Carving up the World.

This post is going to look at NMP in a different perspective again. I shall presume that the readers of this post shall be impressed by the amazing ability that NMP has when it comes to technology as you shall all get to know what its essence is, and the fun out of it too.

Structures

Of thinking end up making patterns.

Naturally, humans detect patterns, and this gives us the chance to name them and tell the difference between them all. This in the long run enables us, humans, to do our daily activities such as dress differently depending on the occasion. Sometimes, this is based on the cultures as well.

· So we have clothes

· Recipes-what is appropriate for what and what is not, and on what occasion.

· Music-scales, rhythm and melodies. What makes good music is the fact that the artists manage to play that which we expect and also the unexpected, hence people being able to have a taste in music, to like or not to like it.

· Interfaces- different ways in which things are made ie; technology like the phones, cars, elevators (a light goes on to the show you want to go up or down) unlike the crossing-the-road button in Australia, there is nothing that shows that the signal has been sent, so people tend to press it more than once for affirmation, websites, etc.

All conventions are special cases. Presently, the ways in which people dress now and in the past, driving on the left-AU, and right-USA, etc. Have a look at www.janchipchase.com

Affordances and limitations

One can define it as something that tells you something and lets you know more about something. Lets look at an example; knowing that the car is parked in the car park and not randomly, where ever you would like it to be. You can say it is that which we tend t cal basic knowledge of how things should be.

The internet has a different set of affordances and limitations and these include;

· Distance; no limitation to distance as information ca be sent over long distances, like chatting wit someone in Africa when you are in Australia. Unlike before when telegrams and letters were used, there was even a limitation to the amount of words that were written and it took a lot of time to get to its destination.

· (Physical) Scarcity; makes information accessible to all people, and thus is an advantage to the audience and a disadvantage to the companies that rely on this scarcity for business, like the media companies, ie; newspapers, musicians-free to download music, etc.

in summary, I would like to conclude by saying that it is sometimes useful to have conventions that you can follow.

Ontology

Is the study of what there is.

Taxonomy

When it comes to this, things are put into taxons. A taxon is a kind of distinction ie; plants and animals.

Heirachy

This is where there are categories that are more important than others.

Categoreis

This can be defined as a wa of grouping things. Things are often put in categories. Years back when Yahoo was practically the biggest internet company, it used to hire people to use the internet and then categorise what they can. They however had to stop as other companies came into business like Google that does it for a website.

Folksonomy

This is where some the things that we categorise can be classed as wrong or right and not just as they are.

The more flexible way so doing this is by using tags. Sets of tags can tell more or a lot of things. Tags allow things to be members of groups in lots of different ways.

There is something called a name tag and a machine tag, the difference is that a machine tag has got a namespace.

Eg; LASTFM:EVENT=613510

Namespace:predicate=value

ASTRONOMY:OBJECT=M83

MUSIC:BAND=M83

Namespace:predicate=value

Tags are flexible as they can handle a lot of stuff.

*over and out*