Monday, February 7, 2011

# 5 – Weinberger and implicit meaning


             In chapter 8 Weinberger brings up the idea of implicit meanings and a German philosopher named Martin Heidegger.  He states that "the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world" (170).  Through his (Weinberger’s, or Heidegger’s?  not sure) example of a hammer, we see how even simple concepts are explained by and linked to multiple other ideas; in our understanding of hammer is an implicit understanding of what nails are, what they are used for and numerous other concepts.  That is to say, every idea/object is understood within a much larger context.   You wouldn’t generally bother explaining the idea of a hammer or how this idea links to other ideas, because you assume that your audience also possesses an implicit understanding of what hammers are.  Another way of looking at this is to think of every idea/object as the tip of an iceberg: the part that you consciously see (explicit meanings) rests atop a huge pile of other linked concepts that you don’t need/want to address except as they are pertinent to your current situation (implicit meanings).

                Weinberger states that implicit meaning has profound implications in the third order of order.  This is because digital data is free of the limitations of physical recordings of knowledge and the conceptual limitations of traditional databases.  He mentions that a physical logbook contains knowledge, but it isn’t very accessible (p. 170-1).  An electronic database has fewer limits and allows one to easily compile and compare information, but in order to function “properly” must leave out non-essential information.  By contrast in the third order of order, where everything is metadata, we can place any idea into any of its possible contexts.  We can link a concept to any of its implicit meanings and link those meanings to their own implicit meanings.  I think that Weinberger best describes this idea when he says “The value of the potential, implicit ways of ordering the digital miscellany dwarfs the value of any particular actualization…” (p. 171)  Basically what he is saying (as I understand it), is that the virtue of the third order and implicit meaning, is not any particularly useful way of organizing things but is the multiplicity of possible orders.  Any order can be crafted to suit any situation or need (within some outer boundary of reason anyway), due to the ability to tap into and harness implicit meanings.

                As requested I have created a visual representation of implicit meaning as it applies to a song that has meaning for me.  This particular example is actually pretty shallow compared to the possibilities that could be mapped.  It’s limited somewhat by my focus on personal meaning and the fact that I didn’t want to bore anyone by following each connection out to its nth degree.  I have attempted to show why this song is meaningful via references to emotions (mostly in parentheses) as well as events and actions.  I’m not sure if a computer could make much sense of this map, but maybe with a little tagging it could be taught. 



* Apologies if the picture is sort of uncomfortable to look at.  Somehow the colors didn’t work like I’d hoped, and it’s done in Paint, so limited tools to use.

6 comments:

  1. I don't think you web connection is shallow at all! It was very well organized and it showcased how you make sense of the song. The implicit ways you see your song is very interesting!

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  2. I like your example that the tip of the iceberg is the explicit and how it rests upon a mountain of implicit. If you thought of that yourself... genius haha.

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  3. I think is interesting how you mapped you feelings of that song instead of using other labes like most of us have been doing. good job!

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  4. You say, "This particular example is actually pretty shallow compared to the possibilities that could be mapped." This is precisely the problem of making the implicit explicit. At what point does one stop? And how far can/should it really be taken? To some degree having everyone tag/label data is a start, but still, capturing everything seems impossible.

    Nice post, and great example (I loved reading the connections)

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  5. I feel like you have really hit on the heart of the issue here. Databases now bear a great deal of resemblance to data bases before computers with one important difference. There is no limit to the amount of meta data that can be stored on a single topic. In a tradition physical directory meta data was always limited by the fact that it had to be smaller then the work it was about. This limited meta data to indexes and tables of contents. Now as much meta data can be stored on an object as disk space allows. I think this comes a lot closer to matching the human thought process as we carry this type of meta data in our heads. It is we Weinberger referred to as our network of understanding. With computer that can store meta data the same way as our brains do who knows where computers might be headed.

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  6. As others said, your connections are great, especially the ice burg idea, which is really, what is seen is the explicit but there can be so much more to something that goes unseen, hence the implicit.

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