Noam, Torrent, Game

"The resultant `mistrust of the mass media' would at best be a political hunch or at worst a loose accusation, if it were not for the relentless and unswerving media analysis of one of the world's greatest minds. And this is only one of the ways in which Noam Chomsky has radically altered our understanding of the society in which we live." Article HERE

Believe it or not, Chomsky just read my blog post on blogger/media and replied to my question...

I found a website I can relate to politically and as I was poking around I noticed that Noam Chomsky contributes to a blog and in the forums. I made a small donation which gave me access to a discussion board in which Noam and some of the other progressive brains congregate and discuss the issues. Now I have a problem. What do I ask him next? It's kind of intimidating because you can find him listed in philosophy textbooks next to names like Plato, Galileo, Descartes, Marx, Rocker, Freud, etc. Not that Freud and Marx weren't crazy but they were pretty damn influential. So what do you ask a guy that's a living legend among people like me that are into philosophy? I'm going to ask him what he thinks about the fact that his documentaries are available for download over the internet. What is more important, profit or the spread of his ideas? If he gives the OK to release his documentaries, I'm going to buy the DVDs, rip them into an Internet friendly format and start uploading them with BitTorrent.

I'm also going to ask him about his theory of language in relation to AI because he seems to be sort of an expert... Here's a weird linkage of ideas I just came across.

"In a much more radical way, philosophers in the tradition of Wittgenstein (such as Saul Kripke) argue that Chomskyans are fundamentally wrong about the role of rule following in human cognition. In a similar way philosophers in the phenomenological/existential/hermeneutic traditions oppose the abstract neo-rationalist aspects of Chomsky's thought. The contemporary philosopher who best represents this view is, perhaps, Hubert Dreyfus, also famous (or notorious) for his attacks on artificial intelligence."

His critics attack AI which means he probably has some interesting theories on it. Reference the article on deaf kids inventing a language. I'm going to ask him about my code that builds a vocabulary for research. It's really strange how all of these ideas are linked. Just had a crazy good idea that I'm going to propose to the guys at Wikipedia. They need to install bit torrent servers to make high bandwidth content available. I bet someone has already thought of it.

Just found the less than exciting reply from Noam...
" I'm an innocent as far as the internet is concerned. I
don't even know what blogger.com is. Better raise the
question with others.

Noam Chomsky"

How can a guy that smart not wonder about how the Internet is influencing the mass media. There are constant debates these days on the major news channels about the influence of bloggers. It's a little disappointing frankly. I think I need to spend a little more time clarifying my next question to him. Should make for some interesting blog posts in the near future.

In other news, our driving simulator is on the cusp of it's first basic release. We haven't got sound working just yet but almost everything else works. The highschool interns I work with are interested in this project and my boss gave me the green light to spend working hours using it to teach the kids about how technology and software work. It's pretty nice being able to get paid to work on this thing.









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