The impotence of numbers

I heard a lecture by Marvin Minsky[1] once in which he said that any
time you see a number on its own you should think to yourself 'how sad'.
The point being, that a number is the result of some sort of calculation
or measurement. If all you have visibility of is the resultant number,
you have lost potentially useful information. Is "4" the result of
adding two and two or the result of adding three and one? Perhaps it is
irrelevant, perhaps it isn't.

Regardless of the provenance of any given number, of undoubted relevance
to most data processing is the stuff that invariably surrounds it -
context. Numbers do not work well on their own - they require context in
order to be properly interpreted. Indeed, context can be said to give
raw numbers their true meaning. There is a big difference - as anyone
putting an orbiter around Mars will tell you - between metric
measurements and imperial measurements[2]. There is a big difference
between 1 million US dollars turnover and 1 million US dollars gross
profit as any business person will tell you.

Context matters. Context matters a whole lot. The concept of context
brings us by commodius vicus of recirculation[3] back to the idea of
looking at numbers and being sad as a consequence. You see, from time to
time I see someone looking at an XML document and saying something like
'that is the integer value 4'. My response is, usually, a private
intonation of 'how sad'. It is sad because the four-ness of four is the
least interesting thing about it. All the really interesting stuff is
the context that *surrounds* the number four.

Communicating that context information is essentially XML's gift to
mankind, in my opinion. XML allows you to attach arbitrarily luscious
and plump context onto the insipid bones of mere numbers - its called
markup. A wonderful, expressive facility that is there for all of us to
use.

In (my interpretation) of a markup view of the world, there is an
uncountably large number of contexts and basically only one type of raw
data - text. All data is basically text that has been annotated with
context information - markup - that allows you to view the data as a
hierarchical structure. A structure in which you drill down into layers
of context to locate pieces of raw information - text.

Having found some text, you use the surrounding context information to
put flesh on the bones of the raw data - to interpret its meaning. Is
the piece of text to be interpreted as an off balance sheet item in US
dollars? Perhaps it is the time it takes for a photon of light to pass
from one side of a chocolate brownie to another? Perhaps it is average
wing size of a pre-puberty Balrog[3]. How about the total number of
creatures living on the lip of a lobster[4]? Any of these pieces of
information is significantly more interesting than the fact that the
text can be interpreted as a floating point integer. Wouldn't you agree?

If so, the next time you see an XML application that is festooned with
concepts like 'field' and 'type' and 'gYearMonth', you might join me in
this private susurration: 'how sad'.

[1] http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

[2] http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSSpace9910/01_metric.html

[3] http://fan.theonering.net/middleearthtours/balrog.html

[4] http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/articles/pandora.html

» posted by ITworld staff

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