The project
THE MNESEEK SITE: A THEORETICAL APPROACH
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF A NEW KIND
By Julien Guerraz
"Only the impossible is worth accomplishing.
There comes a time when it seems right to look back at what has been done, what has been achieved, and to question its meaning. Fifteen years since the first stone of the Mneseek project was laid… Fifteen years of evolution, fifteen years of enjoyment, fifteen years of work. Periods of enthusiasm have followed moments of discouragement. That is already a tangible result: the joy I have had in developing this project. They say meaning lies in the journey, not in the outcome.
I. HISTORY OF THE MNESEEK PROJECT
The idea for the Mneseek site came to me around
2010, first when I realized it was feasible, after discovering certain
programming languages.
Besides, it was a decisive period for me.
For several years I had immersed myself in the Eastern philosophy of Japanese Zen. This thought (and Buddhism in general), so to speak, leads to the almost general obliteration of desire, through renunciation of worldly things—as well as the obliteration of thought itself. A certain Zen Buddhism considers the question of meaning superfluous. The meaning we give our lives, the meaning of things, study and knowledge itself are superfluous. Only nonsense remains, the absence of (discursive) thought, in which the meditator sits quietly on their cushion. I had thus come to the idea that every intellectual manifestation was, from a certain point of view, useless, faced with the immeasurability of non-thought, faced with meditation itself.
A thought of the Dalai Lama then came to mind: he explains that although beliefs from elsewhere may be interesting for an individual, it is important for them first to explore their own tradition. My tradition, as a citizen of Western Europe living in the twenty-first century, meant, in schematic terms, so-called Western thought (and culture), or conceptual thought, reason, the Enlightenment, and so on. I then decided to start the Mneseek project, to return to the world in a sense. Questioning my own tradition meant reopening the question of meaning, asking myself what meaning could still tell us, offer us.
The Mneseek site is built on the content of web pages. The web is, in my view, the cutting edge of (Western, among other…) culture. Almost all cultural objects are referenced there and under analysis, explanation… It is also accessible everywhere, easily referencable. Hence my idea of starting from web content, referencing it in a participatory way.
The site was developed iteratively: one version succeeded another. Rather than development following a fixed plan, it was more an "organic" development, following my inclinations and the ideas that came to me (I attach great importance, for example, to the site's content, beyond its architecture itself).
"Creating new technology amounts to groping blindly against a wall hoping to find an opening." — Idriss Aberkane, The Age of Knowledge
The first development core, the base of the site, was link submission, carried out around 2011–2012. Then came, fairly quickly, the ability to create link folders. In a second phase, I had the idea of a "quotes" section, to add a meaningful dimension to the site. Finally, later, functions for categorizing posted items… This categorization function is very important because it opens onto the (still embryonic) project of creating an encyclopedia of the web and cultural objects. A section for submitting images came after all of that, more recently.
Finally, 2026 was the year of my decisive meeting with Étienne, who became the site's developer. Together we decided on a complete overhaul of the site and the addition of a loyalty program.
I thank my friends Arnaud (the music-loving gardener), Sylvain (the philosopher), Aurélien (the astronomer), Guillaume (the music-loving presenter), my sister Stéphanie, my brother Félix, and my father, for their precious physical and moral support;
II. TECHNOLOGIES USED
From a technical standpoint, building the Mneseek site combines three programming languages:
- HTML: for laying out web pages
- PHP/MySQL: for talking to a database (DB)
- JavaScript: for interactivity on web pages
- The second-generation site (2026) uses the Laminas framework (formerly Zend). It is hosted on GitHub.
On the HTML side, note the use of forms (with
various fields: text areas, text fields, drop-down lists, buttons…) that allow
users to enter information later stored in the database via PHP. On the
JavaScript side, note among other things the use of AJAX, which opens the door
to advanced interactivity features.
The site's web pages, images, database, etc. are stored on a server at a web host.
III. WHAT IS AN INTERNET LINK?
Also called a hypertext link or hyperlink, a
link is placed on one or more words or on an image and lets you go from the
page you are viewing to another by clicking on it.
An internal link leads to a page on the same website; an external link lets you navigate to a page on another website.
A hypertext link is a word, phrase, or image that points to another document or website. When you click it, you access another document or website.
IV. A PARTICIPATORY KNOWLEDGE BASE
A. Participation
If all websites are participatory, they are so
to varying degrees. Mneseek is a highly participatory site: its main
functionality consists of indexing internet links by users (potentially any web
user). Thus site users can recommend the web pages they prefer to all visitors.
