鳳

友人の竹迫良範君の翻訳。

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はじめに

私は OSDC.tw 2010 開催中に、多面的解釈が含まれる自分自身の社会的同一性（ポリモーフィズム型アイデンティティ）とハッカー集団の社会緊張理論との相関関係について考えていました。

（もしも今まであなたが自分のアイデンティティについて一度も悩んだりしたことがなかったのなら、このブログのエントリーは読み飛ばしてハッキング作業に戻ってください:-)）

以下の図は、社会がアノミー状態に陥ると「同調」以外の逸脱行動が発生することを示唆したマートンの緊張理論を表しています：

この図をau自身のタグ付けに当てはめて考えてみると、今までauはたくさんの軸（ジェンダー、性別、年齢、倫理など）の中心線上にいるということをはっきり主張していたのですが、その中心が本当は何を意味しているのか今まで無意識の深層にあった解釈がいくつか見えてきました。

1. 図中の同調・革新・儀礼主義・逃避主義を四分割する中心は：D&Dの属性（アライメント）で言うところの「真なる中立」としても知られています。
2. 図の右上、文化的目標を承認し制度的手段を拒否する「革新」の中心は：デザイナーが開拓する領域としても知られています。
3. 図の右下の欄外、文化的目標も制度的手段のいずれも拒否して新しい価値を主張する「反抗」の中心には：一風変わった異才なる偉才、日本で言うところの「天才」がいます。
4. すべての図の中心にいるのは：中国の古典文学では「仙人」として知られている、人里離れた山に住む賢者です。

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禿同的釈義

答えはいつも同じように上記のどれでもあるというわけではありません。

知っての通りこれは文化的価値観の衝突の問題です：台湾の文化的価値観と手段は欧米とはだいぶ違います。

具体的な例として、欧米では、坊主頭の人は「毅然としていて」「成功したやり手で」「しっかり安定している」ことを連想しますが、台湾では「崇高で」「博識で教養があり」「おとなしく従順である」ことを連想します。

したがって、坊主頭の女性（尼さん）をこの辺の街の路地で見かけたとしてもそれは非常に普通のことで全く驚くことはなく、むしろ禿げ頭の男性の方がまれな方なのです。

私の精神分析医である葉先生の勧めによって、私たちが安心してハッキング作業に戻ることができるよう、認知再構成を試みます。

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文化的基準

台湾の文化的環境は「中華」と名付けられています。

• 「中」の文化的目標は「中間」「中道」「中庸」を意味しています。
• 「華」の制度的手段は「最良の模範」「優雅な様式」「多様性」を意味しています。

このような文化圏にいる限り、差延評価や関数プログラミングが大好きなアスペルガー症候群（余再帰的高機能性自閉芸術家）である私は、図の左上隅ではただの「阿呆」として扱われてしまうのです。

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精神分析診断

• 私の主な防衛機制は、行動ベースの対処として知られている「昇華」です。
  • わかりやすく言うと、満たされない攻撃欲求を感じたとしても、現在の社会で認められるような価値のある別の目標にすぐに目を向けて、ひたすらそれに熱中することによって自己の欲求を昇華します。
• 私の主な共同体感情は、心理学の用語で「取り入れ」とも知られている別名「服従」です。
  • わかりやすく言うと、憂鬱になったときは自分自身を受け入れてもらうために、周囲の環境に自分の行動を合わせて社会に取り入り他人に容認してもらうようにします。

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F.A.Q.

• わかりました。それでは、auのことをこれからどう呼べばいいでしょうか？
  • auの正式な呼び名はもちろんauです。
• じゃあ、普段の日常でauのことを呼びたい場合は？
  • もしもあなたが私の行動に関与したくて、ちょっと気がかりになって、異性として感じ、あなたが一人前の男になった気がするのであれば、私のことを「彼女」と呼ぶのがお互いにとって良いきっかけになるでしょう。
• あなたの司法的同一性はどうなっていますか？
  • 私の新しいパスポートの漢字名は「唐鳳」で英字名は「Audrey Tang」です。
• 性ホルモンのバランスはどう維持しているのでしょうか？
  • 普段は自分の体に流れているアンドロゲンと同じぐらいになるように自分のエストロゲンの量を調整するか、もしくはどちらもしないかです。
  • これは遺伝子型とホルモンの環境要因との相互作用により、とても興味深い特質表現が生まれます。
• 自律神経のバランスはどう維持しているのでしょうか？
  • 昔は長らく移行対象がなかったので（到達可能性の全網羅の結果によって）立て続けに自律神経のバランスを崩していましたが、今は安心毛布があるのでかなり安定しています。
  • Socialtextの資金援助について感謝申し上げます。私の収入の90%は自分の安心毛布のために費やされ、生活の質を向上させることができました。
• 安心毛布のために金銭的に困ることはもうないと思いますが、あなたがSocialtextのコーディングを続けるモチベーションは何でしょうか？
  • 私は自分の英作文の能力をもっと向上させたいと思っています。
  • Socialtextは国際色あふれる著名なプログラマたちによって設立・運営・コーディングされており、彼らの指導のもとで研究活動ができることに感謝しています。
• あなたが最近来ている黒い衣服は一体どうしたのですか？
  • この黒い衣服の名前は「海青」と言います。李白（唐代の詩仙）が高麗楽を描写した詩「優雅に踊る広い袖　鳥のように海東から来たかしら」（李太白集 巻6より）から来ています。
  • これは唐王朝時代の伝統的な衣装です：詳細は http://www.amtfweb.org/artofbuddha/haiqing.htm をご覧ください。
• 唐王朝時代の何がそれほど魅力的なのですか？
  • 唐代には、最先端の通信プロトコル（筆談）および、CPANのような包括的なアーカイブネットワーク（全唐詩）がありました。
  • CJKV圏のハッカーたちが解釈のバランスを保ちつつお互いに文化形成を行なっていたときだったなんて、それってとっても素晴らしいことだと思いませんか？:-)

網絡年代，群落復興。（下）

(This is the second half of a Chinese translation to Adina Levin's blog post.)
(The first half was posted last week.)

