[Inquiry] Arisbe ~> Inquiry

[Jon Awbrey]

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EW = Elijah Wright
JA = Jon Awbrey

JA: Mind still fuzzy/flexible on the collab idea, just the notion that it
    would involve something a little bit more like "working together" on a
    common concern or toward a common goal, and something a little bit less
    like combat.

EW: more thoughts/details would probably be good ;)

they never learn ...

EW: it might be a good idea to start a new space here, rather than trying
    to layer it onto the top of the Arisbe list.  I can make a new list
    rather quickly, if you let me know what you want to call it.  ...
    and am happy to do so.

JA: Hmmm, the word "inquiry" comes to mind ...
 
EW: list created.

EW: http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/inquiry

wow!  thanks!  and so nifty, too!
i've already unblanked the slate.

EW: what sort of collaboratory experiments do you have in mind?

JA: Pretty open, I guess.  Jack Park had a nice idea with his
    Nexist project, and I put a half-year's work into that,
    but after a while the database system just couldn't
    handle the load, complexity, connectivity,
    or something, we never could figure.

EW: i have some loose familiarity with jack park's stuff ...
    fairly interesting.

yes, he's onto version 2+ last i heard,
but the idea of retyping the text and
rebuilding the structure i had before --
brrr! -- so he was supposed to let me
know when he got a good export package
up and running ...

JA: But I did get in the habit of thinking "episodically" in more
    finely granulated bits of text, and it seems like a lot of what
    the Wiki system did you could do with a standard, and much more
    stable, archiver just by maintaining some discipline with parallel
    threading, annotation, or "glossing".

EW: episodically -> narrative, at least for me.
    or maybe i'm just inured in that tradition.

yes, chunking and storytelling, stepwise e-laboration by any other name ...

EW: tools to support narrative would be fairly interesting to investigate.
    especially across very complicated problem domains.  (like peirce :) )

i used to lurk a lot on ohs & unrev & various satellite sites of engelbart's planet,
where people are always talking about the fancy new tools that they have in the works,
but it has always been a bit hard for me to see the transition from talk to action ---
though i know that it always happens, eventually --- still, i have grown impatient ...

where was i?

idea 1, was to try and develop a working "theory of inquiry" further.
this is what i'm supposed to be doing in my dissertation, and i still
have some slim hope left of making that more understandable and viable.

idea 2, that i had started up at the nexist work site, if you know anybody
who is up for a transport from pascal to a web-footed language, would be
to documnet and develop the ideas in my "theme one" program.  i may try
that again soon.

but those are just my personal bits of unfinished symphonies ---

the mind toggles, so i will leave it there ...

jon

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