Added to this are related features: initial sorting of posted links (themes, keywords…), posting comments, creating thematic link folders, favorites, voting, sharing. Any posted link can also give rise to notes (in the form of multimedia texts). Take the case of a link pointing to an online lecture. After a user has posted the link to that lecture, any user can create a note linked to it, containing personal thoughts, comments, text excerpts, links, images, videos…
Participation on the site does not stop there. Users can also post quotes (the "quotes" section can be seen as an anthology of the best quotes encountered), textual items (In brief, did you know?; Shower of thoughts…), or images, with related features equivalent to those for link submission.
All of this is done from a personal space for each user.
Finally, web users can take part in the "Articles" section by sending contributions by email or by turning one of their notes into an article.
Added to this is a second indexing of items—the second phase of the work. Like the first phase, it can be carried out by any registered user. This time it involves performing in-depth "categorization" of posted items, processing them, turning them into resources at the level of knowledge, learning, philosophy, or opinions.
B. An engine for exploring knowledge —
Exploring thought through web links
Where platforms like Wikipedia organize
knowledge into pages and articles, Mneseek relies directly on web links as
fundamental units. Mneseek is a knowledge base (the concept of "base"
would deserve study) built from web links.
V. CULTURE AND SHARING KNOWLEDGE
Social bookmarks, link exchange, collaborative search engine, community, social bookmarking, encyclopedia on the internet—so many terms that can characterize the Mneseek project (I refer here to my article on "Social bookmarking sites," published in 2019). Mneseek's specificity lies in its cultural aim (exploring the web) and its goal of innovation.
The Mneseek site's field of application is cultural internet. By culture we mean both culture in the broad sense—that which relates to the human (I remember a sociology course that began with this idea: what distinguishes humans from animals is culture)—and culture in a narrower sense: general knowledge, the arts, the humanities. The web today offers new ways to access cultural content. Mneseek's goal is to stimulate curiosity and interest in that content.
On Mneseek we are interested in great works of culture as well as small ones. "There is no object, even the simplest, that cannot be the subject of very demanding intellectual work." — Philippe Meirieu
Enriching one's knowledge, acquiring new skills, relaxing are among the many functions the web can serve. It is a vast space that most web users use only in a fairly narrow slice. Search engines, for their part, are not necessarily suited to cultural searches (commercial links, pages that are not necessarily attractive…) where quality matters. A site like Mneseek (one of its principles is "serendipity": the art of making unexpected discoveries) can therefore represent a way to explore the World Wide Web in an innovative and playful manner.
"Sharing knowledge" is emblematically one of UNESCO's goals. That organization also affirms in its objectives the necessary "intellectual and moral solidarity of humanity" as well as "promoting cultural diversity" and "intercultural dialogue." A site such as Mneseek can, at its level, take part in this pooling and valorization of cultural heritage.
A tool for cooperation, Mneseek is a collaborative space for cultural sharing and the creation of meaning.
The site's editorial line combines eclecticism (we believe in interdisciplinarity) and seriousness (which does not prevent the site from having a "Humor" section).
VI. THE COCKPIT AND COLLECTION MODELS
The cockpit
In his book Cognition in the Wild, E. Hutchins uses the bridge of a warship as a central study of distributed cognition. In the complementary article How a Cockpit Remembers Its Speeds (1995), he takes the case of aircraft cockpits: the pilot forms, together with the entire instrument panel, a global cognitive system. The essential idea is that cognition is not only in the pilot's head. The cockpit constitutes a distributed cognitive system, made up of:
- several human agents: pilot, co-pilot, etc.;
- material artifacts: instruments, dials, indicators, adjustment devices;
- external representations: inscriptions, cursor positions, displays;
- procedures and verbal exchanges among crew members
- the social organization of work, which distributes tasks among people.
Thus an operation that seems to be a simple memory task is in reality accomplished by the whole system. For example, the speeds needed for the various phases of landing are inscribed and manipulated on cockpit instruments: the cockpit "remembers," in a sense, on the pilots' behalf. Hutchins's idea: the cognitive properties of the system are not simply the sum of the cognitive properties of individuals. Memory, calculation, and decision-making can be distributed among people + objects + representations + environment. This is what Hutchins calls distributed cognition. From this perspective, asking "What does the pilot know?" is not always the right question. One should rather ask: How does the pilot–co-pilot–instruments–procedures system collectively produce the information needed for action? That is precisely the methodological shift Hutchins proposes: moving from cognition conceived as a phenomenon internal to the individual to cognition studied in its sociotechnical context (assisted cognition). We can apply this model to the Mneseek site and view it as a machine (a machine for thinking or dreaming…) with as many cockpits as there are users, each user being connected to their environment. Mneseek as machine. One can think of all the attributes of a machine.