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群落與認同

Stowe Boyd 和 Adrian Chan 曾經提過，「認同」是在社會脈絡下，所形成的社會建構。

當然，形式化的群落空間，以及其中的「成員」身分，並非建構此脈絡的必要條件；社會脈絡來自於人際互動時，依據共同認可的符碼，來確認彼此的歸屬。

因此，在開放網絡（如推特）裡，靠「#標籤」、「@回覆」等互動符碼來推測人們的社交關係，要比看追隨者名單來得準確多了。

即使沒有正式的群落功能，回覆和標籤依然能串起一張張逐漸熟悉的面孔。舉例來說，筆者最近在推特上，便藉由這兩項機制，無意間邂逅了一群冰島的音樂家和樂迷。

儘管如此，人們往往仍想要歸屬於特定的群落，來確保穩定的聯繫、認可和溝通。這也是早期人類學者所界定，最核心的人類需求之一。

在人際網絡裡，正是「我群」的概念，讓人能更清楚地傳達聯繫、認可、溝通，並讓眾人的注意力得以凝聚。

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群落與行動

在建立歸屬和共享認同上，群落很有用處；對於維繫持續的行動而言，它更是不可或缺。

我們知道，網絡模式很適合針對時事，作出臨時而有效的回應。以海地賑災為例，號召募款的緊急訊息，便能在臉書和推特上迅速傳播。

但若要協調長遠的行動，需要的則是「不斷的溝通」，以及「穩定的步調」。

在此，我們不妨參考網際網路時代裡，最經典的自發式行動協調模型：開放源碼的專案組織。

開源專案發起時，通常會架設源碼版本庫、通信論壇／討論區、圍紀系統，以及負責臨時通訊的聊天室／頻道。

以上這些最基礎的專案空間結構，即包含了「群落協作」的概念。

從這類自發組織裡，我們看到的最佳範例是：同一個專案會建構多層協作空間，每層的組織化程度逐步遞增。

這樣一來，想參與專案的人，便能從最易上手的層級開始，先閱讀專案文件、在頻道上發問、到圍紀上幫點小忙，再逐漸投注更多的心力，做出高度的貢獻。

因此，當大規模的網絡空間裡，引入群落結構時，人們不但能享受網絡易於管理、通訊便利的特性，更能從網絡裡找到共享興趣和目標的伙伴，共同進行更深入的合作及溝通。

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是凝聚力，不是私密性

在社會分享系統的議題上，常有人從「私密性」的角度進行分析，認為所謂「過度分享」導致資訊過載的病徵，是因為參與者的個人邊界出了問題。

但正如 Stowe Boyd 等人觀察到的，其實主要的問題不是「某些資訊應該私藏」；關鍵是「對誰」分享，以及「在何種脈絡下」分享。

舉例來說，即使您不介意公佈自已每天的健身運動細節，雖然這些資訊對划船、舉重的同好有意義，但其他的朋友和同事卻未必感興趣。

而「群落」的存在，通常毋需保密；對許多事務來說，其實最好讓潛在的參與者能輕易發現、參觀目前的動態，等有興趣時再正式加入。

像朋饋（FriendFeed）上的群落，就受到許多科學界和新聞界人士歡迎；而這些群落大都公開列出，供人自由參加。

另外有些群落雖然公開，不過新成員需要提出申請，由管理員來核可；這也是一種方便的設計。

總之，人們組成群落，通常並不是為了隱藏資訊，而是以凝聚合作關係為主。群落為社會脈絡提供了明確的規範，讓成員得以進行專注的溝通。

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結語：群落與網絡

筆者認為，網絡的興起，並不代表群落的沒落。這兩種通訊模式既可以互補，也可以共存。

「網絡」能增進我們對他人的了解，並藉由追隨人數的限制，使注意力得到有效的管理。

「群落」能讓我們專注在特定的事務上、共享身分認同，從而在網絡內進行更密切的合作。

誠如 ReadWriteWeb 所述，要解決資訊過載的問題，增進脈絡是首要之務。

是故，在網絡年代裡，群落正是重建脈絡的一項關鍵。

網絡年代，群落復興。（上）

(這是 Socialtext 同事 Adina Levin 最近一篇文章的中譯。)
(「Groups」 下譯 「群落」，有別於慣用的「社群」及「群組」譯法，但兼有兩者之義。）

