one small voice

stpeter's blog on jabber, technology, history, philosophy, et alia

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2002-09-30

Busy

Why I haven't been blogging.

We just launched a new website at www.jabber.org. I'm sure there are wrinkles to be ironed out, but it feels great to finally release this!

Posted on 2002-09-30 at 22:41. File under personal.

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2002-09-28

Pragmatism

Thoughts on the progressive march of science and practical knowledge.

I just read (and re-read) the text of a dogma-busting speech that science fiction writer David Brin gave at the national Libertarian Party convention this year. Brin's insights apply to more than just libertarians -- they apply to anyone who cares about the future. It's been a long time since I've read something that questions so many assumptions and false premises. His perspective is that of someone who values freedom and the future above any ideological "ism". He points out that people live better and more freely now than at any time in human history, and that the best platform for paradise is near-paradise (no, paradise is not an option, and he knows it). Despite the continuing power of elites in our society and rise of bureaucratic power, more people are more free and more self-actualized than ever. Rather than hearking back to some time when everything was perfect (I hate to break it to you, but the past was dismal), we need to look forward. And not forward in a revolutionary, ideologically-pure, holier-than-thou, I-know-the-truth-whereas-you're-a-clueless-schmuck manner, but in a spirit that is hopeful, progressive, evolutionary, and scientific. He advocates a practical, cheerful libertarianism that seems somewhat similar to my idea of a progressive libertarianism.

Brin's perspective comports with a lot of the thinking I've been doing of late, spurred by continued reading in the fields of history and science. Sure I started out my intellectual life as a fire-breathing radical Randian. But more and more I see that ideologies and isms are not the answer, no matter how good it feels to think that one has all the answers because of the special philosophical insights one has gleaned from reading whatever authors one holds dear. In the long run, philosophy is nearly useless. What matters is verifiable truth in the form of scientific knowledge. And that comes about only when a field separates from philosophy, when it matures enough to stand on its own. Philosophy has been the nebula from which stars such as cosmology, anthropology, economics, and psychology have emerged. With the advancement of neuroscience and psychology and such, we are just beginning to witness the emergence of epistemology as the science of knowledge. And I think eventually we will experience the scientific emergence of even so fractious a field as ethics (or politics!). And science leads inevitably not to ideology but to practical knowledge, even to pragmatism (that bugaboo of all good ideologues). And um, yes, pragmatism is good. For the point of knowledge is not intellectual hygiene but the success of human life on earth (and perhaps the stars if we get that far).

There is much more to chew on in Brin's speech, which is simply brimming with challenges to all good ideologues. But don't take my word for it -- read it!

Posted on 2002-09-28 at 20:52. File under philosophy.

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2002-09-21

Instauratio Magna

Baconian reflections.

One of my favorite philosophers is the late Hao Wang. I started reading his books in college and even corresponded with him a bit, but I was young and foolish at the time and I don't think I had much of value to say to him. (Philosophy is wasted on the young.) Wang is interesting to me not so much for his positive views in philosophy but for his searching tone, his desire to harmonize the Chinese philosophy of his youth with the Western tradition of analytic thought (see a related book review of mine), and for his focus on ambitious philosophical projects rather than the small problems and analytical minutiae that too often dominate academic philosophy. One intriguing project Wang suggested was an updated version of Francis Bacon's Instauratio Magna of 1620. Bacon's project, which he never finished, was to have consisted of six parts:

The division of the sciences: a summary or general description of the knowledge which the human race at present possesses
The new organon, or directions concerning the interpretation of nature
The phenomena of the universe, or a natural and experimental history
The ladder of the intellect, or the thread of the labyrinth: a scale of ascent in proven knowledge from lesser to greater axioms
The forerunners: pieces of knowledge experimentally derived but not yet placed in the new synthesis
The new philosophy, or active science

Wang notes in Beyond Analytic Philosophy: Doing Justice to What We Know that, over 350 years after Bacon, parts 3 and 5 have been absorbed into the special sciences and would not be part of a modern instauration. Part 2 would need to be updated to account for progress in methods of thinking and investigation since Bacon's time, especially in fields like biology and psychology which were not independent sciences in 1620. Part 4 is something that has been out of fashion for some time, but Wang argues well that an inductive axiomatization of existing knowledge would provide the foundation and scaffolding necessary for building up a new philosophy or active science that "does justice to what we know" (as a first step towards also doing justice to what we feel and how we live).

