From books-owner Tue Aug 1 18:44:51 1995 Received: (from root@localhost) by ccat.sas.upenn.edu (8.6.12/CCAT) id SAA20084 for books-outgoing; Tue, 1 Aug 1995 18:44:50 GMT Received: from homer25.u.washington.edu (homer25.u.washington.edu [140.142.78.15]) by ccat.sas.upenn.edu (8.6.12/CCAT) with SMTP id OAA45677 for ; Tue, 1 Aug 1995 14:44:44 -0400 Received: by homer25.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.07/UW-NDC Revision: 2.33 ) id AA49879; Tue, 1 Aug 95 11:44:57 -0700 X-Sender: rstaffel@homer25.u.washington.edu Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 11:44:56 -0700 (PDT) From: Rebecca Staffel To: The List Subject: Ontological Breakdown (fwd) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-books@ccat.sas.upenn.edu Precedence: bulk Hi everyone, long time no read! I hope summers in your various corners of the world are going well. I wanted to pass on this eloquent essay on one professor's reality shift... Rebecca ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 1 Aug 95 12:03:02 EDT From: Rich Lethin To: digerati@ai.mit.edu Subject: Ontological Breakdown X-Sender: rah@tiac.net Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 09:03:07 -0400 To: lethin@ai.mit.edu (Rich Lethin) From: rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga) Subject: Ontological Breakdown >Date: Mon, 31 Jul 1995 15:16:24 -0700 >From: delong@econ.berkeley.edu (Brad De Long) >To: apple-internet-users@abs.apple.com >Subject: Ontological Breakdown >Message-ID: > >I am not at all sure that this is the right place to put this. I can >already hear Chuq Von Rospach saying "Now, if this were >apple-philosophy-internet-virtuality..." > >Nevertheless, the experience was profoundly disturbing, and made we want to >consult a philosophical professional (in the same way that a health problem >makes me want to consult a medical professional...) > >Let me back up. For the past year or so one of my main Internet activities >has been to use it to look for pictures of dinosaurs. The five-year-old >sits on my right knee and the two-year-old on my left. We stare >Triceratops eye-to-eye, and to count the teeth of Tyrannosaurus Rex. (The >five-year-old is pretty good at following links; the two-year-old is still >at the "Twicer'ops. Piktur Twicer'ops" stage.) > >One of our favorite places is the address above: the University of >California Museum of Paleontology-the UCMP. On the Internet, the UCMP is a >marvelous virtual, interactive museum. It carries the endorsement of Adam >C. Engst, who writes that he could "spend the rest of my afternoon here, >browsing the exhibits, and all without hurting my feet." > >Last June I stopped being a Senior Treasury Department Official, and became >a Berkeley economics professor. Since the UCMP is in /berkeley.edu/, I >asked around, and was told that the UCMP had just moved into the >newly-renovated Valley Life Sciences Building. > >So one afternoon I paused in my attempts to deal with the pile of paper >created by the Associate Vice Chancellor for Sending Junk Mail to Faculty >and the Assistant Associate Vice Chancellor for Thinking Up Pointless >Rules, and the five-year-old, the two-year-old, and I crossed Strawberry >Creek to enter the Valley Life Sciences Building. > >We walked past a wall of news clipping and pictures of paleontological >digs. We soon found ourselves in the central stairwell in front of a banner >that said "University of California Museum of Paleontology." There was a >very impressive Tyrannosaurus skull behind glass. On the next floor up >there was a similarly impressive Triceratops skull. The hip bones of a >Tyrannosaurus (a different Tyrannosaurus) hung suspended in the stairwell. > > >That was pretty much it. The UCMP really had just moved, and did not have >all the public exhibits unpacked yet. By mid-September a Tyrannosaurus Rex >will fill up the entire three-story stairwell. But the public fossil >collection is very small: the UCMP is a _research_ museum, not a display >museum: it is for twenty-five- year-old graduate students fascinated by >posters with titles like "Acid Rain an Agent of Extinction at the K-T >Boundary--Not!" This research museum is not designed for five-year-olds, or >for thirty-five-year-olds who don't know as much about geology and >chemistry as they should. > >I stood in the stairwell. I looked at the few-very impressive-fossils. I >thought to myself, "Let's get back to my office computer, so that we can >link to http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu/expo/dinoexpo.html and see the real >University of California Museum