Protocol 7

From wikipedia: Folksonomy is a neologism for a practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords. More colloquially, this refers to a group of people cooperating spontaneously to organize information into categories, noted because it is almost completely unlike traditional formal methods of faceted classification. This phenomenon typically only arises in non-heirarchical communities, such as public websites, as opposed to multi-level teams. Since the oragnizers of the information are usually its primary users, folksonomy produces results that reflect more accurately the population’s conceptual model of the information.

Folksonomies and tagging have been buzzing around the www for a while, and can be seen in use at sites such as Flickr and del.icio.us. Taking a cue from this emerging taxonomic method, I thought I might borrow the animal classifications elaborated in “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” by Borges and apply them to web pages, using del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/cyborges) as the means to start categorizing the www. If you have a del.icio.us account, please feel free to contribute by tagging web pages with one of the following categories:

a) those that belong to the emperor
b) embalmed ones
c) those that are trained
d) suckling pigs
e) mermaids
f) fabulous ones
g) stray dogs
h) those that are included in this classification
i) those that tremble as if they were mad
j) innumerable ones
k) those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
l) others
m) those that have just broken a flower vase
n) those that resemble flies from a distance

Due to the nature of tagging on del.icio.us, please denote spaces with a period, such that the category “those that have just broken a flower vase” becomes “those.that.have.just.broken.a.flower.vase”. A bit of a pain in the arse, but not so much for anyone who has ever had a broken space bar.

Soft toothbrushes in Japan are *really* soft. I like them.

I just started reading The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, and started with Telepistemology: Descartes’s Last Stand by Hubert L. Dreyfus. The first paragraph details a disembodied future mediated by the internet/communication technologies and tells us we are getting closer and closer to such a future (natch). To pull a quote:

“When we are engaged in such activities [reading news, shopping, talking to friends, doing reseach], our bodies seem irrelevant and, thanks to telepresence, our minds seem to expand to all corners of the universe.”

Uhm, irrelevant bodies my ass. Mr. Dreyfus has obviously not had the pleasure of sitting on a plastic crate covered with a yoga mat for 5+ hours of computing time. My body has never been more relevant, or I so painfully aware of it (this is also due to the bruises from a grappling match post-viewing of the Ultimate Fighting Championships… grar!).

Golden Week has come and gone, with the finality of the festivities emphasized by a night and day of rain. Now that our headaches are gone, cobwebs cleared, and pants dry, I present you with some text and photos in a loose report of varying style.

A brief summary of Hamamatsu Matsuri

Golden Week is celebrated throughout Japan… it is a week containing 3 or 4 national holidays so pretty much no one works (except for those unfortunate enough to be employed at a convenience store*) and everyone parties. Hamamatsu is overwhelmingly known for its kite festival, in which each neighborhood in the city builds huge bamboo and rice paper kites, takes them to the Nakatajima dunes, and for three days wage war in the sky.

The Hamamatsu Matsuri (festival) lasts for three days, though legend has it it used to last for five according to a businessman kzi was talking to. It seems five days of kite fights and float hauling was too much for everyone (I was exhausted after marginally participating in three). The festival rests on and encourages community involvement; the kites, floats, and bands are made by and comprised of individuals from each neighborhood. Neighborhoods vary in size, with Owari-cho (our neighborhood) encompassing eight blocks and the larger neighborhoods like Kamoe-N encompassing at least twenty. During the day, the kites engage in battle and in the evenings neighborhoods parade floats around the town and the bands gallivant about playing trumpets, waving lanterns, shouting “yoisho!” incessantly and drinking lots of sake and beer.

{ Read the rest of this entry }

Golden Week has started and to celebrate I shaved my head, complete with devil lock but a bit more stylish than Doyle’s, methinks.

The master behind the ‘do is Sebastian, who wielded his scissors/clippers with grace and ease. I’ll post more on Golden Week soon, but for now I’m going to keep nursing my hangover.