A recent thinker who was also interested in large projects, philosophical systems, and even axioms of knowledge was Ayn Rand, whose ideas I absorbed at an early age. I recently re-read an essay by the late Ron Merrill entitled Axioms: The Eightfold Way, in which he seeks to organize and explicate Rand's philosophical axioms. Re-reading Merrill has led me to write up my own formulations of some fundamental truths:

Entities exist. (Solipsism and radical skepticism are false.)
Every entity has an identity. (To be is to be something.)
Some entities are alive: they remain in existence only because they engage in self-generated activity (for individual existence) and reproduction (for species existence).
Some living entities are conscious: they are able to identify other entities.
Some conscious entities are conceptual: they are able to consider non-identical entities as units of a class based on similarities among members of the class and differences between that class and all other classes.
Conceptual entities use words to stand for units of a class as well as the attributes and activities of entities.
Words can be organized to produce statements of fact about entities.
Every statement of fact is either true or false (but not both).

I'm not sure how valuable this kind of exercise is, and I'm not sure that all of these statements are axiomatic in Merrill's sense of being foundational and undeniable. But, following Wang, I'm not sure that it is all that important for observations to be foundational. To me that smacks of Cartesian or Spinozistic rationalism and the derivation of all knowledge from a handful of axioms. Bacon's inductive approach is more true, I think, and that's one reason I find Wang's ideas so potentially fruitful. It's not a philosophical axiom that some entities are alive or that some living entities have awareness or that some aware entities use concepts or generative languages, but those facts are certainly key aspects of human existence and of what we know about the world.

Obviously these are only a handful of statements about the world. We could extend such statements in many directions: toward ethics, toward the realm of feeling, toward particular sciences, and the like. Doing so in a simultaneously inductive and deductive manner, and spiraling back over topics to continually integrate the resulting insights, might yield the kind of web of knowledge that Wang hoped might provide the basis for a new philosophy.

There are connections here to the ideas of Jacob Bronowski, too, but I'll leave that for a future entry.

Posted on 2002-09-21 at 21:22. File under philosophy.

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The Journal of a Mind

Nietzsche as blogger.

As previously mentioned in this space, I'm slowly reading through all the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. As the rate of a few pages a night I'm currently reading Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, the first of his books to employ what is usually referred to as his aphoristic style. Yet that moniker does not do justice to how Nietzsche was philosophizing after he finished his Untimely Meditations. After publishing "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" in 1876, all of Nietzsche's books consist almost entirely of fairly brief reflections on a wide range of topics. Often he writes about the same topics again and again, spiraling back to think and rethink his views on art, science, history, culture, individualism, and the like. In a book like Human, All Too Human, most of the "entries" consist of a short title and a paragraph (from one or two sentences up to several pages). Given that most of this material originated in Nietzsche's notebooks (suitably polished for publication), I've come to see Nietzsche's writings as the greatest journal of a single human mind ever created. There is an alarmingly personal quality to his writings, and a singular directness. Indeed, Nietzsche's books feel an awful lot like a philosophical weblog! If I had the time and the grasp of German, I'd translate one entry from Nietzsche's books every day. What a project! Even just volume one of Human, All Too Human contains 638 entries. The complete Nietzsche would probably take twenty years or more. Maybe it would make more sense as a collaborative weblog. Hmm...

Posted on 2002-09-21 at 20:20. File under philosophy.

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Gumbo

Groupchat again.

