DrImplausible

"Modernity died at the gates of Auschwitz", which is the Lyotard quote that I usually bust out when trying to explain Postmodernism to undergrads. Even though it isn't entirely true. It probably died at Verdun and the Somme.

But the point is that the end result of the project of modernity had resulted in the development of the means of atrocity, of automatic mass death and holocaust, and the only sane move in that instance was to put it aside and move past it. Hence: "post".

Coupled with the burgeoning theories from physics, Heisenberg's uncertainty, and the rest, and the idea that perhaps we not on as solid a foundation as we thought, and the time was ripe for moving on to new ways of thinking about the world.

So how would this process work in the context of a self-organizing criticality (SOC) [0]? I've long taken that to be one of the more plausible mechanisms for getting to simple automata.

I guess this could work in conjunction with SOC, providing discrete stages for development. Interesting stuff.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organized_criticality

Games are, and won't be a "consumer luxury good", as the article states, unless we're getting into bespoke CAVE systems or Westworld-like theme parks. Consoles have achieved that point of ubiquity that they're a common household appliance, and it isn't unusual to see one. A "normal" good in other words.

The games themselves are content from a production culture standpoint, which is why we so little innovation (and lots of duplication) within the market. EGP coming out of the pipeline.

There is a salient point about the capture of leisure time, but it was written 40 years ago. Seeing as it ties into the Facebook ad policy reveal of a month ago, maybe it's worth bringing up in it's own thread.

Well, an academic paper is basically code; you have a lot of dependencies in there, and if you don't get all your #includes right, it'll likely fail to compile.

Similarly, knowledge management is inherently multi-disciplinary, so there areaot of libraries that need to be referenced. It's often easier (or necessary) to get a domain-specific SME for the topic on the list of contributing authors.

Still not as bad as some hard science papers though.

So you're saying there /are/ things that the social sciences can contribute to data science? This is my complete lack of surprise...

I'm not seeing it. Fast seconds are a thing, and will come in and take your lunch money.

I'm also not entirely sure how it connects to "defensible" software. The ability to set a standard so that you're able to build that audience that you need for a network effect to kick in is difficult, and is typically rare. It might serve well in a small niche market, but you'll be unlikely to expand past that market with out getting scooped by one of the bigger competitors.

I'm curious to learn how it's supposed to offer protection in the current environment.

Thanks for sharing; it was a good quick read, and I found it instructive.

What I'm not sure is how the lessons of a material production culture might translate to the digital one that most of HN (presumably) interacts with. Version control, getting rid of legacy systems, concentrating on the high-margin products that keep the business going. These could all be applied, correct?

I've been liking the material at https://aeon.co/ for a while now.

To pick an example out of thin air, think of stage act trying to keep a number of plates spinning. You can keep a number of them going, but the LRU one is the one most likely of falling because it's lost some energy, and you need to check it to keep it up in the air.