[working notes for Diderot 2.0]
Diderot attempts to create a new Encyclopedia for a new time.
He is curious about how terms and concepts emerge from the interactions between tiny fragments of language and the humans and other systems which use them.
He believes that a term does not require a fixed, permanent definition, but rather a fluid, organic, completely open notational space. He imagines such a space: it contains the strange sum of all interactions with the term, all attempts to get close to it, to understand it. It remembers all uses of the term, and all uses of the uses. It remembers and connects to every person and system that interacted with the term. If a small blonde-haired girl from Iowa in the mid 40’s poor in property but not in language, if she said the term, it remembers. It remembers her and the feeling of her small hand, the way she laughed when her brother rode his bike with “look no hands.”
Diderot believes that definition denies the possibility of a term. It makes finite, brings things to an end, a close, a finish, a false coda.
Diderot wishes that knowledge was more like music: a system (collection) of notes that can be interpreted, combined and performed according to the inclinations and whims of the performer. A system which does not say of any one manifestation, “this is true” or “this is false”, but which asks questions such as “what does this arrangement tell me about Being?” or “how can I fold that melody into my ‘song’ about Thought?”
Diderot looks at the Academy and shutters.
Diderot is listening to mash-ups between Radiohead and Jay-Z. He wishes to become a DJ of Thought.
Diderot imagines that the knowledge of the future will look more like hip-hop, a constant re-combination of fragments into novel configurations that make the kids lose their heads, the parents reach for their meds.
The notational space is a system for perpetual interaction with, and refinition of the term. It is not a catalogue of citations, but a collection of notes, which can be played like the notes of a musical score, improvised through, arranged into ever-new melodies.
Diderot imagines himself as an operator in a vast system of semantics and history, of text and context.
Diderot is not THE operator, but one of many, working with the system according to some fixed rules.
He is also an operation.
He is both operator and operation.
Diderot believes that new terms, new concepts, new ideas emerge out of the interactions between elements, between fragments of thought and language.
Instead of attempting to define, or re-define, old terms, or to use them to categorize current knowledge, Diderot has decided to create structures and methods for discovering entirely new terms and concepts in the flow of the stream of all knowledge, the Realm of All Relations (the ROAR).
A notational space is a formal structure for the functional exploration of this concept.
A space for making notes.
The relation to music cannot be overstated.
The notational space is simply that; a space for notation, for the collection of notes.
Unlike definition, it does not attempt to be the final word(s) on the term.
Rather, a place to collect notes which can be strung together in melodies, interpreted according to the whims of the performer.
A musical score does not believe that it is the definitive, the only arrangement of the notes.
It does not believe that it owns the notes.
It is a use of the notes in a space for a particular purpose at some point in time.
Ideas, fragments of language are notes.
That may be sung, may well be sung (Oppen)
There are thought-objects.
There are spaces.
There are methods.
There are users.
