Re: Thoughts/comments on "Philosophical Engineering: Toward a Philosophy of the Web"

Hello Alexandre,

On Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 01:46:23PM +0100, Alexandre Monnin wrote:
> True, just like more or less than 25% of Wikipedia edits are generated by
> bots. I've co-written a piece myself about the evolution of the Web that
> might be somehow relevant for this discussion: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-859/

Thanks. I will read that.

> > It is difficult for me to see a *qualitative* difference between the pre
> > Web
> > state and now. What is so special about the Web ?
> 
> See above.
> 
> Also, I think the more philosophical papers tried to address this issue ;)
> My answer had to do with the very notion of "resources" and the details
> behind the making of the Web, drawing from Brian Cantwell Smith to state
> that to account for the Web, on needs to reopen questions pertaining to
> ontology, intentionality, etc.

The following question came to my mind when reading your essay: What is
the fundamental difference between "The New York Times" and http://times.com/ ?
I can walk to a kiosk at any time and say "Give me the New York Times".

> That would be my answer but Harry has another one for instance, more
> related to the extended-mind hypothesis.

I also could not see a fundamental change in Harrys example. We've had maps
for some time and those maps were updated. That more people can do this now
in a shorter timeframe does not strike me as qualitative change.

> It seemed to me that chapter 8 made a nice link between the Web and the
> Semantic Web thanks to a renewed notion of content negotiation - an idea I
> am in deep agreement with.

I really liked that essay - it resonated much with my mind. I just wondered
at the implicitness the Semantic Web was presented as next step in mind 
extension. Maybe we will one day learn important Web ontologies in school and 
use compact URIs like words :-) Or maybe the Semantic Web is simply not well 
suited or flexible enough for the human mind and other technologies will be 
used to "extend" it. The Semantic Web has its use cases anyway.

> That's why we might want to specify next what we talk about we we say "the
> Web" (not unlike what happens when we say "society"). I'm more interested
> in the architecture of the Web and its potentialities for instance but
> others might want to put forward other aspects.

True :-)

Regards,

Michael Brunnbauer

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