SYZYGY 2017
Syzygy 2017:
Everyday language holds the key to future situations involving people, places, property and plans. The Advent of the Internet broadens the horizons for those who are connected but how can it overcome the barriers to collectively-rendered critical thinking and problem-solving? Indeed, using semantic applications in civic and organizational situations is promising as code libraries and datasets grow in quantity, and to a lesser degree in quality. Currently, I am gathering thoughts on the value of attention while focusing mine on the vocabularies of ontologists and context builders. This document is yet another placeholder for a long-ranging projection of the world to come.
The Liberative Property of Mathematics
I chose the name syzygy because it’s meaning, morphology and metrics relates to the coming celestial alignment as the sun and moon draw a line connecting two very disparate kinds of places: a college campus known for its resistant and rambunctious past and a military base known for its sense of honor and valor. This peculiar transit from Carbondale to Fort Campbell inspires an unusual sense of hope, I have trouble understanding. I think it has something to do with the prospect of people finally coming together en masse sharing a very special experience that will be referred to for decades to come. If the web of data merges to align our higher natures with our deepest concerns, a rapid and wonderful change is, in my mind a certainty.
Libraries, lexicons and glossaries assemble through a planet-wide autopoiesis as humans and machines discover one another over a matrix of identity and referential taxonomy in a way that rivals nature herself. With renewed vigor in the application of theory to practical matters I see models merging within several spheres of sociology and culture as cognitive empathy for the refugee and the inmate displaces the avarice and ambition of the tycoon and the tyrant. The cultural implications of honoring ancient wisdom with modern technological prowess raises the context as our current generation builds into the fabric of the communications infrastructure a means by which the coming generations may traverse time and distance with great ease. The symbolic link and the regular expression that Dennis Ritchey and Ken Thomson yoked into the architecture of Unix for the explicit purpose of building tight community among the Human users of advanced machinery have withstood the test of protracted useage creating a toolchain capable of generation and regeneration that may soon illuminate who we are, what we can do and how we can rapidly solve our deepest problems.
The inexorable link between musical science and polynomial forms has been known since Pythagoras. If the elegance of sacred geometry met the unthinkable product of theoretical physics on a field of battle, I think the geometry would win. The capability of our species is far above the expectations expressed in the vulgar communications of commercial networks. The misuse of the terms ‘generic’ and ‘branded’ for example, reversed the connotation lowering the worth of the original qualifier as something base and inferior while the artificially promoted entity attracts inordinate attention. The conceptual framework offered by a possible syzygy of the two worlds (models) could remedy the lack of awareness that has so alienated large swaths of modern culture from the very source of its sustenance, the completely regenerative ecosystem that brought us through five mass extinctions.
Shallowness of mind will, I predict, be abhorred by future generations as the dogma and prejudice of our dark-age predecessors are today by cognizant and compassionate people. As linguistics keeps pace with mechanized transcription and translation the barriers will come down, but not without high levels of courage and discipline. The temptation to capitalize on exciting new knowledge cheapens its value within the spheres of affluence and influence. The collective mind invites the creative and generative. Syzygy, in use as a universally observable physical phenomena, a musical style, a poetic device and a comprehensible mathematical model generator combined into a singular event in coordinated universal time may not be the singularity, but if we pay attention, the universe will teach us a little something about alignment.
Layers of abstraction that emerge from more scientific instrumentation coming online such as seismometers, barometers, wind and current sensors, and a host of other direct physical inputs will certainly thicken our analytical framework in both scope and range. Syzygy within its connotation as a commutative property in mathematics is likely to expose a fourth property along with associative and distributive, which I am prematurely labelling the liberative property. If applying syzygies brings our species out of the bondage of commerce and the shipping industry and lifts the veil of avarice from our systems of justice, education and governance the liberative property will have earned its name.
Syntax and Semantics
How do we know when we are on the same page? When we write white papers about complex theories and sensitive topics, how do we know for sure who is reading them, if anyone? How does the process of peer-review work, or does it? How do we generate interest in the theories and topics we think are important, valid and relevant to not only our peers, but the whole of the Internet Public? These questions have been asked repeatedly in large open forums such as the World Wide Web Consortium and more locally (from my perspective) The Free Software Foundation. Fortunately, the process, language and vocabulary are so well documented as to render a platform for at least moving the web forward toward a just, equitable and viable model of dialog, transaction and objectivity. The HTML5/CSS3 anatomy, as a living organism functions as a central nervous system even mimicking the human form with the simple terms “head” and “body” which to me humanizes the web in a user-friendly environment of sensible context, goodwill and openness: A good start.
The next phase: Peer to Peer Development : P2P Foundation