Violent Acres is ignorant : A lesson in truth

Update: Ok, so Violent Acres was having us on. What a great way to instill my lecture on truth, science and theories, which you should read anyway. Toot.

Why is it that some people cling to stereotypes and stupidly assumed fantasy when a few asserted searches would reveal the truth in a matter of seconds? (neither Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins nor Dr. Meyers do what VC claims) Why do otherwise upwalking people such as Violent Acres (whom most posts I enjoy very much) then stumble into the world of the ignorant and stupid?

To justify their own belief, of course. The truth has got nothing to do with it. So I'd like to talk about truth a little.

I am one of those people who seeks the truth. Now, we have to be careful about what that means because a lot of people think that "the truth" has a specific meaning, or a specific goal. The religious are the biggest proponents of "the truth is what I believe" although you'll find it pretty much everywhere.

No, I'm after that truth which we all can agree on; Throw a rock into the air, we can all agree it falls to the ground. If we measure the speed of the falling rock, we can all agree to how fast that is by throwing lots of rocks into the air, perhaps at various places around the world to get a wider view of it, document our rock throwing with pictures, recordings and documents, and perhaps - some time in the future - collate our various findings, and we just might call this thing "gravity" and agree to some properties it has.

There's nothing magical about this kind of truth. It's just there, sitting there as knowledge, which we can use and apply to solving whatever whimsical wish we have.

Later, when John went to the moon and threw a rock, the properties of that rock-throwing even was compared to the generic rock-throwing info back at earth, and we folded the new information into our "gravity" thing, saying that gravity has different pull under different circumstances. To understand this pull, we need to know geology and cosmology and astrophysics as mass and chemical markup plays an important role. And so on and so on.

If we then learn, in other areas that's got other theories, about some properties that also applies to throwing rocks - for example, we discover a planet of size X made up of Y and circles its sun like Z - and then the true magic happens; we can make predictions about what will happen if we threw a rock standing on that planet. The more data we've got, and the more other theories are verified, the more accurate the prediction. This is how we land things on the moon, on mars, and on asteroids flying through space at high velocities. This is how we backtrack life and discover new things through evolution. This is how we further experiment with stuff, because we've got theories that can predict a lot of stuff when we apply X, Y and Z to it. This is, basically, how we come up with all the cool stuff we do these days.

This is science. Lots of different people all over the world all the time find out stuff. We collect data, and have explanations for why the data do what they do, also known as theories. These theories are not guesswork; over hundreds of years scientists adjusts the theory as we know more. The theory of gravity have changed a lot from Newton to today. This is how science works; data forms a theory, and new data further shape the theory, and all theories need to make sense together. No theory stands out and goes against what all the others are saying.

In science there are thousands and thousands of theories, all interconnected. If someone comes up with a theory (note: singular) that seems to go against what the other theories say (note: plural theories; no scientific theory stands alone! Never!), then you've got two options; your one theory is wrong, or you've stumbled upon something that's either revolutionary or crazy.

We never really get one theory that goes against the majority of scientific theories. They are all interconnected, a web of theories that fit into one another, backing each other up, making sense of the world we live in. Thousands of theories that gets tweaked as we find new data, creating a larger theory of how it all fits together. It's a long process (thousands of years of asking the most powerful question in the universe; "How does that work?"), lots of hard work, lots of hours of repeating what others have done (to verify or falsify some small part of some theory).

In the real world, as seen in the movies, a "theory" is someones' crazy guess. Please don't make the grave mistake of mixing up the folksie "my theory to why JFR got shot was hidden advice coming out of Area51"; that's not a theory as science use it, but conjecture, an opinion, or just plain speculation. It's important to know the difference, because at each end of the truth-o-meter there is science and religion.

One claims to be in pursuit of truth, the other claims to already hold it. One is not afraid to modify the truth if new evidence comes along, while the other is the same for eternity. One is about investigation, curiosity and being open, the other is about accepting, don't question and close yourself to others. Science holds no other goals than truth, while religion dips its toe into any human physical and psychological endevour.

Let's get back to what triggered this post; "Atheists are snobs." First, a conjecture such as that is just plain silly. Which atheists? What do you mean by atheist? How broad must your brush be before you're painting your way into the loony-bin? Second, some religious people play roleplaying games. They enjoy a fantasy play as much as the next guy. Of course the next guy will them them they are already living in a fantasy game, but a fantasy game within another fantasy game is still just a fantasy game, so I guess that's ok. As long as they are away of the real world. Third, some religious people are heavy into porn. They perhaps shouldn't be, but they are people, too. All too often, they are people, too.

