Subject: Re: [lojban] word for "www" (was: Archive location.)

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 14:42:44 EDT

In a message dated 9/10/2002 12:23:35 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> ralcku
I find my hackles up on this despite the fact that I find some of the 
arguments for it sensible -- that is, they ought to be more persuasive than 
they in fact are. I suspect that this is largely the (current -- or what was 
current when I was learning English) archetype of a book still functioning. 
Mayhap we need a more general definition of {cukta}, of which books (in the 
various present and past senses) are natural examples but which is open to 
future -- and perhaps present -- technologies.

<<
maldzena reservations 
I suppose "fuddy-duddy" or "moss-back." I think this is unfair in the 
present (probably) transitional situation; the concerns are real from the 
point of view of the established paradigm and the new paradigm is not so 
clearly in place that the older one can be cavalierly dismissed. Even the 
notion of a cukta as a collection of documents is not a given -- most books 
can be viewed (and would be for the established paradigm) as single 
documents.

<<
Beware
of importing the malglico semantics of "book"!
"Importing" is slanted. The semantics of "book" is forced on us; the 
question is just what that semantics is -- clearly more than pages and 
binding, but what more? Note that it does not (pace point 2 and, implicitly, 
4) require cohesiveness (arguably the Bible, certainly some of the 
experimental "novels" of the 1950's and 60's).

<<
5. The linking of different hypertext documents follows the same
behavior as linking to other locations in the same file, or other files
written by the same author and residing on the same server. Whereas there
is a conceptual difference between flipping a page in a book, and closing
its cover and opening a different book, there is no conceptual distinction
between following a link to a different location in the same file, and
visiting a different "website".
Granting the basic claim here, the established answer is that internally 
hyperlinked files are not books/cukta. In any case, this analogy does not 
help the claim that the web is a cukta.
I think this case would be stronger if the analogy between different ways of 
supplementing information in one text were stressed -- hyperlink jumps with 
looking it up in a different codex. This may be pointing toward the kind of 
expansion that is needed for {cukta} beyond books (if that is the way to go 
-- a still largely unsupported point).

<<
6. Therefore the semantic distinction between different "websites" is
not always conceptually clear. Hyperlinked documents can be considered the
same document, albeit not the same file. Authorship is the only difference
between a single work, and a compiled, annotated work. However, a cukta
can have multiple authors, and be created over time.

I presume the point is that it is unclear whether to count hyperlinked sites 
as one object (whatever we want to call it) or several. A book can certainly 
have many authors and be constructed over time (the Bible yet again), but in 
the end it is put together in a single package (even if several codices -- 
the OED always to hand. And a good one, too, since the latest version is 
hyperlinked all over the place). 
Robin:
<<
ralcku could be a library. 
Bad move -- it gives away more than it gains (it doesn't gain anything, in 
fact, since no one previously thought of a library as any kind of book, so 
this is an analogy to an unknown analog). 

<<
I mean, *come* *on*. It means 'most important book'. Not only is that
ridiculously ambigous *now*, it's pretty much guarnteed to become
obsoleted over time.
Well, so are books, but we stick with them while we have them and later we 
can laugh about the reliance we placed on them. I suspect that "most 
important" is meant here (as some things xod says later suggest) in the sense 
of "most encompassing." This is doubtful as well, but seems to point in some 
useful directions. 

In passing, one feature of the Web that is most unlike a book is that it is 
not a done thing, but a constantly changing (mostly growing) entity. Even at 
a given point, it is inherently unfinished, even more than a three-volume 
novel is at the end of volume 2. 

If we had a good word for those fungi like the one in northern Michigan that 
covers square miles and has been growing for millennia, it might make a good 
base.