"The preparation and assembly of an experiment which, as a generic machine, has the particularity of concentrating in each intellectual act the simultaneous construction of the machine, its operation, and the production of the expected results—the generic machine being built as it produces knowledge." — François Laruelle
Studying models of thought can, in general, be useful to our project. Besides the situated connection we have just discussed, there is the enaction or embodied cognition model developed by Francesco Varela. According to this model, cognition is above all the business of living organisms (animals, humans) and must be viewed as a dynamic device in contact with the outside world and managed by sensorimotor devices (thus involving perception and motricity) and subjective experiences. Following these ideas, one arrives at those of assemblage, desire, and flow (Deleuze), or couplings of thought/action, individual/collective…
The collection
"Knowledge behaves like a collection and, more precisely, like a collection of interbreeding organisms, which is even more interesting." — Idriss Aberkane
The Mneseek project rests on building a digital corpus of web links with a heuristic dimension (serving discovery). To links one can add quotes and images; and ultimately all objects in the world, of which we can at least use the labels. Categorization work makes it possible to build structured knowledge, in an analytical approach to these objects, an anthologization. Putting things in order (Apollonian dimension: measure, reason, clarity, harmony, self-mastery, tendency to transform chaos or disorder into a structured, balanced, intelligible form, in relation to its opposite, the Dionysian dimension: drive, intoxication, instinct, overflow and dissolution of forms). In this regard, building a "stock" of links requires a specific maintenance operation: gradually removing or replacing dead links. The problematic accessibility of certain content (for example pages requiring registration: Facebook, Tumblr, some paid articles on Le Monde…) and simply pages that disappear over time make a certain vigilance necessary.
Collection of links… Collection of statements… Knowledge in cumulative terms.
Making collections, in general, can be of great interest:
- Pleasure: searching, discovering, and gathering objects we like. Searching for and sharing interesting things on the internet with others can give real pleasure.
- Passion and expertise: a collection helps one know a field better and become knowledgeable in it. Thanks to Mneseek, I have personally been able to explore various themes. I created, for example, a folder on cabinetmaking or on parks and gardens. I became interested in flowers and, for example, their vital functions: nutrition, respiration, growth and development, reproduction, relation to the environment.
- Sentimental value: certain objects recall memories, an era, or a person. Mneseek can thus act as a memory support: on the one hand it highlights our past and present (and why not future) cultural experiences, lets us recall them; on the other hand, finding again after some time elements that touched us (links, etc.)—whether 1, 2, or 10 years later—is in itself valuable.
- Heritage value: we touch here on an essential aspect of the Mneseek project: creating a knowledge base, a collective encyclopedia of a new kind, a commons.
- Transmission: passing on to others over time one's knowledge, favorites… Highlighting and preserving a cultural heritage.
- Social bond: all proportions kept, Mneseek acts like a social network. Features such as posting comments, sharing, or sending messages between users contribute to this.
- Sense of progress: completing a series or reaching a goal gives particular satisfaction. On Mneseek one can evolve one's own collections as well as the site's collections at any time, in a kind of collective work.
Making collections has to do with the pleasure of repetition and variation (see especially Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition) as well as with psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis, collecting can be viewed as behavior that takes on a particular psychic function. There is no single interpretation: everything depends on what the collection represents for the subject:
- Mastering loss and lack: collecting can be a way of gathering, preserving, and retaining objects, as if fighting disappearance or loss.
- Controlling and ordering: classifying, counting, arranging, and completing can give a sense of mastery over something experienced psychically as uncertain or chaotic.
- Relation to the object: in a Freudian perspective, the collected object can be invested far beyond its material value. It can become the support of a desire, a memory, or an attachment.
- The desire to complete: a collection is rarely definitively finished. "The next object" is always missing. This can be related to the psychoanalytic logic of lack, which sustains desire.
- Identity: "I collect X" can help build a self-representation and give continuity to one's personal history.
- Sublimation: some collections can be a way of transforming drives or psychic preoccupations into a socially valued activity: searching, preserving, studying, classifying, exhibiting.
- Relation to childhood: some collections prolong an infantile pleasure of gathering, owning, and preserving objects, but that does not mean they are pathological.
One can thus summarize the idea: collecting can be a way of dealing with lack, loss, and desire, by transforming scattered objects into a set the subject can preserve, order, and invest. Freud, Lacan, and Winnicott (among others), and their various approaches to collecting, would deserve study.
VII. FOLKSONOMIES AND INDEXES
A folksonomy, or personal indexing, is "a
collaborative, decentralized, spontaneous classification system based on
indexing by non-specialists" (source: Wikipedia). Much could be said about
the terms "non-specialist" and "amateur"… Folksonomies are
also a quest for meaning. Meaning, because it is a matter of semantics: speech
acts, annotations, comments and expression… personalization of information.
One can see the Mneseek site as a collection of indexes.
