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1/25/02 3:17:36 PM, Mike Champion <mc@xegesis.org> wrote:
>1/25/2002 3:37:54 PM, "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>There ain't no The Web. Just a bunch of
>>pieces hooked up and variously reliable
>>each according to their owner's intentions
>>... Just As God Intended. :-)
>
>I'm not sure what the point of this subthread is ... if it's to deny
>that "The Web" exists because it can't be unambiguously defined, then
>that leads to all sorts of black holes. (Does "Len Bullard" exist
>since he consists of a different set of cells than he did when his
>parents named him? Where EXACTLY is the canonical set of neurons and
>synpses that define the one and only Len Bullard? If it turns out
>that the "Len Bullard" who posts here is really just an AI experiment
>that the "real" Len Bullard created to give him time to do his day
>job, do they both exist?) <grin>
>
>If it is to suggest that all the wailing and gnashing about
>preserving the purity of the Web Architecture is misdirected energy,
>because "The Web" is a fuzzy set of all sorts of ideas and
>technologies that more or less interoperate most of the time, then
>I'm inclined to agree.
I think the point is that "The Web" is an emergent phenomenon of all those varyingly hooked-up
pieces, just as Len Bullard is an emergent phenomenon of a bunch of ever-changing cells, and that
treating it as if it were a physical object would be committing the fallacy of reification. A
person, a river, or a Web are in many ways best thought of as processes rather than things.
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