Re: Planning to close Philosophy of the Web Community Group due to inactivity unless we hear from you

Dear All. Dear Dr. Dainow:

Agreed, with no disruptive mean at all, all Tech is temporary, as they 
are the Escholastica, the Pharaohs, The Second Spanish Inquisition (no 
offence), as well as Ancient Calculus.

Agreed  that the original proposal, - so I though - of this W3C 
community is based and meaning solely on a sub-type or subset of what, 
in academic terms, is known as the Philosophy of Science. Being the 
Philosophy of Technology another subset of the former. Both of them also 
subsets birthed after that disruptive philosopher Newton, with his 
tricked Principia on natural philosophy.


I remember that in the first few meetings, I felt strange, even 
doubtful, on Tim's part, as he clearly mentioned, on about the fact that 
there was an attempt to develop a philosophy based on the standards of 
the Web. The intention, neither semantic nor theoretical, was never to 
implement a Theoretical Model of Reasoning, reaching the limits of 
Gnoseology, when creating a tool such as the World Wide Web.

The intention, I thought, was not to develop a philosophy for a model of 
communication and implementation of hypertext, but like all 
philosophical currents the theoretical foundations and implications of 
the Web and the W3C standards for the human knowledge process.

A basis for reflection, in terms of philosophy, that would make it 
possible to establish the standard or model for the adoption of the Web 
by humans and people, and to establish some foundations or categories, 
with respect to other equivalent but less successful or less adopted 
models, such as the Gopher protocol or the Gemini protocol, two mention 
direct competitors, not under the umbrella of the W3C

It is only through observance and from the external environment that the 
theoretical and structural approach of philosophy emerges.  We would not 
be discussing about laying the foundation of any product or project, not 
even of a vision of the World, in theoretical terms, but rather about 
laying the formal basis and about translating into some kind of jargon 
or metalanguage the categories and standards that make up the task of 
the W3C members and experts.

It was clear that The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an 
international community that develops open standards to ensure the 
long-term growth of the Web.

And long-term growth demands a long-term meta-model approach of formal 
interpretation, which in most cases, and in those activities of human 
reasoning, is provided by other fields, and Philosophy, due to the 
intrinsic relation between She and formal fields of Maths, Logic, 
Language et al.

It was not, as Henry and Alex mentioned, the goal to achieve by this 
community, to set the ground for the Web, instead, and agreed again with 
  Dr. Dainow the purpose was an overly restrictive task. A sub setting 
experience which may not find its path in our days, except to write a 
personal thesis.


Apologies for the misspell,if any, even for the required verbosity.