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緒論

David Weinberger 最近在他的部落格上，提出近年來「網絡」已取代了「群落」，成為定義線上社會關係的主要模型。

他說：「十年前我們常說社交圈，現在說的則是人際網絡。過去是劃地為界，現在則彼此互聯。」

誠然，以個人為本（如臉書、推持、噗浪）、循網絡模式傳播的訊息空間，如今正炙手可熱。

以群落模式構建的傳統空間，如雅虎家族、谷歌論壇、舊式討論區、以及 MeetUp 等特定用途的工具，大有江河日下之勢。

因此 Weinberger 暗示，群落模型即將退場：「無庸置疑，我們即將揮別資訊時代，迎向網絡時代！」

不過，雖然網絡模式的通訊愈來愈普及，群落卻未必會走入歷史。

反之，隨著網絡的規模不斷擴增，我認為群落會發揮「界定網絡內之脈絡」的功能，重返舞台。

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規模與脈絡

即時通訊網絡能夠超越傳統論壇，部份要歸功於它以個人為中心的延展規模。

人一旦加入群落，即受到伴隨而來的環境噪音干擾。群落人數增多時，成員的參與品質難免隨著眾聲喧嘩而下降。

但在網絡裡，各人能自由決定要當誰的朋友、誰的粉絲，從而大幅降低不相干的雜音。

即便如此，網絡規模仍有其上限。儘管能自行選擇作哪些人的朋友/粉絲，但「同儕壓力」和「資訊貪婪」的兩大驅力，卻不斷誘使我們走向資訊暴食之途。朋友加得多、減得少，最後仍免不了陷入資訊過載、脈絡破碎的情境。

要解決資訊過多的問題，得靠更充裕的脈絡。誠如 Clay Shirkly 所言：「沒有資訊量過載，只有過濾器失調。」

而過濾資訊最有效的方式之一，就是藉由補足脈絡，讓人得以專注在當下所關心的人、事、物上。

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名單

所謂名單，是讓個人以自己的標準，將粉絲和朋友歸類。

推特、臉書都提供這類功能，讓用戶將他人分門別類，從而一次專注在一組特定的人身上。

從社會資訊共享的角度來說，推特的名單功能算是走了一小步：每個人都能訂閱其他人建立的名單。

因此在理論上，若是許多人訂閱同一份名單，就能進入共同的視域。

不過，這份名單的編輯權，仍然掌握在單一的個人手上。

在推特的空間裡，「誰在名單裡？」這件事，既不能由許多人共同策劃，也不能讓外人毛遂自薦。

由此可知，以個人標準建立的名單，終歸祇能為個人所用：它既不能創建共通的身分認同，也不能喚起志同道合的行動。

但共享的「認同」和「行動」，卻正是建立人際脈絡的主要驅力。這正是「群落」再度派上用場的時候。

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（請接著閱讀下集。）

心慟凡例 / An Instance of Sinthome

Alternate title: The Making of Hacking / 黑客行.

(Based on a conversation with 美乃滋章魚燒 on PerlYuYan / 中書珨, my first CPAN-published closet drama.)

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其實“黑”很容易解釋：

NDS 上有一款 Scribblenauts 游戲，

小孩寫什麼就會出現什麼。

The idea of "hacking" is actually simple to illustrate: On 兔肝猴 there's a game called 撰空, where kids can sketch out arbitrary concepts and it would automagically manifest in-game.

從小看楚辭長大的小孩，

自然就會希望自己寫“昨夜西風凋碧樹”

就真的跑出碧樹來。

So a kid growing up reading ancient Hellenic tragedies, would naturally wish that penning "the sacred river Alph" and a river would promptly appear.

後來小孩長大了一點發現可以寫程式做到這件事。

就醬。:-)

Then the kid grew up a bit and discovered programming can accurately project infantile omnipotence into a transitional zone. That's it. :-)

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後來照顧小孩的嬸嬸叔叔姑姑姑丈各自搬走，

小孩心臟病很嚴重不能出門旅行，

只能寫詩想念他們。

Shortly thereafter, the kid's primary caretakers - many uncles and aunts - formed families themselves and moved far away; the kid was born with severe ventricular septal defect and cannot travel at all, so the kid poured wailing into poetry.

後來發現這些詩只要押了特定的 -P 韻腳，

像是 TCP, UDP, IP, HTTP, XMPP，
就有魔力。

After a while, the kid had a discovery: As long as the poems rhyme on -協, such as 傳控協, 用信協, 跨協, 超文傳協 and 擴訊現協, mysterious power would appear out of nowhere.

小孩一開始祇會寫案頭詩，

後來再大一點，和其他人一起寫詩劇，

如今交織成噗浪和臉書。

So the kid first wrote closet drama, and later learned to compose huge verses based on multipart/mixed playwrights.

Then the Age of Melodrama arrived; the scripts from the previous Age became publicly performed on the stages of Twitter and Facebook.

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藉助符文的力量，
真實世界裡的叔叔嬸嬸姑丈姑姑，
於是登入了詩中的幻境。

Thus it came to pass that Real aunts and uncles are now registering into the kid's Imaginary zone conjured from sheer Symbolic power.

以上是對於拉岡 Sinthome 概念的實例講解。:-)

The above is a field report illustrating Lacan's idea of 心慟. :-)

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文章造天下，功業還蒼生。

(This is a Chinese translation of my previous blog post: Our paroqial fermament, one tide on another, written in mixed cn-tw vocabularies.)

