TimPenner.ca - concepts

chomskyism

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2024-03-17T15:05:49+00:00

Chomskyism Noam Chomsky is widely credited with changing the world that studies language and languages, which influences neuropsychology. I’m calling this path Chomskyism and his acolytes Chomskyites. Chomsky has detached the human faculty of language from the human need and ability to communicate, which includes the production and discernment of languages in numerous forms, carried in various media. Language is about decoding meaning from a received language and encoding meaning in a languag…

code

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T20:13:46+00:00

Code This is an important word in the computer programming business. Code comes from the act of encoding a sequence of instructions for a computational device into some language in some medium. By this, I refer generally to the act of writing a computer program, no matter the encoding scheme or mechanism. So, writing an old Fortran program on paper and then sitting at a keypunch machine to create punched cards with characters that represent code cut into them is logically analagous to sitting a…

collaborative_dimensions

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T17:10:23+00:00

Collaborative Dimensions These are unlike Wilkes' Media Dimensions. For any context within which collaboration operates, especially those in which various media are deployed to facilitate the collaboration, collaborative dimensions are the functions or tools available for working together.

compilers_versus_interpreters

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:36:51+00:00

Compilers versus Interpreters This is a fine point as far as everyone but computer programmers are concerned. A compiler is a computer process that converts source code into an intermediate state on the way to becoming a usable computer program. Typically,

enframing

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T17:07:21+00:00

Enframing Enframing (VERY BRIEFLY) is the capacity of a tool or medium to confine user behaviour. The person becomes a part of the system the tool engenders instead of the tool being a liberating extension of the person. I got the term enframing from Heim and found extensive validation in Bijker. See especially Bijker Review.

extensionism

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T17:13:26+00:00

Extensionism Extensionism is the fundamental tenet that media are not just simple appliances with which we solve simple little problems (like toasters), nor does the usual definition of media as in news media present a satisfactory view. Media are, by definition, extensions of our physical, psychic and social ourselves; we remake ourselves through them.

functions_and_recursive_functions

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:39:26+00:00

Functions and recursive functions The advent of stored-program devices was the first and key event that presaged programmability and, ultimately, computer technology. The second event was the advent of the function subprogram. Consider a player piano with its music roll. You put the roll in and the piano plays the tune to the end, according to the sequence of the marks (or holes) in the roll. Image what it would be like if you could make holes in the roll that wo't realize: the marks in the ro…

intelligence_amplification

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T20:22:05+00:00

Intelligence amplification I first encountered this term in Scot Gardiner's A History of Media (2002). This is as opposed to the basic concept of making ourselves smarter as Donald Norman explains in his Things That Make Us Smart (1993). Gardiner sees how human intelligence has evolved through identifiable phases because of the amplification process enabled by our innate ability to adopt and adapt to various media.

interests_manager

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T20:27:22+00:00

Interests manager This is a technique used by Amazon to suggest items of interest, whether CDs or books, to their customers. The software keeps track of all the kinds of material everyone looks at and purchases. It is then possible, based on interest and buying patterns, to suggest new material based on what appear to be common and collective interests. This is described well in Andy Clark's

language

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T21:09:14+00:00

Language Noam Chomsky has led us to understand language as a biologically-based computational mechanism that can manifest in communication, most powerfully as languages - spoken, written and signed. The precise mechanism is not well understood but much has been said, most originally by Chomsky, about what it seems to accomplish and the patterns in its behaviour, not to mention the astounding built-in creativity that can generate a human language then present it to others for consumption.

linguistic_construct

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T21:10:54+00:00

Linguistic construct There is language and then there are languages. I'll glibly suggest that languages manifest as mental representations in media. Some languages are hardened by tradition and necessity into explicit rules-based systems of communication. Others are less so, perhaps communicating feelings rather than something as explicit as a story or an accounting. Consider a typical spoken or written language versus dance or photography.

linguistic_reflexivity

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:20:54+00:00

Linguistic reflexivity The end point of this is that we can construct or describe language with language. I wish I had another term for this concept because it's a tad intimidating/pretentious, but I can't think of one. It has to do with two particular features of language that we use pretty well constantly.

linguisticity

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T19:01:35+00:00

Linguisticity I need this term to induce discussion of the characteristics of language as a medium and, more so, of languages as media. There is language and then there are languages. What is the job of language? What is the job of each language? How well do languages do their jobs? Do absolutely all languages, including the ones we invent in computer technology, have anything meaningful in common? Is there a process or method for understanding language - how it is constructed, how it operates…

loose_coupling

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:27:41+00:00

Loose coupling Loosely coupled parts is a maxim of those who build re-usable and open processing systems. Loose coupling is also a feature of natural or naturally evolved systems. To start, consider Small Parts Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web

media_dimensions

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:06:48+00:00

Media dimensions The point here is to wrap your head around how the various dimensions of media contribute to their interpretation and consequent value. I have yet to spend any bandwidth (in this site) explaining how their influences manifest in the discussion of tools.

