In 1987 August Willemsen called a collection of his essays De Taal als Bril (or in my translation: Language as Glasses). These essays are mainly about translation and how the language you use gives direction to what you see. That means making choices and that does not happen automatically. Actually, the transition from phase 1 to phase 2 of a project (including my project) is a form of translation.
As with so many things, the use of ICT tools leads to the insight that this transition mainly concerns networks of translations. It is not about converting my thoughts into a computer language, but about facilitating processes that can talk to each other and with me and with outsiders, while also making the contribution expected. To make the most of that (after learning how to set up and use databases and the www) thoughts about APIs and object orientation (I’ll leave those terms for what they are here) made their contributions. As with Lego, but in a Barbapapa-like world, they enable the separation of powers and the division of labor while maintaining an identity in information worlds. (This is too difficult for me too, but nevertheless.)
What we all recognize by now, I think, is that we are more or less at the mercy of service providers that we can no longer do without and who at the same time take over or grab parts of our autonomy and our responsibility in many areas, most often under the motto of improved service provision. We still don’t really know how to curb that process.
I try to arm myself against it in terms of COVID-19 related behavioral choices with the help of my (this) project. In addition, I have arrived at the conclusion that separately using open databases and open source platforms such as NetLogo, WordPress, Python, HTML, PHP, Apache, MariaDB, Bracket and Openoffice is no longer sufficient. In fact, I should be able to let all individual tasks and their machinery talk to each other while continuing to operate in their own environments. I will sketch later what such a network will look like for my project.
I am the target user. What do I want? (i) Graze data about COVID from the internet and summarize (ii) with and (iii) for further analyses (iv). The results (v) show and translate into (vi) rules and (vii) data that are used in a (viii) toy world (ix) by its (x) inhabitants and its (xi) institutions. And then again make summaries of those behaviors and show them (xii). How:
- i python
- ii python, netlogo
- iii python, Bracket
- iv bracket, OpenOffice
- v WordPress, PHP, HTML
- vi bracket, NetLogo
- vii python, NetLogo
- viii Netlogo
- ix Netlogo, HTML, python
- x Netlogo
- xi NetLogo, python, PHP, HTML
- xii WordPress