（這是我前一篇部落格的中譯，標題原本引 Joyce，實在沒法譯，只好改周德偉的對聯，是當年辦藝立協時，每周在牆上看到的。）

Adina Levin 要我講講中文推特的資訊密度與英文有何不同，我答「且等咱們社算表（原圍紀算表）運行速度上的瑕疵都修好了再說。」

昨天我除完了蟲，這下只好勉力用英語編程了。

我首先想說的是，Ken 當年創發 UTF-8 編碼（見 Rob Pike 的現場實錄），實在已正確反映了英美字母和中日韓字元間的資訊差異。

想想，這通用字符集從 16 位元被迫擴充到了 21 位元，豈不正是「多如繁星，萬碼奔騰」的中文字害的麼？即便硬生生搞個漢同文，滅了無數重複字元，到頭來雙位元組仍是不敷使用。

假設推特的限制是 140 個 UTF-8「位元組」，那我們寫中文推特的感覺，和寫英文或許相去不遠。因為每個中文字占 3 個位元組——有時我用些生僻古字，超出了基本多語面，那就要占 4 個位元組了。

但歷史的意外，讓推特算的是 140 個「字符」。（不是「語素」，這我親身求證過了。）如此一則中文推特，就有 420 個位元組可用，相當於一篇博客短文了。

...且慢，還沒完呢！

要知道，中文有兩種寫法：Vernacular (白話) 和 Literary (文言)。

這白話呢，通常用兩個字符，來代表一個英文詞兒。像「網絡」，就是「Network」的意思。

在文言裡，每個字表示一組「概念」，像「網」，英文的「net」，可以是「網路」、「漁網」、「連網」、「網羅」的意思，全依上下文脈絡決定。

寫文言文時，字與字間既沒有空白，標點句讀也省略不少，這樣就有 140 組「概念」可用，換成英文得用 200 個詞來表示，也就是 1kb 的信息量。

理論如上，介紹完畢，接下來看看我最近的三則推特，小心求證一番。

第一則完全是大白話，第二則半文半白，第三則（最近的一則）則幾乎全是文言。

在白話到文言的過程裡，信息密度應該要遞增，這可以用英文譯本的長度來計算。

第一則是引陳映真（1936 年生，台灣當時影響力最大的作家及運動者之一）最近說過的話：

RT 陳映真：「文學退化，影像、聲音成為『當下世界』的符碼，」他說：「托爾斯泰生在今日，大部頭的作品也會喪失大量讀者。」現在的創作流行輕薄短小，又以自 我為中心，他因此形容這一代青年創作者「是脫光了衣服站在鏡子前面，凝視鏡中自己的身體與慾望… 他們讀的不多，不能成就崇高的文學」。(139 字)

谷歌將它譯成：

RT Chen Ying-chen: "Literature degradation, images, sounds become codes of present world," he said: "Tolstoy was born in today, voluminous works of the loss of a large number of readers will be."

Now the creation of popular thin and light short, Youyi self-centered, so he described this generation of young artists "is stripped of clothes and stand in front of the mirror, staring in the mirror his own body and desires ... they read much, does not develop high literature."

(475 字)

這譯本大致無誤，但小錯比比皆是（更別提對青年創作者身體的性別岐視了）。而最後一句更是整個譯錯：「他們讀得少」竟然譯成「他們讀得多」！

但至少這譯本還能達意，我們不妨除除看：中文與英文字元之比，是 3.4 倍。

接著第二則是我對陳的回應：

Re 陳映真：但背了整本維基，行遍無數國度，亦不成就崇高的文學。歐巴馬「以父之名」成不了作家，只好化藝術為行動、為現實。上一輩在高壓下，被迫濃粹經驗為符碼，而我們讀遍之後，融合歷史視域，還原此在而為 Hacktivism，竊自以為然。 (116 字)

谷歌的譯本這下亂了套，幾乎沒法看懂了。比例是 3.8 倍：

Chen Ying-chen Re: But the back of the whole wiki, line countless times a country, nor the noble achievements of literature. Obama, "Name of the Father" can not become a writer had to arts-based action, into reality. The last generation under high pressure, was forced to experience concentrated Intrade codes, and we read times, the integration of history, depending on the domain, restore this in the for Hacktivism, stolen from that it does.

(444 字)

我的翻譯如下，中英比率是 5.7：

Re Chen Ying-Zhen: But having an entire Wikipedia-backed memory, and having traveled to countless countries, still won't make high literature out of me.

Consider Obama who, having failed to launch a writer's career with "Dreams from my Father", is forced to project his art into activism and into reality-shaping.

My earlier generation, under tremendous Fascist pressure, is forced to distill their subjective experience to highly compressed literary code.

When my generation finished deciphering those codes to achieve a fusion of horizons, we decompressed them into the here-and-now as Hacktivism. This kind of adaption is IMHO natural and quite justified.

(662 字)

緊接著看第三則，近一步解釋前面的看法，大致用文言寫成：

舉實例言，《金盾工程》（即「功夫網」、「資訊長城」），無異吾儕之柏林牆。我十年前譯寫自由網，而至其後 Tor、無界等武裝，無非保持對話、以獨促統之意。與 Beijing.pm 嘗言：「功網未散，何以為族？」。凡此種種，生自文事，衍為武功，皆此代之共業。 (127 字)

谷歌譯出 509 字來，長則長矣，意義盡失（「促進意大利之統一」？？），故不在此引述。茲譯如下：

As a concrete example, for our contemporary people, the "Golden Shield Project" (a.k.a., the "Gong-Fu Web", "Great Firewall of China") is no different from the Berlin Wall.