Whew! A few hours ago I released a new version of my JEP for multi-user chat in Jabber. From September 17th until today I've gone from version 0.3 to version 0.6 by releasing a new revision every day. Thanks to feedback from many of the smart minds in the Jabber community, this proposal is really starting to come into its own. And David Sutton (a.k.a. peregrine) says he already has a code framework half worked-out for an implementation! Having a solid groupchat protocol (and implementations) will definitely strengthen the overall Jabber "offering".

Jabber on!

Posted on 2002-09-21 at 16:49. File under jabber.

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2002-09-16

Why Be Open?

The research results are in.

Andy Oram reports on FLOSS, a study of free and open-source software use in Europe. Fascinating reading.

Posted on 2002-09-16 at 21:47. File under technology.

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2002-09-13

.LRN

E-learning and Jabber.

JSF member Talli Somekh contacted me recently about .LRN, an open e-learning platform being developed at MIT and elsewhere. I've always been interested in e-learning given my academic leanings and early experience in instructional design. It seems that the .LRN folks are intrigued by possible integration of Jabber functionality into their platform, which sounds like a great idea. Right now they're mainly interested in standard presence and IM features, but I can definitely see the day when they might want to use Jabber for event notification, remote procedure calls, and maybe some workflow applications using jabber:x:data. Talli and I are going to put together a short proposal for the .LRN folks regarding the possibilities of Jabber integration, so hopefully this story will evolve over time.

Posted on 2002-09-13 at 16:44. File under jabber.

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Books4Geeks

Required reading.

Two things that computer geeks do a lot of are sitting and typing. Unfortunately, as I know from personal experience, that can lead to both back trouble and wrist trouble. The best books I've found on these topics are The Back Pain Help Book and End Your Carpal Tunnel Pain Without Surgery. They're probably available at a public library near you, so if you sit a lot and type a lot, do yourself a favor and check 'em out.

Posted on 2002-09-13 at 16:21. File under technology.

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Words4Nerds #5 and #6

Further fun with language.

I haven't posted any "words of the week" in a while, though I wrote some on my whiteboard a fortnight or so ago, and this week as well. I can't quite recall Words4Nerds #5 (I know prevaricate, dissemble, and dubiety were on the list), but this week's words, on the theme of power and authority, are as follows:

hegemonistic -- relating to the pursuit of dominance
obeisance -- an act or gesture of subservience
puissant -- full of strength and power
magisterial -- in the manner of a master or ruler; imperious
autarchy -- absolute power, despotism

That last word provides a fine segue to the first entry in Words4Nerds #7 (strange and obscure terms from the dismal science of economics), but we'll have to wait a week or two for those!

Posted on 2002-09-13 at 07:36. File under language.

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2002-09-12

Groupchat

A protocol gumbo.

I just published version 0.2 of JEP-0045, which sets out a proposed Jabber protocol (or set of protocols) for multi-user chat. Of course we already have groupchat within Jabber, but some commonly-requested features are lacking. Hopefully this JEP will plug the holes. Expect more revisions shortly based on discussion happening on the Standards JIG mailing list.

Posted on 2002-09-12 at 16:44. File under jabber.

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2002-09-10

Booking It (II)

Jabber Handbook update.

Hmm, yesterday the New York Times reported (and the Slashdot community discussed) the fact that Bruce Perens has left HP. I hope he's still editor of the HP Open Source Series -- the old URL on HP's site is now inactive (history being rewritten even as we speak?).

Despite the potential turmoil on the marketing front, I've been going full spead ahead on writing. So far I've been putting all the content into the CVS repository for the JabberManual project on JabberStudio, converting everything to DocBook XML and cleaning up the text as I go. All that content will go onto the new jabber.org website we're scheduled to launch by October 1st (get a sneak peek at http://stage.jabber.org/). Once the new site is up, I'll fork the JabberManual project and continue working on the content for the Jabber Handbook in a separate CVS tree. As previously mentioned, the Jabber Handbook will be covered under the Open Publication License but the JabberManual content is optimized for the jabber.org website and there's content I'll write especially for the book, so I think it makes sense to fork the project once the new site is live. And I'm excited about the new website, too -- it's really going to make it easier for people to get started with Jabber! (And there are more and more newcomers all the time -- I guess coverage like yesterday's interview with Jeremie in the Investor's Business Daily doesn't hurt. :)

Posted on 2002-09-10 at 10:49. File under jabber.

