Taxonomy & Traffic Engineering
Today I met by semi-accident with three young men, an event with mythic resonances as always. We collided on the Borderlands, where you will always find these people or people very much like them. And while I was enjoying lunch, we came across a new way of describing a particular kind of 'wisdom of crowds'. It's called taxonomy.
The etymology of this term is interesting. The suffix nomos of course means 'management' or 'law' in the sense of 'rules of action and transaction'. The prefix comes from the Greek taxis, which means 'arrangement' or 'formal structure'; this word is the basis for other words like syntax, which means 'together-arrangement'. Quite often, taxis is placed in opposition to praxis, which means 'doing' or 'acting'. The nature of the opposition is that taxis implies laying things out in sequence while praxis implies carrying things out in sequence.
But the taxonomy I speak of, which I associate with traffic engineering, is the wisdom of listening to taxi drivers. Are the two words 'taxi' and 'taxonomy' related? Yes, they are. 'Taxi' comes from 'taxicab', a cabined vehicle operated by automatic fare arrangements – the Latin word 'taxa' from which we get 'taxes' refers to this arrangement of cash flow. 'Taxonomy' means 'managing the order of things', or 'the law by which we arrange things'.
I would propose a new etymology. From today onwards, I introduce an alternative meaning of 'taxonomy'. It shall mean 'letting what taxi drivers say be an input into your decision-making'.
Why? Because I've come to realise that taxi-drivers get input from many sources and they act like powerful computers which synthesize an opinion from these sources. When you have enough taxi-drivers as inputs, you are receiving multiple nuanced inputs which are all syntheses from many secondary (and in some cases, primary) sources. It is a 'wisdom of crowds' situation.
In fact, if you get them all together, processing in parallel, you have the quintessential ('fifth estate') source of knowledge, the neighbourhood coffee shop or kopi tiam. That particular social node must be acknowledged as the forerunner of the internet in terms of its information-transfer role. The role of the coffee shop and similar establishments is well-documented in Europe, Asia, North Africa and the Americas. It is a hub.
See, if you will, a vision of the mind's eye. Here is a hub. Attached to it are the many carriers of information and people. New ones come and go, fleets of similarly-labelled and blazoned vehicles, following the cycles day after day. Are we looking at a server? An airport? A coffee shop? It could be any of these, but behind them all looms the invisible spectre of my new taxonomy.
The etymology of this term is interesting. The suffix nomos of course means 'management' or 'law' in the sense of 'rules of action and transaction'. The prefix comes from the Greek taxis, which means 'arrangement' or 'formal structure'; this word is the basis for other words like syntax, which means 'together-arrangement'. Quite often, taxis is placed in opposition to praxis, which means 'doing' or 'acting'. The nature of the opposition is that taxis implies laying things out in sequence while praxis implies carrying things out in sequence.
But the taxonomy I speak of, which I associate with traffic engineering, is the wisdom of listening to taxi drivers. Are the two words 'taxi' and 'taxonomy' related? Yes, they are. 'Taxi' comes from 'taxicab', a cabined vehicle operated by automatic fare arrangements – the Latin word 'taxa' from which we get 'taxes' refers to this arrangement of cash flow. 'Taxonomy' means 'managing the order of things', or 'the law by which we arrange things'.
I would propose a new etymology. From today onwards, I introduce an alternative meaning of 'taxonomy'. It shall mean 'letting what taxi drivers say be an input into your decision-making'.
Why? Because I've come to realise that taxi-drivers get input from many sources and they act like powerful computers which synthesize an opinion from these sources. When you have enough taxi-drivers as inputs, you are receiving multiple nuanced inputs which are all syntheses from many secondary (and in some cases, primary) sources. It is a 'wisdom of crowds' situation.
In fact, if you get them all together, processing in parallel, you have the quintessential ('fifth estate') source of knowledge, the neighbourhood coffee shop or kopi tiam. That particular social node must be acknowledged as the forerunner of the internet in terms of its information-transfer role. The role of the coffee shop and similar establishments is well-documented in Europe, Asia, North Africa and the Americas. It is a hub.
See, if you will, a vision of the mind's eye. Here is a hub. Attached to it are the many carriers of information and people. New ones come and go, fleets of similarly-labelled and blazoned vehicles, following the cycles day after day. Are we looking at a server? An airport? A coffee shop? It could be any of these, but behind them all looms the invisible spectre of my new taxonomy.
Labels: Etymology, Information
etched with acid at 3:30:00 pm
1 Comments:
soon taxi drivers will be charging people who want to seek their opinion. this will be called tax. this is on top of taxi drivers charging people for sitting in their taxi (fare). in the end, the situation is unfair and the amount of brainpower needed to calculate the total charge can be taxing.
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