I suspect VC wants to bring this atheist vs. religious people down to a question of ethics and morals, that somehow religious people hold better ethics and morals. Hogwash, and I'll repeat Steven Weinberg : “With or without [religion] you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”

The importance - in the end - comes down to how truth is defined; as something we all agree to through an open process, or truth as handed down to you by a guru. And Violent Acres is no guru. And that's the truth.

Topic Maps 2008

I just quickly need to jot down some thoughts on the Topic Maps 2008 conference I attended last week before I move on to more personal things.

First of all, it was a very smooth operation as conferences go, and I felt comfortable and welcome thanks to very nice hosts. I met a lot of really interesting and smart people there, too, all interested in roughly the same thing (which is such a generic thing as "world peace" and "doing what's right").

I have to say, though, that my tutorial on "Topic Maps for Information Architects" was the hardest presentation or tutorial I have ever prepared. It was very hard to balance based on the audience type, as they were either heavy into Topic Maps, heavy into information architecture, or some other thing alltogether. I struggled a long time, and ended up with a 33% focus on each subject, with the remaining 33% focusing on philosophy and epistemology. Some loved it, some hated it, but that's what you get when you take a risk such as this.

My presentation on "A Topic Maps vision for the library world" on the second day went much better, with much enthusiastic response afterwards. At least here I know my audience, and have been saying these things for years. And the quest for a library world uptake of Topic Maps is of course one that I shall pursue further even if I'm now back in commercial sector.

There was a great deal of wound up dust about the latest OOXML standardization process by ISO, how Steve Pepper, one of the main people behind the conference, also has quit ISO in protest over the latest happenings. The funny part is that another Topic Maps great, Patrick Durusau, was also at the conference, together with the Microsoft-bought consultant Shahzad Rana, which made the whole thing a bit poignant at times throughout. It was actually quite fun to watch sometimes as greats clashed in a non-clashing sorta way. All smart people, serious fun.

I also talked a bit with Robert Barta and his wife (having them over for dinner was the conference highlight, hands down!) about theirs and ours experiences with moving in and out of Australia. The verdict, I think, is that Australia is great unless you're a foreigner staying for more than 3 months. :) Also we talked about Topic maps, and I was extremely happy to confirm that I at least were not alone in my madness. Thanks, Robert.

All in all, a great conference with lots of interesting presentations. Winning presentation might be Conal Tuhoys presentation on what New Zealand is doing in the area, and especially their Electronic Library is doing, and I'm very thrilled to see them push forth an persistant identification open-source project that libraries can use for their work. I hope the uptake is large, because the library world won't survive without it.

So, tThanks for having me, and thanks for putting the conference on. Good stuff.

Topic Maps 2008 : Libraries, Information Architecture, stuff that matters

Hi folks. It's been a little while since my last confession, but rest assured I haven't been resting. The international move have gone mostly good, and we're slowing down and settling in, and my new / old job at Bekk Consulting is fantastic (and I'm re-learning just how much fun you have when you're also extremely effective and professional ... Thanks Frode for luring me back here). But before I leap into song about our new life, there's some professional news I need to tell you about;

From the 2nd to the 4th of April this year (so, in just over two weeks) the Topic Maps 2008 conference is happening here in Oslo, Norway. The lineup of speakers and topics look absolutely fascinating, and should have something for everyone, not just people who know anything at all about Topic Maps. I'm featured in two areas I know a few bits and bobs about ;

The first is my vision for a Topic Mapped library world, in which I explain why Topic Maps is more than just the perfect fit for what the library world is trying to achieve, but how the library world will forever lurch in the shadows of knowledge management and education support if they don't adopt it. This "talk" is deliberately made shorter so that people interested in all things library can have a fruitful discussion. Those who know me (fours years at the National Library of Australia up until a few months ago) know how vocal I can be about library processes and cultural baggage, but there's no denying that I'm passionate about it, and I'm passionate about it because I love the library world so and want it to thrive. And Topic Maps might just be the thing to do it.

Second, I'm holding a tutorial (half-day with lots of coffee and pens and post-it notes and bad jokes) in Topic Mapping and Information Architecture. This is not a lecture, but an experiment and demonstration of how Topic Maps is, yet again, a perfect fit for those who take Information Architecture seriously. The more information you've got, my thinking goes, the more you need a great tool like Topic Maps. Let's try it out and see. This is a practical tutorial based on my presentation "Sexier, faster, smarter information architecture with Topic Maps" that I held at OzIA 2006.

There's still space left and I would encourage readers with the opportunity to come to Hotel Bristol at the beginning of April to join me there, not because I'm talking or presenting, but because of all the other stuff that's happening, like the fabulous David Weinberger with his equally profound (yup, seen it before and loved it, and yes, looking forward to seeing it again!) presentation "Everything is Miscellaneous", which for any Information architect is a pure must-see!