Ten years ago I translated and coded for the Freenet project; along with its follow-ups such as Tor and Wu-Jie, they're nothing but cyberspace armaments designed with the sole purpose of keeping the conversation flowing.

This way we maintain our independent identity, in the hope of accelerating a fusion of horizons with the Chinese government.

I've told Beijing.pm: "Without the dissipation of the Great Firewall, how can we make one people out of us?"

All these circumstances, born out of the literary world, has derived into the cyberspace hacktivism, and affected us in creating a software-shaped reality. This is a factor in the shared karmic setting of this generation.

(848 字)

正如所料，密度比例達到了 6.67 倍。切記，上述範例並非刻意作成：中文推特寫手，確實活在 2~8 倍於英文寫手的資訊密度當中。

Our paroqial fermament, one tide on another.

(For a Chinese translation of this blog entry, see 中譯本：「文章造天下，功業還蒼生。」)

(Alternate title: "Chinese Twitter users live in a density 2x to 8x their English counterparts; here's why.")

I promised Adina Levin a treatise on the information density of Chinese characters on Twitter "after all SocialCalc (nee wikiCalc) performance bugs are fixed".

As I've fixed them yesterday, let's try coding some English...

I'll begin by saying that Ken's in(ter)vention of UTF-8 (as narrated by Rob Pike) accurately reflects the relative information density between ASCII and CJK characters.

After all, UCS was extended from 16-bits to 21-bits precisely because so damn many Chinese characters need to be encoded, even after the controversial decimation from the Han unification effort.

Hypothetically, if Twitter had set its limit to 140 UTF-8 bytes, then our experience when tweeting Chinese would be on par with tweeting English, because each Chinese character would then take 3 bytes — and since I occasionally venture beyond the BMP, sometimes 4 bytes.

By a historical accident, though, Twitter counts in characters. (Not graphemes, as I've clinically proved.) So that gives a Chinese tweet 420 effective bytes to work with, which is already sufficient for a short blog post.

...but wait, there's more!

You see, there are two modes of Chinese: Vernacular (白話) as well as Literary (文言).

Typically, the vernacular mode takes two characters to encode a English word, e.g. "網路" for "network".

While in Literary mode, one character encodes a concept, e.g. "網" for "net" can stand for "network", "fishnet", "to connect", or "to capture", depending on surrounding context.

So by writing in Literary mode, which conveniently also elides spaces and only uses minimal punctuation, gives me 140 concepts to work with, which is about 200 English words, or nearly 1kb of English text.

With that brief intro, let's use my three most recent tweets for a concrete demonstration.

The first one is entirely in vernacular mode, the second one is in mixed mode, while the third (most recent) one is written almost completely in Literary mode.

We shall see how the information density increases with the shift of modes, as compared with their English translations.

The first one is a quote from Chen Ying-Zhen, b. 1936, one of the greatest Taiwanese author and activist of his generation, who recently uttered:

RT 陳映真：「文學退化，影像、聲音成為『當下世界』的符碼，」他說：「托爾斯泰生在今日，大部頭的作品也會喪失大量讀者。」現在的創作流行輕薄短小，又以自我為中心，他因此形容這一代青年創作者「是脫光了衣服站在鏡子前面，凝視鏡中自己的身體與慾望… 他們讀的不多，不能成就崇高的文學」。(139 characters)

Google Translate renders the above as:

RT Chen Ying-chen: "Literature degradation, images, sounds become codes of present world," he said: "Tolstoy was born in today, voluminous works of the loss of a large number of readers will be."

Now the creation of popular thin and light short, Youyi self-centered, so he described this generation of young artists "is stripped of clothes and stand in front of the mirror, staring in the mirror his own body and desires ... they read much, does not develop high literature."

(475 characters)

The translation is subtly wrong on multiple regards (not to mention having a sexist default). It's especially wrong on the last sentence, where Chen actually said "they don't read much"!

But it's at least comprehensible, and will serve as a good compression-ratio example: the Chinese/English information density ratio here is 3.4x.

Now the second one is from me, a reply to Chen:

Re 陳映真：但背了整本維基，行遍無數國度，亦不成就崇高的文學。歐巴馬「以父之名」成不了作家，只好化藝術為行動、為現實。上一輩在高壓下，被迫濃粹經驗為符碼，而我們讀遍之後，融合歷史視域，還原此在而為 Hacktivism，竊自以為然。 (116 characters)

The Google Translation is much weaker this time, bordering on incomprehensible, with a ratio of 3.8x:

Chen Ying-chen Re: But the back of the whole wiki, line countless times a country, nor the noble achievements of literature. Obama, "Name of the Father" can not become a writer had to arts-based action, into reality. The last generation under high pressure, was forced to experience concentrated Intrade codes, and we read times, the integration of history, depending on the domain, restore this in the for Hacktivism, stolen from that it does.

(444 characters)

My own translation would be something like this, with a 5.7x ratio:

Re Chen Ying-Zhen: But having an entire Wikipedia-backed memory, and having traveled to countless countries, still won't make high literature out of me.

