Genetic Systems: from DNA to Facebook
From CS260SP09
Readings
Notes on Genetics and Power Laws, John Canny
Background Material
On a Class of Skew Distribution Functions, Herbert Simon, Biometrika, Vol 42, 3/4, 1955.
Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law, M.E.J. Newman, Contemporary Physics 46, 2005.
Extension of Zipf’s Law to Words and Phrases Le Quan Ha, E. I. Sicilia-Garcia, Ji Ming, F. J. Smith, Proceedings of the 19th international conference on Computational linguistics, 2002.
Discussions
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Seth Horrigan 17:02, 20 February 2009 (PST)
The discussion of traditional text as linearized hypertext caught my eye. It occurred to me that much of the Internet (and almost all of the World Wide Web) is based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Hypertext "will lead the user to other, related information on demand" and "makes possible a dynamic organization of information through links and connections." Given this, the web seems to be missing a major portion of its best use. The majority of the web pages that I view contain only a small amount of information (often more than the one page that the name implies, but far less than an entire book), and they link to other related pages as expected; yet much of what I access through the internet does not take advantage of this intended properties of hypertext. In the large number of journal papers, conference papers, and online books that I read the capability of embedding hyperlinks and additional information is obvious, and yet they instead rely on traditional "references" optimized for printing which require substantial additional work to actually find and read the stated reference. While I can understand the impetus to provide references in a traditional format so that printed media retains the key information, why should these documents not also utilize the electronically available resources for hypertext and directly reference the indicated resources on the ACM portal or the IEEE archive or where ever the electronic publication is available?
Simon Tan 02:59, 22 February 2009 (PST)
The argument for the concept of inter-textuality is quite compelling. I do feel aware that the way I write is heavily influenced from texts that I have read. Although I do develop my own style of writing, it is ultimately a "remixing" of all of the content that I have been exposed to over the course of my life.
It should be noted that a lot of the written works we are exposed to come from our schooling, so I have a suspicion that the writing "voices" that are produced from a group of similarly schooled people will tend to be similar as well. I wonder if there is any study or evidence of this.
Roland Barthes claim that there are no such things as "original works" begs the question - if all of humanity's writing is based on the few great works (e.g. Shakespeare), then what are those works based on? There must be some linguistic origin of all of this, even if it is before the advent of written languages. (Oral history? Cave paintings?)
KetrinaYim 14:42, 22 February 2009 (PST)
I think that's exactly what style is: a sort of re-appropriation of all the cultural works and experiences that one is exposed to in life. Musicians, actors, artists, and authors all like to speak of their creative influences, the things that shaped their styles, and often it is the works of existing persons. It's in the "remixing" process that the style becomes an original entity. At least that's how I feel about my own artistic style; all the comics and literature I've read, all the cartoons and movies I've watched, all the video games I've played, and all my life experiences have contributed somehow to my style. Style could be considered a genetic entity (albeit a rapidly evolving one) in that sense, being created from the splicing and recombination of cultural content and personal experience and also being unique to every person (aside from copycats).
And on that note, I too have difficulty believing Barthes' claim. I would argue that there can be original works because each person has a different mixture of influences, and also in different proportions. The uniqueness of such mixtures is what becomes originality.
Kenrick Kin 00:58, 23 February 2009 (PST)
I think Barthes has an interesting point of view on writing. But if there is no such thing as original work, then is there such a thing as original thought? Has every thought that could possibly have been thought before already thought of? To distill writing into purely an ordering of words seems to squeeze out all meaning behind writing. What is the point of writing if not to convey something meaningful and original? Style may be borrowed, but content, ideas, thoughts are influenced and can spur originality. What is life then, but a remix of atoms?
The Power Law is interesting. Apparently you can pick anything and make a power law out of it - even the order in which a person wades through a house.
Brian Tran 01:42, 23 February 2009 (PST)
Like everyone else in the discussion, I was also fascinated by the concept of inter-textuality. It explains why we start saying things that other people repeat around us, like slang. It's not surprising that inter-textuality exists because the basis of communication between all members of society is a set of mutually understood signs. Thus, the only way to communicate any ideas is through those mutually understood signs, words and phrases in the context of the reading. I have also given some thought as to whether thought speak plays a role in this theory. Most of the conscious thoughts we have consist of words. How can we argue that any idea we have is truly ours if our medium to channel those thoughts is a mix of preconceived words.
I feel that the concept does not negate originality because we coin new words like "D'oh!" all the time. However, one could always argue that the context then becomes part of the new word.
Priyanka Reddy 07:17, 23 February 2009 (PST)
As a couple people mentioned already, Barthes' claim that there were no original works is worth talking about. One key point in this claim is what we mean by the word "original". Does "original" mean that the product is completely new and no parts of the product have ever been done before? Or, does it mean that it may include some previously done parts but after putting all those parts together, we have something that has never been done before? I think Barthes is referring to the former while most of us side with the latter.
Kristeva's concept of inter-textuality is also really interesting. As Brian mentioned, inter-textuality is the basis of communication in a society and almost defines that society. This comes into play when two people from different societies/countries attempt to communicate, it becomes really hard to do so, even if they speak the same language, because they lack inter-textuality.
Himanshu Sharma 08:02, 23 February 2009 (PST)
After reading Barthes' claim, I had the same feeling as expressed by the comments above. I think its easier to make such a claim that can neither be proved or disproved. One needs to record every work, experience to see if the individual style is a mixture of them or not.
I was somehow surprised and confused about Power Laws and their significance.
Anuj 12:15, 23 February 2009 (PST)
As a reader what struck me the most was the amazing consistency with which Power law seemed to apply across various different scenarios. To me it seems that it would be really interesting study in itself to see the correlation between cases in which power law applies. With regards to Barthes's claim, I certainly agree with parts of it because almost writer takes inspiration from what exists in the world, before creating his own work, but there is always room for innovation. So I am less sure of the absoluteness of the claim.
David (Tavi) Nathanson 14:08, 23 February 2009 (PST)
What first struck me about the article was the discussion of how the genetic perspective has not gained much ground in Psychology. Thinking back on all the Psychology courses I've taken, it's true that the majority of the focus was on the individual (e.g. the individual's traits), where the individual was defined has his/her state at the moment of observation. It is odd that genetic analysis is left only to Developmental Psychology--it is tossed aside as its own field of study, when in fact it should be integrated with all of Psychology. This "tossing aside" reminds me of the way design is often applied at the very end of the product development life-cycle, instead of being integrated throughout the process.
Regarding Power Laws, I immediately thought of the "long tail" in business and economics. I've been familiar with the "long tail" for a while, but I didn't realize that it is such a pervasive phenomenon outside the business word (i.e. personal names, city populations, etc.). This blew my mind!
Also relevant to Power Laws is Wordle.net, a site that allows users to input a textual document, and outputs a beautiful display of the frequencies of words in the document. Wordle is a great tool for visualizing certain Power Laws.