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2002-09-06

Who Owns the Air? (Part III)

More thoughts on open protocols.

I spent most of the morning wrapping my head around issues of intellectual property while putting together the next revision of an IPR policy for the Jabber Software Foundation. This IPR stuff is a tangled thicket. What I'm struggling with is how to ensure that the JSF's IPR policy purely reflects the fact that the Jabber protocol is as free as the air. In the terms of copyright law this seems to mean that the protocol exists in the public domain. And when people contribute to the protocol by means of Jabber Enhancement Proposals, we want to make sure that the enhancement doesn't pollute the public nature of the protocol. I've tried to capture all that in the (preliminary) version 0.3 of the IPR policy. But somehow I think there's still more we need to do here -- I'm just not sure what it is. I guess it's time to call in the lawyers. To that end, I emailed Lawrence Lessig, but he's awfully busy so I wouldn't expect him to reply. Well, at least we can discuss this among the members of the JSF's newly-elected Board of Directors.

For completeness, here's what I sent to Professor Lessig:

The Jabber Software Foundation, of which I am the Executive Director, is currently formulating an intellectual property rights policy. We feel it is critically important that the Jabber XML protocol remain free from all encumbrances, including any claims of ownership. Indeed, even the Jabber Software Foundation does not assert ownership over the protocol. It seems that the safest course is to make it clear that the protocol exists in the public domain, and that any proposed enhancements to the protocol are also in the public domain (the Jabber Software Foundation manages such enhancements through a process similar to that used by the IETF). It seems that this would both ensure (1) that the protocol is free and open for use by any implementer under any license, and (2) that no one could attempt to patent technologies based on the open protocol.

Do you know of any other protocols that have been explictly added to the public domain in this manner? If so, have they successfully met the two conditions described above?

BTW, while attempting to educate myself today about intellectual property matters, I came across the following quote from Thomas Jefferson:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Old TJ struck the right tone there. To translate it into Jabber terms, the XML protocol used in the Jabber community is an idea, pure and simple. Documentation of that protocol can be copyrighted, as can implementations of the protocol, but the protocol itself is "expansible over all space" (Jabber Everywhere?) and is "incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation".

Posted on 2002-09-06 at 13:27. File under jabber.

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2002-09-05

Classics

Brief thoughts on humanist education.

One of my three faithful readers pointed me to a provocative interview with Tracy Lee Simmons, author of Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. Well, it's provocative to me, anyway, since I majored in classics (along with philosophy). I certainly think that my humanist education has stood me in good stead, though sometimes I wish I'd at least taken a few programming classes.

Posted on 2002-09-05 at 15:13. File under philosophy.

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2002-09-04

Whew!

A report on the JSF's annual meeting.

OK, sorry I've been so quiet lately, but I've been cranking away on preparations for the annual meeting of the Jabber Software Foundation. This was definitely non-trivial! So many details to attend to (and I am not a detail person): early voting, receiving proxy authorization from 50+ people, keeping track of who had voted and who hadn't, making sure we were in compliance with the organization's bylaws, preparing an agenda, lining up a conference call service, counting the votes, running the meeting, finding a volunteer scribe (thanks pgm!), writing the meeting minutes, and then following up by setting up new mailing lists, purging more inactive members, and so on -- yow! I'm blitzed. But with a new Board of Directors, a new Jabber Council, and a more focused membership, I think we can finally tackle some major issues facing the JSF. For starters that will include clearing up lingering issues surrounding the Jabber trademark, finalizing an IPR policy, strengthening the JabberPowered program, and raising more money so we can do things like have a real presence at open-source conventions. So let's get busy!

Posted on 2002-09-04 at 16:12. File under jabber.