Consider Obama who, having failed to launch a writer's career with "Dreams from my Father", is forced to project his art into activism and into reality-shaping.

My earlier generation, under tremendous Fascist pressure, is forced to distill their subjective experience to highly compressed literary code.

When my generation finished deciphering those codes to achieve a fusion of horizons, we decompressed them into the here-and-now as Hacktivism. This kind of adaption is IMHO natural and quite justified.

(662 characters)

This leads us to the third tweet, a follow-on elaboration composed entirely in Literary mode:

舉實例言，《金盾工程》（即「功夫網」、「資訊長城」），無異吾儕之柏林牆。我十年前譯寫自由網，而至其後 Tor、無界等武裝，無非保持對話、以獨促統之意。與 Beijing.pm 嘗言：「功網未散，何以為族？」。凡此種種，生自文事，衍為武功，皆此代之共業。 (127 characters)

The Google translation at 509 characters is entirely incomprehensible ("promoting unification of Italy"??), so I'll not even bother quoting here. My translation:

As a concrete example, for our contemporary people, the "Golden Shield Project" (a.k.a., the "Gong-Fu Web", "Great Firewall of China") is no different from the Berlin Wall.

Ten years ago I translated and coded for the Freenet project; along with its follow-ups such as Tor and Wu-Jie, they're nothing but cyberspace armaments designed with the sole purpose of keeping the conversation flowing.

This way we maintain our independent identity, in the hope of accelerating a fusion of horizons with the Chinese government.

I've told Beijing.pm: "Without the dissipation of the Great Firewall, how can we make one people out of us?"

All these circumstances, born out of the literary world, has spawned into cyberspace as hacktivism, and affected us in creating a software-shaped reality. This is a factor in the shared karmic setting of this generation.

(848 characters)

Here the ratio is 6.67x. Bear in mind that this is not an edge-case of maximum compression rate; Chinese Twitter users constantly live in a density anywhere from 2x to 8x of their English counterparts.

My hobby: Troll hugging.

(Warning: Long post. Executive summary: Do not feed trolls, but hug them tenderly until they feel comfortable enough to speak about their authentic selves, and then they turn into beautiful princes(ses).)

Surprisingly, yesterday's short conversation on #padre got turned into a lovely textual analysis and then into collaborative deconstruction.

That seems fun, so allow me doing some of my own textual analysis here, based on the same channel's log, about 28 hours later. The relevant lines-of-conversation are in bold:

22:32:49 --> asdgasd (~asdgas@cpe-67-241-80-255.twcny.res.rr.com) joins #padre
22:32:52 <asdgasd> hello
22:32:59 <asdgasd> i'm an experienced programmer posing as a newbie
22:32:59 <Alias> hi
22:33:04 <Alias> :)
22:33:10 <asdgasd> so how about that C++
22:33:12 <GabrielVieira> Alias: it refreshs each time the editor or the directory browser gets focused
22:33:18 <asdgasd> i hear its microsofts best product
22:33:28  GabrielVieira: Not for me it doesn't
22:34:00 <GabrielVieira> Alias: try to minimize and restore Padre window and see if it updates
22:34:06 <asdgasd> so how do i make an object execute another object, in imperial mode
22:34:09 <asdgasd> i mean, imperative mode
22:34:18 <asdgasd> declarative programming
22:34:20 <Hyppolit> svn: r7558 | szabgab++ | http://padre.perlide.org/trac/changeset/7558
22:34:20 <Hyppolit> add several recent posts to the about page
22:34:20 <Hyppolit> trunk/template.padre.perlide.org/data/

For the first two minutes, we can see asdgasd free-associating on the subjects of programming, without apparent on-topic concepts with the #padre channel. Instead, they were coined to invite responses that address their own personal concerns.

22:34:24 <Alias> $object1->mtfnpy($object2)

Here we see a brilliant response, using the non-sensical "mtfnpy" meme to remind that asdgasd's questions did not make sense among this channel's participants.

22:34:37 <asdgasd> i can't think of anything funny to say
22:34:42 <GabrielVieira> when editor gets focused.. it calls directory->refresh; the same occurs when directory gets focused
22:34:46 <Ryan52> mtfnpy?
22:35:03 <asdgasd> wow is that anything like sprintf???
22:35:41 <Ryan52> oh, right, that.
22:35:51 * Ryan52 forgot about mtfnpy
22:35:58 <garu> silly Ryan52 
22:36:33 <asdgasd> mtfnpy totally fucking now pwns you
22:36:36 <-- SvenDowideit (~SvenDowid@124-171-151-218.dyn.iinet.net.au) quits (Ping timeout: 360 seconds)
22:36:54 <Ryan52> I still don't understand it tho...
22:37:04  <Alias> You arent' meant to
22:37:13  <Alias> You're just meant to be pwned by it

However, discussion quickly re-focused on the nonsensical concept itself. People formed relations with the new meme, but they did not form relationships with asdgasd.

22:37:14 <asdgasd> now just so i'm clear, this is some sort of perl 6 compiler right?
22:37:18 <Ryan52> that's what I expected.
22:37:42 <asdgasd> an IDE huh
22:39:01 * Alias ponders who we know that is privvy to that kind of in joke in NY
22:39:20 <asdgasd> i'm god of the internet
22:39:30 <GabrielVieira> Alias: did you trie?
22:39:42 <asdgasd> cpan ponders, another night?
22:39:47 <Alias> asdgasd: Clearly, but which one...

