Ancient Eastern Philosophies
In the process of writing the manuscript for this book I chanced to have some correspondence with Stephen Guerin of Redfish. He had just returned to the USA after spending three years working on Web systems in China. He pointed out that the references to Avatars could be extended further into Eastern philosophies. He wrote:
The idea of temporal states of objects and transformation has strong parallels in Taoism.
Neo-Confucianist Chang Tsai (1020-1077) writes;
"When the Ch'i condenses, its visibility becomes apparent so that there are then the shapes (of individual objects). When it disperses, its visibility is no longer apparent and there are no shapes. At the time of its condensation, can one say otherwise than that this is but temporary?
The Great Void of Tao (i.e.. the Great Intranet) cannot but consist of Ch'i; this Ch'i cannot but condense to form all things; and these things cannot but become dispersed so as to form (once more) the Great Void. The perpetuation of these movements in a cycle is inevitable and thus spontaneous."
Having had a brief love affair with these Eastern mystical interpretations of the new physics when they were all the rage in the early 1980's I was somewhat skeptical about applying Eastern philosophies to modern day science. I looked at Stephen Guerin's associations:
The Great Void of Tao = The Internet
Ch'i = bit patterns
Li = code
How could Easter mystics, of a thousand years ago, possibly have anything useful to say about a new emerging technology a thousand years hence?
Then the penny dropped. Of course, they were not talking about the Internet and the World Wide Web they were talking about life and existence. They were propounding an abstraction of life so as to determine its meaning and consequence.
If the environment of the Internet and the World Wide Web could be mapped across to the biological environment of planet earth to produce a common abstraction in terms of information theory, there was every reason to believe that the philosophies of the Eastern mystics would also be applicable to the Internet.
This is not just a trivial consequence. We are looking to try to understand this newly emerging phenomenon of the Web. How do we appreciate what it is, and how do we deal with it? If the Eastern mystics thought about a similar phenomenon (life) over the course of a few thousand years they must have come up with some interesting explanations and metaphors which may well be useful to us in our comprehension of this intriguing complexity.
With these thoughts in mind, I looked through the pile of dusty paperbacks I'd bought back in the 1980's. In between Capra's "The Tao of Physics" and Gary Zukav's "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" was a slim volume called "Games Zen Master's Play" by Robert Sohl and Audrey Carr.
I remembered buying this book some fifteen years before, on the strength of the title, and then being bitterly disappointed to find it quite beyond my comprehension.
It struck me that this book could provide a good test: by seeing if this new mind set I had acquired allowed any of this stuff to now make any sense. To my utter amazement the writings of the ancient Zen masters suddenly acquired an enimatic logic.
To understand, it is necessary to realize the mental attitude of the Zen masters. To them, the Self or God of the universe saw life as a type of game. The concept of Zen they promoted was an elusive concept and its explanation was by way of puzzles, contradictions and paradoxes. Typical of these teachings is the story of the student who went one day to a famous Zen master and asked:
"If someone were to ask me in one hundred years what I thought was your deepest understanding, what should I reply?".
The "Zen master replies, "Tell him I said, 'It is simply THIS'"
Until you click onto the mind set that can give such a reply, it seems to be utter nonsense. Let's look at the this same kind of mind set displacement in a contemporary technological environment:
Presenting a new Concept
Time: Early 1970's
Place: The president's office in a large electronics company in southern California.
"The president will see you now"
The geek was ushered into the president's sumptuous office and shown to a seat in front of the huge desk which dominated the room. He waited nervously for the president to finish reading through the pile of papers on his desk. The president then looked up at him.
"You the guy with the killer app for these new fangled computer things?"
"I think so", replied the geek nervously.
"What is it then"?
"Well it's sort of difficult to describe", began the geek hesitantly. "It consists of a grid of rectangles covering the screen"
"What's in the rectangles?"
"Nothing"
"Nothing?"
"Well not until the user puts something in them"
"What sort of things?"
"Text and figures, but, figures mostly because the rectangles are used to do mathematical operations on the figures."
"So each rectangle is programmed to act like a calculator?"
"Well, they could be. It depends how the user programs them"
"You mean these empty rectangles have to be programmed by the user?"
"Yes, that's right. The rectangles are connected to each other by some kind of formula"
"What's the formula you use to connect up these rectangles?"
"I don't provide the formula."
"Who does?"
"The user"
"How are these rectangles connected to each other then?"
"They aren't connected until the user supplies the connections"
"So this killer app of yours consists of a grid of empty, unrelated rectangles which the user has to fill up with figures and connect together with their own programming and formulae."
"That's right?"
"What are you going to call this killer app of yours?"
"I thought of calling it a spread sheet"
"Nice name. Thank you for coming along"
"Thank you for seeing me"
"Good-bye"
"Good-bye"
How to become a Zen Master
The above scene seems humorous to us now because we know what a spread sheet is and we can see how easily it would have been for somebody not to get the point of having empty rectangles on the screen.
We are now faced with a similar situation with the Internet and the World Wide Web. We have a vast network of "empty rectangles". How many people are there out there, who are saying to themselves:
"What is the point of having empty Web pages ? We have to fill them full of 'content' before they serve any useful purpose".
Wouldn't the Zen Masters smile?
In the style of the Zen Masters we could explain to these people who have a compulsion to fill their Web pages with nothing but content by using a continuation of our contemporary sketch:
Time: Early 1970's
Place: The president's office in a large electronics company in southern California.
After the crestfallen geek leaves the room, the president's secretary enters with a batch of letters in her hand ready for signing. She sees the president staring blankly at a grid of empty rectangles and asks him:
"Was that meeting with the geek interesting?"
"The guy was a loony. Look at this. He's brought me a program which consists of nothing more than a screen full of empty rectangles which I have to fill in for myself."
The secretary looks at the screen and immediately recognizes it for what it is - because she had been learning about the concept of spread sheets at an accountancy course she is taking at the local university.
Recognizing her 'I know something you don't know' smile, the Director asks,
"What do you make of it then?"
"It's perfectly obvious. You just put whatever you want into those rectangles and you get out the results of what you put in"
"What sort of thing should I put in?"
"If I were you, I'd put my business into those little rectangles to see how it is likely to perform over the next year".
"You'd what...?"
"Your next appointment has arrived"
Another geek is ushered into the office.
"And what have you come to see me about?", asked the Director.
"I've got this idea about linking millions of computers to the telephone and building this giant brain..."
"Get out ...out ...OUT", screams the Director, bundling the secretary and the startled geek rapidly towards the door.
Of course, the secretary is having a little fun with the president, but, how could she have explained the concept behind the spread sheet with any simple answer? The scope of a spread sheet's possibilities are too endless to explain simply - as it is with the Web.