media

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:28:09+00:00

Media Interesting word, media. Many understand media as newspapers, television and radio, as in news media and broadcast media. If you talk to a computer techy, media are disks and tapes. Telecommunications engineers think ethernet, wireless and broadband. We also have sociologists who understand communication as it works within culture for whom media means books, billboards, photos, email, anything that carries information. (Go figure: they call the content of media texts. Think about the text…

nam-shub

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:16:09+00:00

Nam shub I'll start with a passage from Neil Stephenson's Snowcrash (pp. 211-212): “A nam-shub is a speech with magical force. The closest English word would be 'incantation,' but this has a number of incorrect connotations.” He goes on with: Nowadays, people don't believe in these kind of things. Except in the Metaverse, that is, where magic is possible. The Metaverse is a fictional structure made out of code. And code is just a form of speech - the form that computers understand. The Metaver…

protocol

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T20:04:15+00:00

Protocol A protocol defines the three aspects of a communicable relationship of two or moreentities, whether people or computer programs. The assumption is that the relationship is established in order to do something that the entities participate in. This sounds like a contract - which is exactly what it is.

reciprocal_determinism

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T19:09:10+00:00

Reciprocal determinism

recombinant_functionality

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T19:06:37+00:00

Recombinant functionality This is a computer-based concept that explains how various functions programmed into computers are combined, and recombined, to achieve new capabilities. The idea of combining functions on a computer is pretty old and very well established. Programmers have not only been strongly encouraged to recombine functions from the beginning of commercial programming, but a mark of success of a programmer is how well his or her work has created for re-use and how often re-use ha…

reflexivity_of_programming_languages

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:28:38+00:00

Reflexivity of Programming Languages You should read the related concept, linguistic reflexivity, before consuming this. The part about using language to describe language is especially important. Story time: when I was in college (early 70's), I came to the conclusion that a programming language that cannot be used to define itself isn't really a programming language at all. Computer programmers know what I'm talking about when I say this but most others don't.

reflexivity

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:31:52+00:00

Reflexivity Reflexivity is, quite simply, self-reference. Hofstadter beats the subject to death (1979) by discussing at length how sentences can be self-referencial. For example, “This sentence is short.” People are reflexive when they make references to themselves.

situated_cognition

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:15:35+00:00

Situated Congnition The revelation of this concept has added new dimensions to this work. This is not so much an explanation of the concept itself as a discussion of the connections, which I'm starting to find overwhelming. I now have a field with which I'm innately conversant, that now has much foundational material readily available, through which I can communicate with other scholars in the business. The field, although consisting of views from many different disciplines besides cognitive sc…

social_determinism

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:32:50+00:00

Social Determinism This concept came to me in a flash while I was reading McLuhan (1964, pp. 9-11) and I was thinking about how media determine/enable social behaviour, whether positive or negative. McLuhan was expressing annoyance over General David Sarnoff's address to the University of Notre Dame on receipt of his honourary degree.

soft_tool_culture

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T15:51:55+00:00

The Soft Tool Culture I hope we're going to stop using the term information society. I do realize that it refers to the fact that information itself has become a commodity, whereas energy was previously the stuff of economies. The thing is that all creatures work with data that pours in through senses to be interpreted into information and ultimately meaning that stimulates action of some kind. And, in the case of social insects, such as bees and ants, received data can be encoded meaning share…

software

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:32:55+00:00

Software (This is a work in progress.) The human artifact we call software needs to be explained for the sake of those who don't like magic. This article describes what it is, how it is created and shared through software development process, and how something that has no substance can affect our physical reality.

temes

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-28T13:33:27+00:00

Temes You've no doubt heard of genes - self-replicating biochemical agents of heredity. You may of heard of memes, a hypthetical (to some) unit of “cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena

the_basic_property_of_language

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:29:26+00:00

The Basic Property of Language Chomsky talks about the basic property of languages that he needs as a shorthand to refer to, I’m looking for something that is a basic property of language. With this, he, of course, stipulates that to be considered human languages, they must have this property (Chomsky, 2016).

the_toolshop_story

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T18:32:05+00:00

The Toolshop Story This is not so much a concept explanation, but the story behind the concept. How It Started I first thought of the toolshop effect many years ago when I was attempting to explain the concept of software to people who knew very little about computers. Here is the core of that explanation later re-developed in the fall of 2006 for use in my first attempt at my masters thesis:

tools

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2024-03-29T02:04:38+00:00

Tools By tools, I mean anything that can be used to help someone in any way. Tools can be ways of thinking, useful words, ideas, hammers, knives, chairs ... I really do mean anything. Importantly, media are tools, depending on the moment. For example, video can be tools for explaining things. And for those who partake of the explanations, tools for learning. All tools are media of one sort or another - they convey meaning imbued by the creator. And like all media, tools are reflexive in nature…

transformational_theory

Anonymous (anonymous@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-02-27T17:04:54+00:00

Transformational Theory I acquired this concept from Heim (1999). The theory holds that the shifts in technologies that support language are at the root of transformations in human thinking and, by consequence, civilization. In Electric Language, Heim explains and banks heavily on the general applicability of transformation theory to word processing technology, although he recognizes that . In Heim's words, it is