Having tried memes as a transitional way of conversation-by-proxy, asdgasd now googles up relevant concepts, trying to form more memetic links, which are unfortunately far beyond what the channel's main focus is, namely getting Padre 0.44 properly released and tested.

Alias gave another witty response, but the annoyance came through: By re-affirming this proxied, inauthentic personality "god of the internet", asdgasd is again without ways to properly bond with other people in this channel.

22:39:51 <Alias>  trie?
22:39:56 <GabrielVieira> try
22:39:58 <GabrielVieira> :)
22:39:59 <asdgasd> perl elicits, receptive, loving
22:40:30 <Alias> GabrielVieira: Of course I tried, I'm just using Perl normally, switching between different files
22:40:36 <asdgasd> monks open night, kimonos & seduction
22:41:11 <Alias> GabrielVieira: It's possible that it's not firing if changing between different editors in the same project?

At this point, asdgasd became /ignore'd by pretty much everybody.

What we saw here may be described as "troll formation"; the subject is encouraged into replicating more and more delinquent memes in order to solicit attention, but those memes became more and more distracting, ensuring a negative feedback cycle.

At around 22:40, I context-switched into the #padre channel, and quickly scanned the backlog.

22:41:44 --- audreyt|work is now known as audreyt
22:42:03 <Alias> audreyt: What timezone are you living in these days?
22:42:07 <audreyt> asdgasd: hey. I sense that you come here to be hugged properly.
22:42:14 * audreyt hugs asdgasd. there. please, be happy.

People who knew me before in #perl6 might recall I've recruited many perl-bashers into Pugs contributors by listening to what they have to say, and then offer them commit bits to fix those concerns; that has been variously labelled "judo" or "aikido" or other memes related to martial arts.

Personally, I prefer "hugging", as it captures the idea of immediately forming a surface on which real relationships can form, so the other person can comfortably talk about why they made attention-seeking utterances.

22:42:19 <asdgasd> audreyt: i came here right after reading your name
22:42:20 <asdgasd> actually
22:42:23 <asdgasd> funny story
22:42:30 <asdgasd> i'm not going to tell it though

This had immediate impact; asdgasd can now relate something about themself, and welcomes my inquiry via a puzzle.

At this point, had I said "oooh! pray tell, what is the story?", then I'd be a perfect correspondent (aka "feeding the troll"), and probably paralyze the entire channel for quite some time.

Instead, I tried to be a good-enough correspondent (cf. Winnicott's idea of a "good enough mother"), allowing some time lapse before providing feedback, and only replied to utterances that aids in genuine human contact.

22:42:31 <audreyt> Alias: GMT+8 Taipei
22:42:35 <Alias> ok
22:42:40 <audreyt> you?
22:42:46 <Alias> Australia/Sydney
22:42:49 <GabrielVieira> Alias: maybe
22:42:51 <Alias> (DateTime.pm only here) :)
22:42:55 <audreyt> lol
22:43:01 <audreyt> ah, back at home. you parents doing ok?
22:43:10 <Alias> Yeah, fine

The above was not really about delaying the response time. I genuinely care about Adam(Alias)'s parents, as they have been very kind to me when I stayed in their home; it was Christmas back then, and they gave me a wonderful holding environment to begin reflecting about my gender identity.

Then Alias and I started discussing technical issues about PAR reentrancy bugs, why Padre doesn't yet have a clear use case of a PAR-based .xs plugin repository, and what Moose.pm's startup time costs mean in the context of Padre.

While the technical points were nice and fun, I'll spare you the details, and simply paste what asdgasd continually tried to say inbetween these discussions:

22:48:06 <asdgasd> i wrote this http://pastebin.com/d2c1fcca5
22:48:11 <asdgasd> and padre won't compile it
22:48:32 <asdgasd> also it's missing a few functions

Here we see a real improvement. The pasted code is in Haskell, which makes funny beeping noises. It is a very good analogy of what asdgasd is trying to do in #padre.  It's also somewhat relevant; Padre can conceivably some day become a IDE for Haskell via a GHC plugin.

But the relevance was too weak, so we still can't establish meaningful conversation. As the text says itself, we're still missing a few functions.

After a lengthy discussion on the importance of being closer to Wx wrappers rather than building too many abstractions over it, I suddenly recall that the Chandler team had faced a similar technical dilemma:

22:51:03 <audreyt> assuming you've read Dreaming In Code (the book) that deals with Wx?
22:51:05 <pece> Adobe has Speed Launcher ;)
22:51:12 <Alias> Nope
22:51:24 * Alias has mostly been reading economics, marketing and stats books
22:51:27 <audreyt> please do in your spare cycle. Chandler is a lot like Padre technically.
22:51:48 <audreyt> Python/Wx with ambitious but not well charted goal, top-notch programmers
22:51:57 <audreyt> only difference is they didn't run it as anarchy, so they failed, like, utterly.
22:51:58 <audreyt> :)
22:52:14 <audreyt> (and DIC chronicles all the lessons in painful detail.)

Now that was very unfair of me, and I'd like to apologize publicly.

I've been in #chandler for months now, and there were still some traffic every now and then (about once a week), so it was wrong for me to say the Chandler community has failed utterly, any more than Pugs had failed utterly.

