[p2p-research] Implications of Alpha

[Ryan Lanham]

Michel:

Imagine the following system:  I trust that if I ask a question with the
right structure, I will get the answer I wanted, if the question is one of
facts.

That is the ideal of Alpha.  I could see the ideal being reached...not in
2010, but soon...maybe in 10 years.

Now imagine that asking good questions is a knowledge-management ideal...I
can imagine computers sitting around while we sleep and eat cheese
formulating questions to themselves and ordering information in all sorts of
ways.  Could Alpha mean that in 10 years Wikipedia will be written by a
machine?  Why or why not?

The questions are wonderful as epistemology and also very transhumanist:
What is inherently human?  What is an argument?  What constitutes a fact?
Where are the transitions between argument and discourse?  Where are the
transitions between fact and position?  Alpha is starting to hint at real
need to debate these items the way Sharky and Wienberger, you, etc. have
made us think about flatness, leadership, order and identity.

Ryan Lanham



On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Ryan,
>
> this is reminiscent of our debate on the future of universities ... it's an
> area we differ in I guess,
>
> for me, nothing will ever replace the written and verbal dialogue between
> humans and everything is only a tool to make that better ...
>
> yes, perhaps the research paper and blog post will take a more relative
> place in the broader whole because people are more able to have intelligent
> dialogues without middlemen
>
> but the research paper is still needed as validation mechanism in the
> existing institutional framework and I don't see a quick end to the
> democratisation of writing through blogs either ..
>
> Michel
>
> On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've been thinking about Wolfram's Alpha.  The question I'd like to ask
>> him is, what will it change.
>>
>> I saw JOHO's (David Weinberger's) interview.  It was fascinating.
>>
>> Here's my 2 cents:  The research paper and the informing blog post may be
>> dead.  Yes, stringing ideas together to make a point is still useful, but
>> now anyone can answer a question properly structured.  So, ideas may become
>> more changes of queries.
>>
>> Another separate point, Michel recently sent around an academic Call for
>> Papers for a P2P conference.  Isn't that a bit odd, inherently?  A COP on
>> P2P?
>>
>>
>> Ryan Lanham
>>
>>
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>
>
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