Indexing is a process intended to represent, by means of terms or indices of a documentary language or by means of elements of free language, the characteristic notions of the content of a document (resource, collection) or of a query, in order to facilitate searching after they have been identified by analysis. Indexing is linked to information retrieval and thus to the time savings it can bring in that search. It is the product of documentary analysis, which consists of processing the document to make it more accessible to potential readers (users) by guiding their choice relative to their search and information need.
In the article "Documentary analysis" in the "Doc vocabulary" section on adbs.fr (Association of information and documentation professionals), one finds this definition of indexing: an "intellectual operation aimed at identifying the information contained in a document or set of documents and expressing it without interpretation or criticism, in concise and precise forms such as an indexing result, a summary, an excerpt. The goal is to enable memorization, locating, and later dissemination of the information or source document."
This definition excludes critical interpretation; yet it seems to me personally that indexing and criticism, comment, interpretation can go together. We will return to this in the section "For a hermeneutic web."
See APPENDIX 1: HISTORY OF INDEXING AND
METADATA
The term "folksonomy" appeared a few
years ago to designate the phenomenon of indexing digital documents by the
user. It is often associated with the word "tag," a keyword freely
assigned to a digital resource. "Social tagging" can be translated as
"free collaborative indexing."
Folksonomies give users means to process the information they receive themselves.
On Mneseek we practice folksonomies for two purposes: classification and meaning. To do so we extend the notion of tag to any statement. A phrase, two, a set of phrases can thus play the role of tag…
Rabelais already used lists—lists of books, objects, trades, or knowledge—that could give the impression of a true encyclopedic catalog, but they are often deliberately absurd. Rabelais thus shows that knowledge must remain tied to curiosity and pleasure. He defends broad, critical, living knowledge capable of forming an autonomous person. Rabelais's encyclopedism corresponds to the humanist ideal of universal knowledge, but it does not consist simply in accumulating everything. That is why on Mneseek we privilege drawing out meaning, access to meaning.
Encyclopedism thus becomes an instrument of pedagogical renewal: one must learn a great deal, but above all understand and know how to use one's knowledge and personal reflection.
Folksonomies give users means to process the information they receive themselves. They are then among the first means of web "curation," which consists in processing information so as to produce a more readable selection or synthesis. Everything can then be indexed by the user: internet links, photos…
Among the reasons that can push individuals to take part in folksonomies, let us mention: to find one's documents again later (mnemonics), to collaborate and share, to mention a personal aspect, to express an opinion, for the pleasure of organizing.
VIII. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OPEN TO ALL
Mneseek is a site open to everyone. Yet
personally I have gradually made it an experience of memorizing my discoveries
on the web, under the pseudonym Judo73. Thus at present roughly half of the
site's internet links were posted directly by me; the other half was posted by
some 135 registered contributors.
Remembering 10 years later a resource set aside (archived), classifying it, then finally treating it creatively is a happy experience.
For some 10 years Mneseek has for me played the role of cultural assistant, memory support. I use it, for example, to listen to music I like, thanks to embedded YouTube players and the "YouTube playlists" section, which allows listening to music on YouTube without ads.
One can also speak of a shared notebook about Mneseek.
In his book Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson repeatedly mentions the importance of notebooks or "commonplace books" as tools favoring the emergence of ideas; keeping notes is essential to creativity. Big ideas often begin as vague intuitions ("slow hunches") that take months or years to mature. A notebook allows one to preserve these intuitions before they disappear and to create an external network of ideas. By noting observations, quotes, questions, and reflections, one builds an external memory. Over time, unexpected links appear between notes taken at different periods. It is not only writing that matters. Regularly revisiting one's old notes allows combining ideas that seemed unrelated. Charles Darwin, for example, filled observation notebooks for years before publishing his theory. One can also cite John Locke and the tradition of commonplace books, where one gathered quotes, ideas, and observations. The essential thing is to capture ideas, be able to find them again, link them together.
This vision inspired modern note-taking methods such as Zettelkasten, digital commonplace books (for example with Obsidian or Logseq), or paper bullet journals.
Mneseek is a notebook of this kind (with the advantages of digital: finding information easily, classifying and reclassifying it, associating it with other information, making it a springboard for discoveries…).
IX. WHICH LINKS, WHICH CONTRIBUTIONS, FOR WHAT
PURPOSE?
From classifying internet links arose the
possibility of creating a knowledge base of a new kind. Each web page contains information,
knowledge that can be updated, processed, saved, classified.
The question of an editorial policy for the site did not arise directly. My personal freedom and that of web users was the rule: each person could index the links they wanted according to their own interests. Thus some focused on plants, others on philosophy, others on songs, etc. Each user who posts links has (alone) the ability to modify or delete them. But all users can use all posted links to build larger sets (folders) or to draw out meaning. This work happens over time and asynchronously. That is, a link posted in 2015 can serve a folder in 2025 posted by another user, while yet another user can "categorize" that same link at another moment, etc. Web links (but also quotes and images) are the basic bricks of the Mneseek encyclopedic system.
