The philosophy of information infrastructure
It just occurred to me while jamming my Saturday morning sunny-side-ups down my gullet that just as the way in which cities are built and designed reflects the philosophical underpinnings of said urban architects –
Moses wanted to keep the people who couldn’t afford their own private cars off of parkways like the Hutch; those scenic views were the provenance of the wealthy (read: white) hence bridges with low overpasses
– so too is the way in which databases and online communities are built a reflection of the philosophies of said DBAs.
- Which nuggets of information are valuable?
- How will we determine who qualifies to see what?
- How do we measure and evaluate our fellow humans?
I am wondering if there are any academic explorations of these themes. (Relationship between the philosophy of built communities and the philosophy of database structure, notions of the worldviews information database design, etc.)
Has anyone seen anything that pushes this further? I’d like to know what the prevailing theories are.
Information becomes knowledge becomes understanding becomes wisdom.
(NB: each of those “becomes” is actually a “becomes subscript n, becomes subscript n+1″ etc.; note that the fxn “becomes” will not be defined at this time.)
Okay, back to my protein. Anyone up for a swim at the NYSC on 49th and Broadway later?
you mean like a Realpolitik of the internet?
ummmm… you can get a Doctorates in Philosophy of Information on this topic. Current theories are dependent on application, which is where most db’s are more likely to be concerned with. As for the direction that things are going towards.. that’s one of those 4 course meal, coffee into the wee hours of the morning kind of conversation
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pci/ - best intro book on PI. I’ve pulled some ideas on my current work in autonomous parsing / indexing within loose taxonomy constructs for vertical markets. Current side project with some IDs at HUGE Inc. here.