Best



On 2023-03-07 11:56, bd@thinkmetrics.com wrote:
> At the risk of being disruptive, I must disagree.  A philosophy of the 
> "web" is as meaningful as a philosophy of electrical devices or a 
> philosophy of clockwork machinery.  That the web can be equated with 
> systems using TCP/IP is questionable, and will be difficult as new 
> technical communication modes emerge.  And may be overly restrictive.  
> For example, to include questions such as "How we do prepare a robot to 
> understand and feel?" is immediately problematic as part of this 
> discussion if that robot cannot communicate with other devices.  The 
> question applies irrespective of the web capabilities of the robot.  As 
> IoT and AI come to permeate society to consider the role of digital 
> technology becomes equivalent to a version of a generalised philosophy 
> of modern technology.
> 
> I enjoy a productive forum, but I do think a philosophy of the web is 
> simply focused on a temporary, increasingly redundant, short stage in 
> the history of technological development.
> 
> Regards
> Dr Brandt Dainow
> bd@thinkmetrics.com
> www.thinkmetrics.com
> +353 86 248 2846
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Delfi Ramirez - DR <delfin@delfiramirez.info>
> Sent: Tuesday 7 March 2023 02:00
> To: Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net>
> Cc: public-philoweb@w3.org; Alexandre Monnin <aamonnz@gmail.com>; 
> team-community-process@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Planning to close Philosophy of the Web Community Group 
> due to inactivity unless we hear from you
> 
> Dear All:
> 
> Agredd with Henry, Philosophy of the Web.
> 
> A little short of an enormous task to be fulfiled, involving for this a
> continuous interplay of diverse aspects and specialities. Which may 
> have
> not been the case in the past years.
> 
> Apologies for not being as much as I intend. Like everyone there are a
> lot of non-profit activities and little time to fuyllfill all of them.
> 
> However, to close this space is in fact less than a sad ting. In our
> current days,  it feels and seems  more than ever needed a basis or
> skecth on the Philosophy of the Web (TCP/HTTPS protocol)  because of a
> new realitieslike  Artificial Intelligence ( or semantics applied to
> macjnes) the correct use of programming languages to develop algorithms
> which must represent the human dualism (Cartesian) versus the 
> obbligated
> Monism of a computer (Leibniz). And this can be seen feasible as we 
> work
> using cathegories or dictionaries, or vectors
> 
> Needles to say, unlike any other discipline in human activity,
> Philosophy aims to present a global, transversal vision, which enables
> the sowing of innovative lines of research and development, given that
> it acts in a universal way, targeting the whole of all. If DesCartes or
> Leibniz can be mentioned in our days is just because their foundation
> and work is still present and real. As a subset of the human actibity,
> and  more importantly, after the evolution of the Web, not as an
> engineering product, but as a platform for human interactivity, I
> consider it a pity that we do not have the necessary time to develop
> standards or guidelines born from the W3C Ciommunity to be applicable 
> to
> other entities. How does the Web should work in a model of society 
> thata
> does not allow encryption by default? How do we present in a decent
> manner that encryption has been an advantage , not a shield, for
> truusted communications, in a clear and solid manner that can be
> understood by our lawmakers?
> 
> How we do prepare a robot to understand and feel catalogues we may ask
> her to find for us? GHow in our XXIst century,  Philosophy, a 
> discipline
> that historically has beenfor the authoritieseyes only, can be of help
> in our daily voice over the web, gesture over the web interaction ? 
> Just
> mumbling. serves this, as an apology and  acertain justification for 
> the
> abandonment ofthis Philosophy of The Web Community. over the past
> months.
> 
> Shall we promote, the community  as well as to start to make use of
> collaborative platforms ( As the PWC is actually doing through Github)
> to interact each other and let others to play in, or shall be say until
> next time.
> 
> Your choice.
> 
> Best
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2023-03-06 19:20, Henry Story wrote:
>>> On 6. Mar 2023, at 19:35, Alexandre Monnin <aamonnz@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear All,
>>> 
>>> It has been inactive indeed so I won't oppose its closure unless
>>> someone comes forward.
>> 
>> 
>> The idea of a philosophy of the web group remains a very good idea.
>> The problem is that philosophy done well takes a huge amount of time,
>> requiring professional assistance. Someone needs to help people who
>> want
>> to learn and who want to do the work. But philosophy also always seems
>> to
>> anyone untrained to be something obvious and easy, and the
>> risk is that one ends up having conversations about basics using up
>> huge amount of time.
>> 
>> It is said that at the entrance of Plato�s academy was written
>> "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter�
>> 
>> Geometry provides the type of discipline that one really needs to
>> discuss
>> these topics. So I have started a group called Web Cats that looks at
>> how Category Theory can be applied to the web.
>> 
>>   https://web-cats.gitlab.io/
>> 
>> 
>> Hopefully, as a theory of the web using the unifying mathematical
>> language of
>> category theory is developed, it will be easier to ask philosophical
>> questions
>> about the web for which mathematical proofs can be provided as much as
>> possible.
>> 
>> Of course, philosophy does not reduce to mathematics. I have one short
>> proposal
>> that enters geopolitics and security called the Web of Nations that I
>> put
>> forward here:
>> 
>> https://co-operating.systems/2020/06/01/WoN.pdf
>> 
>> It builds on my second-year report for a PhD thesis
>> I started a few years ago, but for which I ran out of money
>> 
>> https://co-operating.systems/2019/04/01/
>> 
>> In the meantime, I have been building a Solid server and access 
>> control
>> libraries
>> for it.
>> 
>> My aim is now to write the thesis out in smaller pieces as
>> articles, as it is easier to produce those and find the right
>> reviewers for them.
>> 
>> In any case, I have not seen anyone really step up here to guide the
>> group.
>> That would require a paid role, I think.
>> 
>> 
>> Henry Story
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> All the best,
>>> A.M.
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Mar 6, 2023 at 7:29�PM Team Community Process
>>> <team-community-process@w3.org> wrote:
>>> Dear participants in the
>>> 
>>>   Philosophy of the Web Community Group
>>>   https://www.w3.org/community/philoweb/
>>> 
>>> Your Community Group appears to have become inactive (per [1]). W3C
>>> plans to close this group in 10 days unless we hear compelling 
>>> reasons
>>> from you to keep it open.
>>> 
>>> Thank you,
>>> 
>>> CG/BG System
>>> 
>>> [1] https://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#close-inactive
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> Henry Story
>> 
>> https://co-operating.systems
>> WhatsApp, Signal, Tel: +33 6 38 32 69 84?
>> Twitter: @bblfish
>> Mastodon: @bblfish@mathstodon.xyz

Received on Thursday, 9 March 2023 06:57:38 UTC