X. CREATIVE INTERNET — A PRACTICE
Creative rather than passive internet — Invention as active study
Indexing, commenting, annotating, categorizing, organizing, hierarchizing, creating can allow each person to appropriate knowledge and especially to conduct their own reflection in order to better understand reality. In this, Mneseek offers a practice; we know that it is by practicing knowledge (for example by preparing presentations in teaching) that we truly appropriate it.
What we talk about very little is the use of the internet, the user's very experience of the internet, and what can be done for and by that experience. Yet it seems to me that the internet experience is still today limited relative to its real potential. The potential of the internet in terms of practice, in terms of user experience, can still be largely developed.
Interactivity and its powers are at the heart of the internet experience. What workers of knowledge should tell themselves is that the internet provides both the potentially unlimited encyclopedia of knowledge and cultural objects (their labeling and/or physical presence), and the potential tools for working on that knowledge: exploration, modeling, transmission. These three dimensions can give rise to a creative and forward-looking practice that remains to be defined.
What we propose on Mneseek is to take part in this exploration.
Take an example: My sister and I thought of putting online an "article" on blue in painting. Later I realized that La Poste had just issued a stamp booklet "Blue in art." Moreover my aunt Jacqueline, who takes part on the site, told me she had had the idea of organizing an association workshop on the same theme. We thus see that the theme in question is already treated off the site, so that it might be judged useless to spend time writing the article we had planned. Yet in hindsight, writing that article allowed us to do very instructive research, to exercise our writing or rewriting skills, to transmit our interest in the subject, and finally to increase our knowledge of painting. It is therefore not necessarily a matter of being original but rather of exercising our talents and practicing knowledge. "By doing, one becomes."
All of this makes the internet a global field of intellectual experimentation.
Now that almost everything is accessible via the internet, what remains is to process knowledge elements that are most often raw, to practice knowledge. To make content on the internet useful, to make books and cultural objects in general useful.
From this intellectual experimentation one can already distinguish two forms: a passive form and an active form. Simple "consumption" of content (YouTube…) or, conversely, that gives rise to action, to production (but is the consumer mode of the internet only passive—does it not also produce effects, which ones?). This action can remain private or conversely happen participatively through an addition (the very choice of one's channels of participation on the internet by the web user could itself deserve special attention).
Internet and creativity. Creativity in writing of course. Comments, notes, treatments, ideas… but also multimedia arrangements, interactive articles… Linking an image or a quote to a statement or an internet link can be creative, even revolutionary.
When one thinks of an encyclopedia, one generally thinks of didactic discourse, opposed in principle to creative enunciation. On Mneseek we want to combine didacticism and personal creation.
Variations — The site as designed allows alternating micro-consultations, micro-tasks, and longer periods; cultural practice (watching, listening, reading…) and work on knowledge
I am preparing an article entitled "50 (creative) ways to take part on Mneseek."
XI. A TOOL, AN EDIFICE
It will be a matter of building an edifice
dedicated to knowledge, meaning, and their practice.
"One day as he passed a huge construction site, a man saw a crowd of people dripping with sweat carrying bricks under a blazing sun. He spotted one of them and asked: 'What are you doing?' The man replied gruffly: 'Can't you see? Hauling bricks is very hard work!' He asked the same question of a second worker. Much calmer than the first, this one carefully stacked the bricks he was carrying and, after a last glance at his pile, answered: 'I'm building a wall.' He then questioned a third worker. Jovial and affable, this one set down his burden, wiped his brow, raised his head, and said with great pride: 'We are building a church.'" — Yu Dan, Happiness According to Confucius
XII. CATEGORIZATION — THE MNESEEK ENCYCLOPEDIA
What is categorization on Mneseek?
There are two levels:
The first level is indexing (recording) cultural elements. These can be web links, quotes, or images (one can add publication of articles). This is simple indexing, with a few characteristics of these elements (title, themes, associated keywords). Indexed elements are thus saved and shared on the site.
The second level is more advanced indexing, which we will call "categorization". Elements that have been recorded are taken up again and undergo a second indexing (creation of indexes), this time aimed at recording certain characteristics of these elements, generally what the user finds "interesting" in them (what is "salient" for them). Statements, which I will return to, are one of these categories created.
[To perform categorization, click the "META" button below the resource to categorize.] For more practical data on categorization see the Mneseek user guide page.
For example, for an image of the Eiffel Tower, we can index this image by creating the pair "Monument" / "The Eiffel Tower" and the pair "Place" / "Paris." This operation will create an index named "Monument" in which our image will be filed (and accessible) on the line "Eiffel Tower"; and an index named "Place" in which the image will be filed on the line "Paris." Over time, other images/links/quotes dealing with monuments and Paris can be indexed and swell the created indexes (lists).