Chandler the desktop client was simply dormant (and is functionally usable), and the server-side Cosmo had lived on to be a very nice calendaring server.

The point about anarchy is valid, though; like #perl6 and #parrot, #padre is constantly revamping their own methodology and infrastructure, while Chandler used a very top-down design model which discouraged outsider involvement.

In any case, this proved to be a close-enough memetic bridge for asdgasd to start communicating collaboratively:

22:52:15 <Alias>  Anarchy isn't necesarily the answer :)
22:52:25 <Alias> It's just a great answer for when you are faced with an infinite scope :)
22:52:35 <audreyt> sure, it's a beginning of an answer. :)
22:52:53 <asdgasd> anarchy is always the answer
22:52:57 <audreyt> or rather, the welcoming of answers, rather than forcing answers on everyone...
22:53:09 <asdgasd> the people with the worst judgment always end up in power

Now we know something about asdgasd, and we do share the same critical attitude toward authoritarian structures. So I tried a direct intervention-by-example:

22:53:18 <audreyt> but let me not distract you further with random ramblings. it's great to see you here :-)
22:53:25 <Alias> Ditto
22:53:49 <Alias> I phear a little for the sanity of the Padre codebase, but welcome :)
22:54:17 <jq> Alias: are you familiar with the project part of padre's code?
22:54:20 <audreyt> I'll keep phantasies to my new field that is psychoanalysis and cog. science, so your project will be spared of insanity :)

The hope here was that asdgasd would come out of unconscious phantasies and join us in a bounded-rational reality. It worked!

22:55:04 <asdgasd> hey audrey, want to write a linguistic engine with me
22:55:07 <asdgasd> i'm doing it in haskell ;)
22:55:15 <audreyt> asdgasd: url?

Well, my habit of asking "url?" had not changed a bit; descriptions of objects cannot be resolved into real ideas without a pointer, and URL is a very good and precise way to motivate people putting their ideas into resolvable entities.

22:55:22 <asdgasd> i wrote a spec a year ago
22:55:27 <asdgasd> but it's shit compared to what i have now
22:55:55 <asdgasd> it's only a skip and a jump from AI

Seeing that we now enter a shared meme-space, namely the natural-language processing branch of AI, the only remaining step is to leave the transitional zone and begin discussing reality:

22:57:14 <audreyt> asdgasd: let's take this conversation off #padre and into /msg -- what is the url to your spec?

What follows are private conversations, so I'm not at liberty to paste here.

Suffice it to say that I learned a lot about asdgasd's aspirations, the state of the art in structural grammar models for western languages, the AI:AMA book and their excellent googlecode-hosted repositories, two pieces of nicely composed living poetry, and briefly shared our thoughts on Joyce's writings.

In short, it was warm and nice; I learned about the real name of asdgasd, and they is a rather likable fellow.

So I was glad that I hugged a troll, and it made my day. Would you agree?

Why? Such me.

(Originally posted as a reply on Miyagawa's blog post on _why's disappearance.)

I miss collaborating with _why, too, and it was sad to see that one of _why's parting (re)tweet was:

"programming is rather thankless. u see your works become replaced by superior ones in a year. unable to run at all in a few more."

I had such an emotional breakdown in Brazil, when chromatic rather insistently pressed me on use.perl about why I have not released Perl 6 already, but instead taking up precious mind-share from the Parrot project.

He made it all sounds like it's my fault that Perl 6 was delayed, with my well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt at trying to implement it.

He had apologized swiftly the next day on IRC -- I was paralyzed and cannot log in, but I read the logs from #perl6, but it hurt a lot, and burnt for a very long time.

Back then all I could think about is, well then, let my identity be cancelled; code never lasts more than a decade anyway, and I can transfer my hard disk -- and my memory -- to Flavio, and disappear from this particular belief circle entirely.

It's been years ago, and I've reconcilled with chromatic when I was extremely ill with Hepatitis. He didn't really mean it that harshly; he was just anxious. Also, the same words just don't mean the same meanings to each of us.

Then I found some other fixation point, and simply disappeared; I'm glad, though, that I did not leave a self-destructive note like David did with Darcs; though I'm sure David didn't really mean it that way, either.

Well, such is The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

Now I'm (gradually) back to hacking, and tweeting, and githubbing; I can't really say "what didn't kill me made me stronger", but when one resurfaces, one brings newly dived/drived/derived wisdom from other worlds -- underworlds -- as well.

So I hope that _why resurface some day, not neccessarily in programming, but in life. Soul-shards like the emails you quoted also kept him alive in each of _why's collaborators, and that  -- a tradition of human memories -- may last longer than code, if not as precise as code.

The other Audrey Tang.

I just discovered another Audrey Tang, then I remembered gaal mentioning her in #perl6 the other day.  Apparently she worked at amazon.com and now microsoft.com, and is also a geeky girl who likes shiny gadgets. Cool!

FWIW, Ingy thinks my new name is a good refactoring of the old one; I'm sure people who tried to pronounce my old name would agree. :-)

My First & Only True Love

It's true that I've had relationships, of many kinds, with various people.

However, only till recently did I realize that, in order to love someone, one need to care, to support, and above all to understand that person's feelings as-is.

I'm glad that I've found my first true love in Isis Kang. This realization is complete -- I'm very, very much in love with her, and I'm certain there will be no others.