http://transducer.ontoligent.com "One is always located at a post through which various kinds of messages pass." Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:14:10 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/643 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/643#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:24:19 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=643 My friend and colleague, David Miller (English, South Carolina), sends this along: The University of South Carolina is seeking to appoint a Research Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities.  Here is the text of the job advertisement: Research Assistant Professor, Digital Humanities The University of South Carolina College of Arts & Sciences seeks to appoint a specialist in Digital [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/643/feed 0 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/627 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/627#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:35:43 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/627 “We must jump off Lévi-Strauss ’s bus one stop before he does.” Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider, p. 149. It is hard to overestimate the infliuence of Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French philosopher turned anthropologist who liked to be known as a craftsman, on the discourse of the humanities and social sciences in the second half of [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/627/feed 0 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/599 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/599#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:01:47 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=599 Musings on Zacks, the Hippocampus, and Kafka NOTE: This article has been modified slightly since I originally posted it.  The section on the hippocampus has been subordinated to an inline note.  It is interesting (at least I think so) but not part of the main argument I’m trying to make here. A few weeks ago I had [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/599/feed 1 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/534 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/534#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:33:35 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=534 When I get the time, I’m going to write a vocabulary creation language to support structuralist text interpretation.  It will consist of two specs: one to handle the marking up the surface features of text, such as rhetorical figures and tropes.  This will be based on my work with the Princeton Charrette Project and it [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/534/feed 7 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/498 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/498#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 15:09:32 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=498 Comparative ontology asserts that humans already have ontologies, and that machine ontologies are both projections of human ontologies (those of the numerati) and material agents that intervene in the ongoing reproduction of ontologies (everyone else’s).  Developers of ontologies for the web of linked data would do well to understand the nature of human ontologies, as [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/498/feed 0 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/482 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/482#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 14:41:41 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=482 I am all for user-driven design methodologies. My instinct is to distrust the Central IT ethos of “we know better” because “we think more rationally about things” and all that.  That perspective is based on a simultaneous over-valuing of a linear, rational notion of process (“planning”) and a grudging acceptance of user behavior as “cultural” [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/482/feed 0 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/434 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/434#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 14:15:21 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=434 I suppose it is the prerogative of different generations to simultaneously dismiss and retrieve old ideas by introducing new words for them. I have in mind words like “metacognition” and “knowledge management.” In both cases there is an existing word that more or less describes the referent of the new(ish) word: epistemology and [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/434/feed 0 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/407 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/407#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:22:35 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=407 Symbols — from core symbols like the Virgin of Guadalupe to abstract ones like the whiteness of Melville’s whale — fix and generate ontological categories.  How and why this happens is a question of deep interest to me, but that it is true seems obvious and well established.  Human beings create symbols like plants produce [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/407/feed 3 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/392 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/392#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:31:51 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=392 Just as institutions require shared ontologies to function, so are institutions involved in creating the categories that nake up ontologies.  Admittedly, assigning agency to institutions poses a number of questions that need to be answered; I won’t attempt that here.  Essentially, I follow Mary Douglas (see video below), especially her How Institutions Think.  The categories [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/392/feed 0 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/370 http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/370#comments Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:26:26 +0000 ontoligent http://transducer.ontoligent.com/?p=370 This is the first in a series of posts in which I define some of the tenets of comparative ontology, in order try to flesh out its significance to the work of making and using RDF vocabularies. The overwhelming conclusion to be drawn from the ethnographic record is that human beings are surprisingly structured in their [...]]]> http://transducer.ontoligent.com/archives/370/feed 0