Posted by dorayme on 02/21/07 21:35

In article <slrneto6p9.63d.spamspam@bowser.marioworld>,
Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> wrote:

> I don't know exactly what AD had in mind, or what current tools do
> anyway. But I think the way to do it is to watch what good web authors
> do and turn that into a tool. One that tries to replicate their
> processes, not their intelligence.

The author still has to direct the traffic, he or she needs to
know which processes to initiate when. Which is what we do now
with all our gismos. And of course, I have not denied we will get
better gismos. Either collected into one software package or not.

> So a tool with actions to reclassify
> and organize the information, rather than one that just pretends to be a
> word processor or DTP, might work. Part of that might be actions in the
> tool to author the "meta-structure" not just the structure, which is
> where the obscure theories came in-- taken totally out of context, where
> they made little or no sense, into one where they might make some.

There is a distinction in the process of creating anything,
especially in the field of ideas, between the psychological
conditions for discovery of something and the more objective
worth of the product. If you look at how Kepler or even Newton,
proceeded, you could be excused for wondering how such screwballs
could have come up with such astoundingly valuable final ideas.

There are two things going on, one of which we know only a little
about, the other a fair amount. The psychological processes are
the little. Kepler and Newton had their heads screwed right on in
their final assessments, in their recognition of the true worth
of their ideas. But how they came to have those ideas is a very
interesting and much more unclear process.

To put it simply, if AD and like minded people get inspiration
and ideas from various linguistic theories to produce web design
algorithms that make life easier for us all, good for them. Their
screwball psychological processes keep company with a whole
history of genius. <g>

There is a big difference too between someone saying that they
used some theory to invent a new application and that theory
being a real basis for the application. The application might as
easily have been the product of someone who had never heard of
the theory. Indeed, the very same person might just have a knack
or other ways of proceeding for these things and falsely
attributes his success to the theory.

The proof, in the end, is in the eating of the pudding.

--
dorayme

[Back to original message]