scr Cross Polination

[Simon Wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jesus Fucking H Christ (no offence meant to the religious members of the
group) - TWO POSTS! In a day. What is the world coming to?

It;s been a 'thing' for me for a while but I've been thinking of cross
polination of disciplines. Stephen Wolfram, a physicist by
profession attempts to explain biology in 'a new kind of science' - some
of the most interesting discoveries have been done by people crossing
from one discipline to another - problems that have been pondered over
for decades by one group of people are solved instantaneously by another
group - "Oh, that looks just like $foo. We solved that years ago" - I
sometimes read over IA stuff like faceted classification and think
"Wait, that's just Relational Databases - why are you people arguing
over this and/or saying it's this great new thing?" 

It's also nice to hear both points of view sometimes. Take CCTVs ...
plenty of people think that they're part of continuous movement to erode
our rights and our privacy whereas, I suspect, people like John Q
Average Policeman think that that's a fair price to pay for protecting
the streets - that if it saves one girl from getting raped as she walks
home alone then that far outstrips the complaints of someone whining
that, despite the fact that they're not doing anything, they've been
filmed all the way to the supermarket and back.

So, imagine a hypothetical panel with, say 2-4 people on it from
different disciplines who were going to talk about how their work
crosses over to the others'. What would you like to see.

A poet, a linguist and a programming language designer?

A computer game designer, a novelist and a advert/commercial/trailer
director talking about narrative, pacing and suspension of disbelief?

An actor, a lawyer and a compulsive liar?

[insert your own ideas here]

This kind of has relevance to this very list. Whilst resolutely and
dogmatically 'on topic' (whatever that means) it's fairly small (about
70 subscribers I think), low traffic and, to be frank, quite an effort
to keep going. 

Compare this to say (void) (rarely on topic, plenty of momentum), 300
(A.N Other list I'm on - nomiminally on topic, off topic discussion
allowed, low volume, high signal to noise, has momentum), Slashdot (high
volume, high noise, LOTS of momentum). When talking to the person who
set up 300 they expressed the opinion that they wanted it to be like
"getting a load of smart people down the pub and letting them talk. A
lot of it will be bollocks but fun but other bits will be fascinating".
Interestingly enough a monthly meet called Think While You Drink has
sprung up round it and it *is* exactly like that (if I sound surprised
then I shouldn't be). Interstingly enough the london bots type movement
(for want of a better word) sort of sprung from this list (sort of -
it does have its own), met up in a few pubs, and now has a thriving irc
channel called #bots on irc.rhizomatic.net which is very much like
people just nattering which interesting stuff coming out of the
nattering.

I'm going to shut up now. There's a question in there somewhere. Go find
it.

Simon 

-- 
: third time's a charm