Each categorized element forms a pair (Film: The 400 Blows; Animal: The tawny owl; Place: Japan) or a sub-pair (Film: The 400 Blows > Director: François Truffaut).
Finally, to know which categories have been created and reuse them, each categorization form field has a search "cartridge" that informs us. This allows among other things using the same spellings for these categories each time. A special page also presents all categories on the site.
These two operations (indexing cultural elements and categorizing them) can be done on the site by any registered member. If a user notices an error or wants to correct what was posted, they can modify these elements. A modification history system (accessible to the site administrator) can if needed restore earlier indexing states.
The articulation of these operations has several consequences:
- Creation of a resource bank (cultural elements), a corpus. Some 7,000 internet links have already been recorded on the site (June 2025), 200 images, 3,000 quotes, 70 articles. These resources are shared on the site, accessible on the internet.
- Creation of indexes (lists) grouped under the term of a meaningful encyclopedia of the web and cultural objects. These indexes partly (and ideally wholly) overlap the contours of the cultural domain: there are common categories such as Films, Books, Songs, Places…, others more niche: Parks and gardens, Theories of mathematics, Cabinetmaking terms… These categories describe a particular cultural field and can be of all kinds. Users should therefore be creative in creating these categories (inventing them, so to speak), while also being well informed about categories already existing on Mneseek.
Created indexes are not an end in themselves. It is in the later exploration of indexed categories that the act, let us say phenomenological, of knowing takes place. Thus base resources (web pages, quotes, images) can be reinvested and take part in the whole encyclopedia.
- An opening onto the quest for meaning. With statements we index not only concepts but ideas. Moreover there is openness to interpretation via comments, annotations, treatments… See the section "For a hermeneutic web," below.
XIII. CATEGORIES
Let us begin with a mise en abyme of what
categorization can be, through an excerpt from a text by Borges: This text
cites a "certain Chinese encyclopedia" where animals are divided
into: a) belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed, c) tame, d) suckling pigs, e)
sirens, f) fabulous, g) stray dogs, h) included in the present classification,
i) that behave like lunatics, j) innumerable, k) drawn with a very fine
camel-hair brush, l) et cetera, m) that have just broken the pitcher, n) that
from afar look like flies (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, 1966, p. 7).
Reflection on the notion of "categories" more or less follows the history of philosophy, from Aristotle to Kant notably. For Aristotle, categories serve to classify the different ways being can be determined or spoken of. They are thus both a tool of logic and a way of organizing reality. Categories correspond to what can be said of a substance: Socrates is white (quality), measures 1.70 m (quantity), is in Athens (place), etc.
Aristotle distinguishes 10 categories:
1. Substance — what a thing is in itself.
Ex.: a man, a horse.
2. Quantity — how many there are, or what size.
Ex.: two meters, three kilos.
3. Quality — how a thing is.
Ex.: white, learned, courageous.
4. Relation — the relation of one thing to another.
Ex.: taller than, father of.
5. Place — where the thing is.
Ex.: in the lycée, in Paris.
6. Time — when it is in a state or does something.
Ex.: yesterday, now.
7. Position — how the parts of the thing are arranged.
Ex.: sitting, lying.
8. Possession / state — what a thing is equipped with.
Ex.: shod, armed.
9. Action — what the thing does.
Ex.: cutting, walking.
10. Passion / being acted upon — what the thing receives or undergoes.
Ex.: being cut, being struck.
Aristotle tells us: Accept classification into categories—even if it schematizes reality—and in exchange you will be able to make judgments and build reasoning.
Taxonomy, for its part, etymologically designates the laws (order) of classification. It was first considered the science of classifying living beings (biology). It is today used for any process of classifying information and documents.
Categorization is an inevitable framing. Thinking goes hand in hand with classifying. (Lévi-Strauss.)
See: APPENDIX 2: CATEGORIZATION — CLASSICAL AND RELATIVIST APPROACHES
On Mneseek, users create categories or use categories already created on the site. Each category accepts subcategories. For example, the category Film (Film – The 400 Blows) accepts subcategories such as: Director (Director – François Truffaut), Actor, Actress, Character, Cinematographer…
XIV. STATEMENTS
Statements are a specific category on the site. One or more statements can be attached to any object on the site: web links, images, quotes. A statement is a text, any type of text: a single word, a few words, a phrase (quote…), a composition of several sentences. It forms a basic unit, a unit of meaning.
Statements may or may not be attributable to authors. For statements from books, articles, lectures… it seemed interesting to us to start from exact statements, that is verbatim excerpts from the resources in question. Indeed an author's thought can be paraphrased, summarized perhaps (as many do), but one loses a great deal. What we want is to restore that thought in its power of enunciation (almost line by line) and make it an intellectual tool.
