Re: [unrev-II] Towards a summary of documents

From: Henry van Eyken (vaneyken@sympatico.ca)
Date: Wed Nov 29 2000 - 03:19:42 PST


Good morning, Michael.

Thanks for your fine offer. We sure can use all the help we can get.

You pointed out a great dilemma: how to digest 2000-plus, mostly lengthy emails.
I don't want to write in too great a haste, but here are some thoughts crossing
my mind.

Right now, we are steering the website "architecture" toward dividing the
bootstrap site in major sections: Institute, Chronicle, Colloquium, OHS,
Context, Alliance, Website, Search.

Not all of these divisions are sharply delineated divisions (nor is the brain
that bootstrapping seeks to augment!). In fact, it is fair to say that most
divisions fall within the scope of Institute or of Alliance. But never mind that
for now.

Two of the divisions, I am hoping, may be the beginnings of ezines of the
DKR/OHS ilk: Chronicle and Context. You may see Chronicle shaping up at
http://www.fleabyte.org/testbed/bi
where you will find the upcoming bootstrap home page with a double menu bar.
Click on Chronicle and you have the front page of a (potential) ezine. Most of
Chronicle looks fairly static right now: material about Doug. (Incidentally,
many links don't work on the testbed!)
The front page is for news items and for lead paragraphs of articles related to
Doug's ultimate objecive. Those articles should be good, informative reading for
reasonably well educated, general readers, preferably the kind of people who
"may make a difference." They should be well written by writers who know where
the word "paradigm" ends and "dogma" begins.

To make things work, we shall need editorial staff of quality. I am hoping that
once the design is more properly installed on the bootstrap site we can go out
through media that address seniors among whom top-drawer talent may be found:
executives, managers, educators, writers, people versed in aspects of cognitive
science, etc. It is the absence of this structure that makes it hard to accept
your offer right now. However ...

I believe that those 2000 emails contain many seeds for ideas not directly
related to OHS development. It would be interesting to establish some of the
major themes of, say, human-interest nature that have been broached on the
discussion forum. These themes do not necessarily play through by following
"threads," but as a long-time reader you may well have discerned a number of
distinct topics. We might isolate a number of themes as they were broached by
the kind of people we have on the forum. We might look at the context in which
they were broached. We might locate sources of informed thought on those themes
and thereby create the feedstock for good editorial material.

Am I too ambitious? Quite possibly - some might say probably, or certainly.
Nevertheless, dreams have been known to contribute to reality.

Michael, maybe you care to dream. And if it ever so turns out that what I have
written here is unworkable then the worst that can be said is that the effort
ought to give you a first-class learning experience.

Appreciating your positive attitude,

Henry

Khedron the Jester wrote:

> I'm interested in helping, and thanks to my school schedule I have a good
> three weeks off for winter holidays. But I'm a bit daunted by the sheer
> number of msgs in unrev-II, at least 2172 in my archive. If at least one
> other person was too help me or help me bootstrap myself I would love to
> take on this task. On the other hand there may be other things more suited
> to my skills.
>
> Michael Crusoe
> Student at large
>
> From: "Eugene Eric Kim" <eekim@eekim.com>
> > I haven't seen any volunteers regarding this, so I thought I'd throw in my
> > two cents. Doing a regular summary of unrev-ii and ohs-dev would be an
> > excellent exercise in knowledge management. They are already used
> > effectively on a number of open source mailing lists. For example:
> >
> > http://www.ddj.com/topics/pythonurl/
> > http://www.ddj.com/topics/tclurl/
> > http://www.freebsd.org/conspectus/
> >
> > This would be a tremendous way of making our list more accessible and
> > meaningfully indexing our archives. I'd encourage people who are looking
> > for ways to contribute to the bootstrap efforts to volunteer.
> >
> > -Eugene
> >
> > On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Jack Park wrote:
> >
> > > At today's meeting with Henry and other bootstrappers at SRI, Henry
> advanced
> > > the concept of a web site that, itself, would become a kind of DKR.
> That
> > > concept involves many different but interrelated ideas, including an
> online
> > > e-zine related to OHS development.
> > >
> > > One of the most important ideas is that of a kind of summarization of
> the
> > > many threads/themes that have passed through the Unrev2 mailing list.
> It
> > > seems that this could be handled in several ways, all of which includes
> > > necessity of passionate editorial volunteers. If I recall rightly,
> > > bootstrap.org has all threads archived in hypermail (or words to that
> > > effect).
> > >
> > > I have been asked to begin the process of solicitation of interest and
> > > action in the direction of producing topical summaries. This could be
> the
> > > effort of one, lone, towering individual, or it could be a kind of
> > > collaborative comprised of several towering individuals who divide up
> the
> > > territory, say, by thread, and accomplish the task.
> > >
> > > Given that there really does exist the framework by which the entirety
> of
> > > Doug's vision as expressed in the Unrev2 series at Stanford may become a
> > > reality, let me take this opportunity to suggest that those readers of
> this
> > > post who are capable of taking on some aspect of this summarization task
> > > please notify either this list <click reply, type YES, click send> or
> > > forward a YES to, say, doug@bootstrap.org <mailto:doug@bootstrap.org>
> or me
> > > at jackpark@verticalnet.com <mailto:jackpark@verticalnet.com> .
> > >
> > > Profound thanks in advance.
> > > Jack Park
> > >
> >
> > --
> > +=== Eugene Eric Kim ===== eekim@eekim.com ===== http://www.eekim.com/
> ===+
> > | "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they
> |
> > +===== can have an excuse to drink alcohol." --Steve Martin
> ===========+



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