I'm very excited about this conference, because there's going to be some of the smartest people I know in the world there (albeit missing Scott Berkun, and, err, not including myself in that list, of course :), and my inferior-complex will surely cause my own imploding. Wish me luck, and I hope to see you there.

Where in the world is Alexander Johannesen?

Ok, a real quickie this time to say that I'm back in Oslo, Norway (me, the kids and my wife), and back at my old company Bekk Consulting doing new and very interesting things, in a tempo I haven't seen much of the last four years. For now I bid a farewell to Australia, the library world and the public sector, and hope to see you again some other day. To my relatives, inwed or otherwise, in Australia, I miss you already, and the rest of my posse miss you, too.

I'll get back to my old posting schemes as soon as things slow down and return to normal. Stay tuned. In the mean time, you can now call me at +47 982 19 378 or email me at the usual gmail spot. Enjoy whatever you're doing.

P.S. Send more Vegemite and Mint Slices.

8 things you didn't know about me

Friend and UX superstar Donna tagged me for the '8 things you don't know about me' meme. The rules are pretty straight forward:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules
2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself
3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged

So, here's my list of things you may not know about me:

1. I play drums and percussion, have played in bands all my life, and also does a lot of composing and production. I've made numerous CD's (demos, mostly), and used to play every Tuesday at a local jazz club in Oslo with Nissa Nyberget, Ole Marius Melhuus and Totto "Heavy" Hansen. I specialize in the udu clay pot drum, and the congas.
2. I'm a big movie buff. I grew up wanting to create movies, and me and my mate Ove Kenneth Nilsen ran everywhere with cameras and made all sorts of wierd stuff. He's since grown up and is today part of the movie industry in Norway (a reputed editor), while I had a stint working for a production company during one of their films "In the claws of the night". I also think Ove Kenneth sits on a few video snippets (me acting, writing and laughing too hard) we made together a few years back. Good times.
3. I started Norways largest live roleplaying association back in 1989 with a few good friends, and have been active in the LARP scene up until about 8 years ago.
4. I was politically active when I was younger, running around, talking publically and otherwise trying to make Oslo / Norway a more socially aware place. I've met lots of politicians and VIPs, mostly on the left side of the political gap. Yup, I like people and their interactions more than I like economic growth in a unilateral free economy.
5. One of my good mates was killed by this piece of shit back in 1993. I was sitting watching the news with my then girlfriends parents when my friend's face lit up the screen. A very surreal experience, and needless to say there's lots of stuff with this I don't really want to talk about. It seems people in Canberra - the black-metal capital of Australia - are intrigued by this whole thing and my connection to it. The short version is that I did different desktop publishing jobs for my friend's record company (in fact, I did the inlet lyrics for the Burzum record, and yeah, I met the guy; he's an complete idiot). Here's some trivia about Øystein you won't find anywhere else (because it was these things that brought our friendship together) ; he loved old electronica (Schultze, Tangerine Dream, Amoebios) and classical music. His religious beliefs weren't quite what you read on WikiPedia. His political views were closer to mine than what most people think. Enough said.
6. I starred as Sydney Carton in an semi-amateur production of Tale of Two Cities by Dickins, and have always acted on (and off) stage.
7. A bit like Donna I also feel surprised that people like me. It stems from 4 years of primary school (grades 2 through 5) where I was bullied (my father is from the Czech Republic, which seemed to spark it off). The school sent me to psychology sessions (the problem must have been me since I was the one being bullied ...) which did me no good, until the day I got a new psychologist. Know what she did? She asked me (as one of the first people to do so), "so, Alex, what do you reckon would solve the problems?" I told her that I want to change schools, such was arranged within a few weeks, and everything has been dandy ever since. Real communication is gold.
8. I can look at (practically) any piece of armor or sword and tell you what century it is from, what country (and sometimes what part of the country) it was made in, the purpose of the shapes and joists involved, who used it, contemporary cost and mostly the metal and forge techniques used. Gee, what handy skills I've got.
   

And here's who I'd like to know more about:

1. Alia, because she's the funniest person I know.
2. Donna, because she's so dandy! Already done, obviously.
3. Matthew, because he's apparently similar to me, so prove me otherwise.
4. Robert Barta, because he's a no-bullshit fighter.
5. Scott Berkin, because he's smart.
6. Murray Altheim, just because I suspect so many things.
7. My daughters, so I could understand the mischievous stuff they get up to.
8. Claudio Monteverdi, because he's my hero.
   

So long, and thanks for all the smelly fish

It's time to reveal what's going on in my life on a big scale, hinted to in my last dozen or so posts.

