Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Blog #5

Meaning

Heidegger's web of meaning is a view that states that we know an object less in its form than in its relation to other things - they derive "meaning" per Heidegger in the same way that a person would describe how a thing acquires purpose. Heidegger's "meaning" is the sum of our understanding of an object in the context of what that object is for not just what the item is. He puts forth that the identity of an item is meaningless without some understanding of its role in the world around it.

Weinberger

Weinberger associates this with his understanding of metadata and his "third order of order." The contextual information that describes the significance of a piece of data is Weinberger's third order of order. The tags and links we associate with ideas and units of information to make them easier to find are an externalization of our understanding of the significance of the data - not just a reference card, but a new piece of information that actually represents the meaning of a thing.

Musical diagram

I don't typically identify with music on a cognitive emotional level - other than associating certain songs with memory (and not necessarily for any good reason) I identify with music solely on the basis of a sort of content-independent reading of the character of the music, attitude with which it is delivered, then develop an appreciation of the music largely based on my emotional state at the time. In other words, I sort of roll with the song. "Come Together" by The Beatles is a good example - for all intents and purposes, that song is about absolutely nothing, but it has a mean groove to it which has been bridging generations since it came out.

Therefore, selecting a song that has some sort of meaning to me is a bit difficult - there are a few songs that have just stuck with me over the years due to their delivery and some of their tonal characteristics. There are a few songs that make me feel nostalgic for purely emotional reasons, and a few that just plain get stuck in my head. I'm going to just have to pick one that falls into both categories:

"Low Rider" by War. My understanding of the song would be pretty difficult for any computer to make any sense of, as every bit of data about it is associative, save for a small number of physical characteristics of the song itself. The computer would need to understand human nature - the degree to which nostalgia affects our perception of the quality of an item, the degree to which nostalgia is formed based on the completeness of our memory of the events associated with the item, etc. It would also need to understand my own personal associations related to the cultural linkages of various forms of media, the identifiability of the song's signature over loud background noise, the historical playlist data of the radio stations that I listened to in my area in the 1990s, and the fact that my one great adventure in life (so far) with my best friends took place while listening a few CDs, two of which that song featured on.

Steep demands from a handful of silicon atoms.

6 comments:

  1. "The computer would need to understand human nature" This was definitely one of the difficult tasks when making this assignment . Computers are learning... but I find it difficult for them to understand emotion.. haha. This song is very popular and people have different emotions and different experiences with the song. A computer doesn't experience emotion and have experiences...

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  2. I agree that computers can't experience emotion however they can do what we tell them to--to a certain degree. I liked how you organized your map to make sense of your song. Very well written! Well done.

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  3. I like how you say that you make sense of Lowrider (btw, one of my favorite songs) while the computer does not. But see, the computer is just a storage and processing unit. People can tag the song and label it in so many different ways and thats how we all shape reality in cyberspace.

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  4. Long quote, but worth quoting: "I don't typically identify with music on a cognitive emotional level - other than associating certain songs with memory (and not necessarily for any good reason) I identify with music solely on the basis of a sort of content-independent reading of the character of the music, attitude with which it is delivered, then develop an appreciation of the music largely based on my emotional state at the time"

    We talked a bit in class about this notion of categorization, and how/if there were ways of categorizing music beyond the expected (emotion at the time, attitude, colors evoked...all sorts of stuff). I think your chart captures one of of making these implicit connections explicit.

    Thanks for your thoughts. Good example.

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  5. I owned a war CD when I was a kid. It was one of the first CDs I owned. I just like the song because it had a funky beat. I understand where your coming from about not fixing songs with cognitive thought. To a certain extent music is where I go to get away from the demon that is thinking.

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  6. I don't believe it is possible for a computer to have humanity. Computers are only as "smart" as we program them to be and we really only program them for specific "events." Emotions carry many different meanings and feelings from one another. Human nature is too complex to rationalize into code.

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