers will give credit backwards from the target to the start of the link trail until they feel an element in the trail doesn't add value. Anyway, back to the Edge. The organisation describes itself thus: Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world. The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society. The organisation has an annual question. This year it poses, "What's your Law?" 164 distinguished contributors have submitted their own laws. Many have taken the question very seriously and they have produced the weakest memes. Dawkins' Law, "Obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity" will probably not enjoy the same success in propagation as Andy Clark's Law, "Everything leaks". For years I have been running around advising my clients to, "Go Meta," with their software models, so I am pleased to see Simonyi's Law, "Anything that can be done, could be done 'meta'." (I recently discovered the down side of going meta, and how to counter it - details in a later blog.) The Edge's banner carries the text, "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions that they are asking themselves." Well, ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that 'complex' and 'sophisticated' do not apply to my mind. That probably explains why the Edge have not asked me for my eponymous law. Surprisingly, I do have one, and here it is. Earnshaw's Law of Pedestrian Encounters When two pedestrians are on a collision course, the faster one goes around the slower one. I expect the complicated and sophisticated minds out there have just chorused in unison, "Well, duh!" And quite right too, because, like most laws, it doesn't excite of its own accord, but does so only when it breaks down. Earnshaw's Law explains that weird little jig that people occasionally dance on the pavement. You go left, he goes left, so you dodge right, but so does he... Think about it, this pas-de-deux takes place because both parties perceive themselves to be the faster of the pair, which generally means that they're doing about the same speed. Complicated? No. Sophisticated? Nope. Worthwhile? Hell, yeah. I wondered for years why some encounters turned into a game of dodge'em, while others went smoothly. Now you too can sleep at night. 10:51:44 PM

Huh? What's a ponzi?

I came to Brian Jackson's 'Guide or Ponzi Schemer' by way of Robert Scoble. I wanted to find out what a ponzi was. I discovered that Jackson backs up what I said yesterday about self-perpetuating rankings, and he does a better job of it. I found out what ponzi, or Ponzi, refers to. Follow the trail and you'll find an interesting history at the end. I noticed something along the way. The added value of each link increased as I followed it. Scoble provided a pointer and a comment; Jackson provided an article and a pointer; my trail ended at a fully fledged story. I wonder if a general pattern exists, in particular, do links in a chain that don't really add value get snipped out? Suppose I provide a terse reference to some interesting content. Someone comes to my page, visits the content I was referencing and decides to link to it. Would they edit me out of the chain because I hadn't really added any value? I've found myself doing just that, often because I have wandered so far that I can't remember where the whole chain started, or can't be bothered referencing all 27 stops along the way. 12:02:18 PM