Thursday, April 26, 2012

Ask a glass of water

One way of testing the waters of a particular infoecology is to see if you understand its sense of humor. Not only because it's fun, but also because things need to be connected in various ways to make humorous sense.

You see, things are generally not funny in and of themselves. They are embedded within deep, interconnected structures that make various semantic noises when they resonate with each other, and if you know to play your chords right, you can make funny noises with them. They are not funny because they sound funny, though, but because the subtle resonances make both sense and no sense at the same time - and this juxtaposition of non/sense is what makes one smile.

Things are both a and not-a, at the same time. According to the logic of the context, this thing that cannot be, is, and is all the more funny because it is logical. Though it is not the logic itself that is funny, the fact that a contradiction can be brought to bear while still following all the rules - the disharmonious harmony of it all equals a laugh.

If you are in tune with the various lateral connections that make up a given ecology, you will get the gist of how and why a joke is funny. The parts will make sense, the relations will occur naturally, and the composition will just work itself out, intuitively. And, conversely, if you find yourself out of tune, the joke in question will fall flat - like any other instrument that is out of tune.

The fastest way to make sure that you are, in fact, in tune with a particular environment is to see if you can make it laugh by invoking its own logic. If you can pull a string there, harp a chord there and ever so slightly drum it in at the end - you are indeed resonating with those around you.

Some have described my recent obsession with infoecology as all work and no play. As you can see, I'm not all convinced that this is the case. Though I might need to bring more humor to the table if I'm to convince them of this.

I'm sure Thales would agree. The world being humorous and all. -

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