"Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't."
Ted Nelson (1987)
Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Rev. ed.)
I'm not so sure people "pretend." I think they can, and they do make things hierarchical / categorizable / sequential. Why?
It's in our nature. We like things to be simple. We like things to be neat and tidy. We like quick and easy, and we like conveniently packaged. We want our information like we want fast food.
We have no time for deeply intertwingled information. We want fast information, we want abstracted information: information without all sorts of cross-connections / interrelationships. We want to understand quickly, and move on to the next thing. We have no time for intertwingularity.
Oops. That sounded kind of dark/cynical. (Oh well. Shoulder shrug. Sorry?)
Think of it from a business perspective: we want easier to understand, easier to manage, easier to plan, easier to justify resources (and probably as few resources as possible), and so and and so forth ad nauseam.
But then, is there is a price to pay? Are people looking at "whatever" with tunnel vision? Have people lost information ?
That got me thinking:
Do big projects fail entirely, or wind up finishing late (and/or way over budget), because a process of abstraction weeded out intertwingularity and, as a result, information critical to success ?
What kind of problems (in whatever context) can we run into when we weed out (or otherwise ignore) intertwingularity ?
What kind of messes can we run into when we create (and rely on) nice and tidy hierarchies / categories / sequences ?
Oh boy, I'll be having a long chew on all of that...
No comments:
Post a Comment