The Semantic Earth.
Release 1.0 / Fresh Produce / The Semantic Earth:
The earth is a wet rock. We inhabit it with meaning. Whether those meanings are discovered, invented or revealed, they are dependent on us. You see that dependency clearly in the diversity of maps we draw. Maps can be inconsistent and contradictory in every aspect – what objects we see, at what scale we draw them, where we etch the boundaries, which words we use as labels – because our human projects are inconsistent and contradictory. There is no more hope for a single, universal map than there is for a single, universal language, because the thing we are mapping – the earth – has no language, no culture and no projects of its own. It is too real for that. All its meanings are attributed.
David has such a nice sense of PLACE.
As a reference
see post on cluetrain list copied below:
We live in a physical world. Markets are Conversations of Structures and Mechanisms to expand communities' conversations. Conversations are physical, having material existence, perceptible, subject to laws of distance, time and form.
The Structures and Mechanism are what we may refer to Business Processes, a direct engagement of community to build and expand Structures and Mechanism. The processes that engage a community to have a particular conversation, a converstion that is not accidental but desinged by the structures and mechanisms. Not abstract, a potential conversation but an actual conversation distinguished by and pinpointed precisely by the structure which allows and affords the converstation to exist. It is physical, let's not forget it.
Communities are physical. Communities are Conversatiions of Concerns to expand communities' commitments. Markets are Conversations in so far as they expand commitments and concerns of communities.
What we call Public Domain are Conversations of Communities to keep in existence the Commitment of Communities. Communities' concers are for the human beings and their environments. They are conversations for me and you and our world we inhabit. We live in a physical world. Conversations are Physical Structure.