of Paleontology. > >"The real museum," I thought, "has audio narration by the discoverers of >dinosaurs. The real museum has many more bones-a Diplodocus skeleton, for >one thing. The real museum has detailed exhibits on dinosaur evolution and >geology... > >"No-wait. > >"_This_ is the real museum. The Internet Web site http://ucmp1. >berkeley.edu/expo/dinoexpo.html is just the "virtual" image-an electronic >reflection-of this place." > >And that was when I felt I needed a consulting philosopher real bad. > >There have long been speculations about how the electronic shadows made >possible by the computer and telecommunications revolutions will acquire >the intensity of effect, the immediacy, the complexity and the depth to >become-in a certain sense-real. That afternoon in the Valley Life Sciences >Building was the first time in my life that I had compared a place in the >real world, the UCMP, to its virtual electronic image in cyberspace-and >found the real world lacking, found that the real world experience lacked, >compared to its virtual electronic image, the intensity of effect, the >immediacy, the complexity, and the depth necessary for reality. > >Thinking back, I realized that the electronic world behind the computer >screen has been slowly acquiring reality-and the real world losing it-for >some years. I check the card catalog for something or other every week; but >it has been four years since I saw a wooden or metal drawer with 3 by 5 >cards in it. If I say "it's on my desktop," I almost surely mean that a >pointer to the computer file exists at the "root" level directory of my >notebook computer. As far as desktops and card catalogs are concerned, the >"virtual" images have so swamped the "real" objects as to make them vanish >from my consciousness. > >My cousin Tom Kalil tells me that cyberspace has obtained "liftoff": >traffic on the NSFNET electronic network backbone is up from 3.6 billion >bytes in March 1993 to 4.8 trillion bytes in March 1995. "WebCrawler" and >"Yahoo" now index over 4 million electronic documents, and receive more >than 9.4 million hits per week. > >Some are oblivious to this transformation: I think of a respected academic >elder who claimed that all physical discoveries since 1930 (including our >current computer and communications technologies) were less significant >than the past generation's "discoveries" in literary criticism-and who had >the lack of perception (or perhaps he was simply irony-challenged) to make >this claim in an electronic mail message! > >For two generations people have been talking about how computers will have >an extraordinary impact on human society and human knowledge. Our children >will think as differently from us as we think differently from >pre-Gutenberg monks, who would spend ten years copying and writing a >commentary on one single illuminated manuscript. Our children will find our >doctrines and beliefs as quaint as we find Socrates' distrust of the >written word as an unsuitable tool for education. > >The evening after returning from our expedition to the Valley Life Sciences >Building I went upstairs to put the five-year-old to bed. He was >talking-but not to himself. > >"If you want to read books," he said, "click on the bookcase. If you want >to play with dinosaur toys, click over here." He was pretending to be a >Help System. > >"To play with Lion King toys, click on the bottom of the bed." > >I have pretended to be many things at play and work-a space explorer, a >wise king, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, a Berkeley >professor. But I never pretended to be a help system. > >"If you need help, click on my picture on top of the dresser. I'll be >there in a flash..." > >Not only is the virtual world behind the computer screen acquiring reality, >but the real world is acquiring aspects of virtuality as well... > > >Brad De Long > > >"Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing >the quantity theory of money] is probably >true.... But this **long run** is a misleading | Brad De Long >guide to current affairs. **In the long run** | Dept. of Economics >we are all dead. Economists set themselves | U.C. Berkeley >too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous | Berkeley, CA 94720 >seasons they can only tell us that when the | (510) 643-4027 376-1362 >storm is long past the ocean is flat again." | (510) 642-6615 fax > > ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf@clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<< --- Concurrent VLSI Arch. 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