[okfn-discuss] Greek root for knowledge?

Tue Feb 5 00:39:09 UTC 2013

Sophia is "wisdom" but also "sophists" were those that in contrast to
"philosophers" who loved wisdom, simply pretended to be able to possess it
and teach it. Thus, super-sophisticity could be misinterpreted. You may
want to look at "noesis", which is similar to "mental acts" or
"dianoeisis". Supernoesis?

Although maybe super-sophistry is the right world :) For example,  I
disagree with removal of non-commercial licensing from Creative Commons.
Essentially by "speeding" up the production of knowledge but not allowing a
copy-left like mechanism that prevents commercial exploitation without
recompensation, you essentially are providing an ever-larger set of data
produced by individuals and public sector bodies (both under severe strain
due to the crisis) for commercial companies to exploit without any
re-compensation for the actual production of such data. So, I'm happy to
share my photos with a non-commercial license. I don't want some random
multi-national to use my photos in an advertising campaign without my
permission. In Marxist terms, that's primitive accumulation - sort of
similar to the looting of Africa and other countries during the colonial
period, but this time done on the level of data.  I think there's some
thoroughly discredited neoliberal ideology at work in some of the "open
data" rhetoric, but then most people involved in open data, while doing it
for the right reasons, aren't actually thinking in terms of political
economy and thus are quite naive. I think open data can change the world,
but find the "removal of any barriers" deeply problematic and
short-sighted. Instead, we should produce the kinds of incentive structures
necessary to align with the ethics of a community, which I would prefer to
be democracy and mass empowerment.

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 12:37 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> I want to create a neologism for the infinitely fast flow of knowledge
> when there are no barriers and am looking for a (probably) Greek root.
>
> The metaphor is superconductivity and superfluidity. A superconducting
> magnet can support trains, run for ever, etc. Any impedance destroys it. I
> want to argue that only Open Knowledge (a la OKD) is fit for the modern age
> - that licences, logins, etc completely destroy the flow of knowledge.
>
> So, analogous with superconductivity and superfluidity do we have a word
> for knowledge?
>
> supersophicity? (sophos = wisdom)
> supergnosis? supergnosicity? (but conflation with Christian theology)
>
> or ???
>
> P.
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
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