Yes, I'm leaving the library world. Yes, I'm leaving Canberra and the National Library of Australia. In fact, I'm leaving Australia altogether. I'm leaving process-oriented committee-driven work (surrounded by the hum of millions upon millions of flies, one of the seriously exciting features about Canberra). I'm leaving good friends and colleges which I'll miss, and a cute house that's been a safe home and haven for the last four years. I'm leaving an extended family who - despite their better knowledge - have accepted me as one of them, with friendships that will bring us back to Australia in a few years, I'm sure. I'm even leaving behind our wonderful dog Oscar (in good hands, I might add ; he's going back to his original owners) which the whole family will miss dearly.

I'm going back to Norway, to work for Bekk Consulting again, and I start at the beginning of February 2008. I'll write more about my role there later, but needless to say these guys know what they're doing, they do it fast and really well, no mucking about. They do not meddle in the semantics of FRBR for 15 years before taking baby-steps to prototype it. Either it's the right thing to do, or it is not. And if it's not, these guys don't do it. And I can't wait to get back into the habit of not doing things we shouldn't do.

We've got a house lined up (in Oslo) centrally and near my beloved woods, and a car. We're scared and excited at the same time, and hope that our Australian friends will forgive us and cheer us on in our adventure, and our Norwegian friends welcome us home and invite us for dinner, if not only for a period.

There's many things I want to talk about, from the state of the library world, to the evils of recruiting companies, to Australian business ethics, the value of friendship, and how to plan your future (which is a short piece about how you can try but will fail), but all in due time.

Right now it's time to pack, reflect, and wrap up my Australian adventure in the most positive way I can. Watch this roof, and wish us good luck in our latest big adventure.

Bits and bobs

Hi all. Just a bits and bobs post. In short ;

• My backyard paving is almost complete. I've spent 4 months (weekends) digging, sanding, edging, moving, shaking, swearing, compacting and laying, but it's worth every aching pain ; I did it myself.
• There's a reasonable chance we will be moving, but there's a few options ; stay in Canberra, move to Wollongong / Kiama (by the coast), into Sydney, or back to Norway. Once the decision is made, expect a huge rant about everything that's been going on the last few months.
• Why do people think that architecting systems in a RESTful way somehow means you can be less devoted to the project? Is the apparent simplicity of REST one of those things that make people forget to take it just as serious as other alternatives? Forgetting that you still need to be good at what you do, and that you still need to design it well?
  
• There's some interesting upcoming changes to this website coming up. I noticed my ISP had installed PHP 5.2, so I have decided to revamp the whole thing using two recent sub-projects ; 1) my SQLite embedded Topic Maps engine, and 2) an XSLT based XML templating framework for GUI's. It's all built around a completely RESTful architecture, and it uses Blogger's external publishing capabilities to blend your blogs into your site without the need for replicating your blog template with your site's templates. More on this as we move along.
• The kids are a joy to watch grow and evolve, and my wife is still as exciting and hot as when I first met her. No matter what happens in life (see my previous post for a drop of depression) I am so darn lucky to have them. (And I mean luck here as there is no way that I could have designed anything as wonderful as them myself ...) My next life-choices revolve around them, and not me. Nuff' said.
• The amazing Happy Rhodes have released a new CD after a long while. Please go and have a listen at her CD Baby page ; support the most hearable unheard-about artist ever.
  

I think that's it, at least until some big decisions have been made. oh, and thanks to those who responded to my last post. Appreciated. Peace.

Sorry everyone

I've been under a somewhat depressive spell the last few months, which effectively has rendered me into somewhat of a recluse. The reasons are several (but reading my last blog postings certainly will give you good clues, although my eyes and migraines certainly has added a lot to it), and hopefully they will be improved upon shortly, one way or the other. All my energy and efforts have gone into being a nice husband and a good dad, so some sorries are in order ;

• Magnus, Karen, Hanne, sorry for being too far away, and for not being better at emails.
• Donna, sorry that I haven't followed up your recent big news and for not being more a proactive caffeine pursuer.
• Matthew, sorry that we haven't talked in a while, and for not being there through your troubles.
• Mark, Steve, sorry for being a bore at work, and for not engaging much.
  
• Kent and Alison, sorry for not talking much anymore, and for giving up hope.
• Mum and dad, sorry for being low on sending you emails and pictures of the kids.
• Julie and Stefan, sorry for being a neglecting (albeit far, far away) brother.
• The library world, sorry for giving up.
• The Topic Maps community, sorry for being absent.

I can only promise to try and think about perhaps evaluating if I should think about being better at dreaming about getting better at all things of personal matters. I'll provide updates and newsflashes soon enough. Big things are afoot.