For example, imagine a user indexes a link to a lecture. They (or someone else) can extract from that lecture the statements that seem relevant to them and that they want to save (along with their annotations and comments). While indexing statements, they can index "statement categories," so that statements can also be sub-statements of other statements.
Indexing statements amounts to isolating small bits of thought, which can then undergo various operations, as there are operations on links. The first operation is the (automatic) construction of an index of statements. From this clickable index one can go back for each statement to the various resources from which it was extracted, to the statement categories it is attached to, to the various comments, contextualizations, and treatments attached to it.
It should be said at this point that categorization activity on Mneseek is not only recording characteristics of studied objects (links, images, quotes). At each step the user can add comments, which can themselves be commented…, or produce texts of all kinds (theoretical…). To indexing one adds expression.
For each statement there is a specific page on the site, accessible from the index of statements.
Comments and annotations added to each statement by users can be layered: that is, it is enough, in the corresponding box, to layer texts. For example one will have:
"I find this idea interesting… (JG)
I disagree… (Gilles)
etc…"
These comments display on the page corresponding to each statement. Same for the subcategory "Contextualization": it is a matter of explaining how the statement in question is treated in the resource.
Finally, "treatment" of statements is an additional step, which allows users to link various texts, synthesis texts for example, to each statement. One accesses it on each statement's page, at the top. Mention of the user's pseudonym in parentheses makes it possible to see who said what…
Sorting statements — The first possible operation on recorded statements is to sort them. Certain pages already play this role: All statements, Statement categories, Alphabetical listing of statements, Most documented statements, Treated statements, Statements in English, Interrogative statements, Search in statements by keywords.
Other sortings are possible: Most commented statements, Associated statements (Peace, Harmony…), (study, meaning, intelligence, knowledge, learning…), Preferential statements or canonical forms (statements used preferentially on the site on a question, a concept…).
A possible extension would be to classify statements by type.
In linguistics, statements are oral or written productions that convey a message. They are classified into different types according to form, intention, or function in communication. Here is a typology of the most common statements:
1. Declarative statements — affirm or deny something; state a fact, opinion, or observation.
2. Interrogative statements — ask a question (total, partial, indirect).
3. Injunctive statements — order, request, advise, or forbid.
4. Exclamatory statements — express strong emotion.
5. Performative statements — accomplish an action by being uttered.
6. Narrative statements — report events in chronological or logical order.
7. Hypothetical statements — express a condition or supposition.
8. Argumentative statements — convince or persuade.
9. Descriptive statements — describe objects, places, people, or situations.
10. Implicative statements (implicatures) — leave information to be understood from context.
11. Dialogic statements — part of an interactive exchange.
Other types can be isolated, notably thematically: philosophical (ethical…), historical, scientific, literary, poetic…
The Mneseek project as encyclopedia presents itself, in whatever state one takes it, as a huge system of statements. These statements (as well as quotes, which are particular statements), drawn from the elements or works themselves, are in a sense extracted, isolated. There is a force of enunciation that exceeds that of logic. By decontextualizing statements, one potentializes and amplifies them.
The various elements (links, images, quotes) can then act as illustrations or variations.
One also touches the idea of semantic constellation. The user's task on Mneseek will be to reconstitute these constellations of meaning with regard to this or that statement.
Take statements where they are
"If knowledge is our goal, simple statements must be preferred to less simple ones because they tell us more, because their empirical content is greater and it is easier to submit them to tests." — Karl Popper
Some examples of statements from Mneseek:
The future;
The irrational, an inexhaustible source of inspiration;
A beautiful symphony of brotherhood;
Isn't admiration the exact opposite of jealousy? I have noticed many times that as soon as I met an admirable person, my view of the world brightened;
Welcome
Joy and acceptance
The Japanese language willingly omits, when obvious to speakers, the subject and complements of all kinds;
Liberty, equality, fraternity
The seasons
Knowledge that is not added to each day diminishes every day
Remember
Objects, do you then have a soul?;
One could psychoanalyze technical objects
The magic of the instant
Make it happen
Minorities
The analogical model is built from transferring units (terms, traits, dimensions…) from one context to another…
XV. TREATMENT
What is treatment, what can treatment of
indexed resources be? One can say that indexing itself already constitutes a
first treatment. Moreover, any cognitive contact between a user and said
resource or knowledge, insofar as it has an effect on that user's psyche,
entails treatment. From treatment of links to treatment of other objects on the
site, treatment can be infinite.
Document treatment ranges from viewing, listening, or reading a document to extracting knowledge concerning that document and using it: synthesis, various texts, arrangements… In short it can lead to any type of creative use…
Treatment of categorized elements: all cultural objects updated on the site (for example Statement | Gravity of childhood; Film | The 400 Blows; Animal | The tawny owl) can be "treated."
