I have been reading lots of books related to experience, knowledge, insights and related things. one message that comes out loud and clear is that experience is the beginning of most scientific and other knowledge. Whether it is an apple’s fall or Arhimidese’s bath, trivial looking experiences have resulted in profound insights leading to revolutionary discoveries and paradigm changing theories.
If we could find a way to harness people’s experiences — similar to what we did to what people could articulate using language — then rapid progress could be made in many fields. Many difficult fields where people had dificulty articulating their thoughts and ideas using current languages, may be captured easier by using a language of experiences. That does have a serious hurdle — a language to articulate experiences. Not an easy task — but definitely seems like an effort worth pursuing.
Hi Ramesh,
What an interesting insight!
I think that your idea strikes out along a path similar to the notion of events that we discussed a few years ago. Back then, we wrestled with the problem of capturing the full context of an event. You made a lot more progress in that area than I. But, the problem is still hard; interesting but really hard.
A language of experience seems like a way to capture more of the context that surrounds our individual existances. That language should include the complex and fleeting web of social interactions and conventions that help shape our behavior. Environmental context would be part of the language as well. I’m sure the language would have many more facets. (“Facets” may imply more structure than can exist)
Thinking out loud for a few sentences…. Phenomena like Google, Twitter, wiki’s, blogs and such capture more and more content from an incresingly diverse and nichey population. That diffluent content swirls, boils and evaporates into Internet atmosphere, to condense and rain down somewhere. I wonder if that seemingly chaotic content contains your language of experience, somehow?
Lets catch up. It’s been too long since we talked.
Dave