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2002-09-03

FUD Fighters

Clearing the air on Slashdot.

Yesterday discussion broke out on Slashdot about last Friday's CNET article regarding Jabber and the IETF. The FUD was flying fast and furious (to be charitable, what sounded an awful lot like FUD may have been merely a big bunch of serious misunderstandings). Check out the comments and you'll see that Jabber old-timers like me and temas were actively fighting the good fight there for a while. Hopefully we cleared things up and helped a few more people understand what Jabber is all about.

One of the main FUD-like issues revolved around whether Jabber Inc. has patents over Jabber technology, to which the answer is a resounding no. As I said in my last post:

Jabber Inc. does not (and almost certainly never will) hold patents related to Jabber. However it does assert copyright over its own code. When Joe said "IPR" he meant copyright, but others took that to mean patents. So one more time, y'all sing along with the chorus: "There are no Jabber patents!"

And as I said in my penultimate post:

As both Joe Hildebrand (Jabber Inc. Chief Architect) and I explained, Jabber Inc. holds copyright on the code it has written (who wouldn't copyright their own code?). Jabber Inc. does not hold patents on implementations of the Jabber protocol, it has not applied for such patents, it does not intend to apply for such patents, and even if it or some other entity wanted to apply for such patents, they would not be granted because the open-source jabberd server and various Jabber clients would certainly be counted as prior art. Ergo the concerns raised about Jabber Inc. or some other company squelching development of open-source or commercial code compliant with the Jabber protocol are entirely without foundation. So take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy the Jabber goodness already. :)

We won't even talk about what I said in my antepenultimate post! (But seriously, how often do you get to use the word 'antepenultimate', eh?)

Posted on 2002-09-03 at 21:01. File under jabber.

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2002-09-02

On Public Things

More thoughts on politics.

After working all day on Jabber stuff and listening much of the time to Beatles music, I'm in a reflective mood about politics yet again. A member of the Colorado LP took me to task via email today for quitting the field, since I'm allegedly disgusted by the messy reality of practical politics, in which there are no rules and the ends justify the means. That's quite possible -- despite my time as a libertarian activist back in the mid-nineties, I think there is a certain wisdom in remaining outside the sordid fray of political maneuvering. George Harrison, my favorite songwriter among the Beatles, had the following inscribed in his passport: "In no way will I take part or interfere in government politics, but will assist in every way possible to bring about better understanding without creating any conflict."

Harrison's attitude here is quite Epicurean. Here are some relevant quotes by and about Epicurus:

One must free oneself from the prison of general education and politics. (Vatican Sayings, 58)

The wise man does not participate in civic life. (On Ways of Life)

Epicurus and Metrodorus urge their adherents to avoid public life and express disgust for those who participate in it, abusing the earliest and wisest lawgivers and urging contempt for the laws.... (Plutarch, Against Colotes)

The advice of Epicurus to steer clear of political entanglements is of a piece with his saying "lathe biosas" -- variously translated as live inconspicuously, live unknown, even live forgotten. It's an intriguing, almost Eastern, idea, similar in some ways to my idea of letting go of ought. Yet obviously even Epicurus did not live unknown -- he is said to have written 300 books, he founded a school of philosophy that lasted hundreds of years, and he is remembered even to this day. However, he pointedly did not get involved in contemporary politics -- instead he pursued a life of quiet happiness, friendship, and contemplation. I suppose this perspective has influenced my own conduct of life to a great degree; indeed, my poem In the Garden pays explicit homage to Epicurus:

In the garden of my life
I'm done with anger, done with strife.
I cultivate my own few joys
far from this culture's buzzing noise.

Colonnade and marketplace,
fame's small change and money's race,
academe's cold haughty tower --
have no meaning, hold no power.

Letting go of shoulds and oughts,
I concentrate on greener thoughts
and find as I fulfill my soul
that things spin calmly in control,

that though events conspire still,
they tend to bend towards my will.
No greater cause achieves the measure
than that of my own reasoned pleasure.