Another great NetFuture issue is out

http://www.netfuture.org/2003/Oct3003_151.html

There’s no one I am currently reading on a regular basis that engages issues fundamental to the role of technology in our society and thinking as deeply as Steve Talbott, and today he sent out the latest issue of his NetFuture newsletter. Though not an educational technology article, I would highlight his longish essay “The Vanishing World-Machine” as worth reading. I’m not sure if I could summarize it briefly. If I were to try, it would be something along the lines that we have failed to recognize that mathematics and other scientific ‘languages’ are abstractions that are not the same as the mediums they describe. By not recognizing that the machines we build to ‘analyze’ nature are themselves reifying these abstractions, the scientific endeavor becomes progressively more blind to the actual world it claims to portend. If the argument sounds facile, it’s not, it’s that my synopsis does it no real justice. – SWL