For each categorized element (including statements), a treatment cartridge is placed at the top of the page, above the documentation relating to the element. This cartridge can contain several texts, up to a large number, written by contributors.
There are types of treatment.
XVI. TOWARD A SCIENCE OF IDEAS
A horizon appears: that of a science of ideas
Already in the eighteenth century, Ideology, as formulated by Destutt de Tracy, designates such a science. Its goal is to study the origin, formation, and chaining of human ideas scientifically. For him ideas are not mysterious or innate realities: they result from sensations and the mind's activity that transforms them. Ideology thus belongs to the project of the Idéologues, who seek to apply the spirit of the Enlightenment and an empirical method to the study of thought. Tracy also considers that studying ideas can have practical consequences: better understanding thought allows better understanding human action, morality, education, and society.
One of the next tasks on Mneseek will no doubt be to clarify the relations our project maintains with Ideology (in the sense of science of ideas)…
…As well as its relations with the language sciences:
In general we will need to work on meaning, through semantics ("Study of the meaning of words and statements," Wikipedia) and the signifier/signified articulation (Ferdinand de Saussure). At the beginning of the twentieth century a "structural semantics" appears: what defines a word is its relation to other words. We will also need to study cognitive linguistics (thought shapes language, "ideogenesis," the genesis of the idea…).
Grammatical study of statements (and grammar in general: from Port-Royal general grammar to generative grammars—Chomsky—, functionalism…) could also be a resource (one can think of a morphological, grammatical classification of statements…).
Other lines of flight: semiotics (science of signs) and information and communication sciences in general.
Already we have systematized the production of statements derived from certain terms: if on the site you search statements by typing "savoir" [know/knowledge] or "rêve" [dream], you can access all sub-statements (on the site) formed from these two terms: savoir-être, savoir-faire… One thus arrives at a list of all locutions (present on the site) formed from these two statements (as well as their illustrations) and finally a possible description of the language…
Some avenues:
Links between words and statements — The meaning of a word, sign, or concept is always defined by its relation to other words, signs, or concepts. Saussure showed that language is a system of differences. The meaning of a word (signifier) is not determined by a direct relation to an external reality, but by its distinction from other words in the linguistic system. Derrida broadens this idea to every sign: a word or sign draws its meaning from "différance" in space, that is from its position in a network of relations with other elements. Derrida speaks of an incessant "play" or movement in relations between signs. A word or sign retains a trace of other terms to which it is linked.
Definitions, synonyms, antonyms, lexical field and semantics — A given word or concept can correspond to several definitions. When possible attaching to context (for "rester sauvage" [remain wild], the context of sauvage is its addition to the verb rester, which immediately creates a certain representation or certain definitions of sauvage are absent), one will select operative definitions as well as synonyms, antonyms, elements of the lexical field (for statements, for example the most relevant linked statements producible step by step—Wittgenstein).
Mechanics of thought: concept/stereotype/paradigm — For Mneseek my friend Sylvain and I thought the best would be to start from a basic unit: the statement.
Every textual element presents itself as a statement. A quote, a word, several lines of text are statements.
My reading today leads me to complicate this idea. If I understand correctly, among statements there are concepts (example: the restaurant). Then comes the stereotype, which is a minimal judgment. For example: Iceland's climate is cold, banks are rich. At the other extreme are paradigms, frames so large one no longer sees their contours, sometimes forgetting they exist. For example: a Europe without armed conflict. "Between the extremes there are innumerable schemas, structures, matrices, and other grids of reading."
This should help us grasp what we have done and do on Mneseek.
One idea would be to classify statements on Mneseek according to these three frames: concept/stereotype/paradigm. But what about these "innumerable schemas and structures" between stereotype and paradigm?
A statement on Mneseek like "Gravity of childhood" can thus be better defined. It is obviously a stereotype since it is a characterization of the concept of childhood. The affirmation underlying this statement is this other statement: "There can be a gravity to childhood" or "Childhood can be grave."
More exactly, the various examples of statements seem to distribute along a continuum between stereotype and paradigm.
Preferential statements — Can one remain wild?, Why remain wild?, Why must we remain wild?… To classify practically elements dealing with wildness requires adopting a single category concerning it, hence the adoption of so-called preferential statements. For example here the single generic statement "Remain wild" will be used in place of all statements dealing with the possibility, usefulness… of remaining wild.
Moreover a statement can be presented analytically or poetically. For example there is a Mneseek folder called "I hear the guitar again" containing things related to the guitar, for example links to songs where the guitar plays a particular remarkable role. The statement "I hear the guitar again" here poetically replaces the very concept of "guitar" (in fact it is the title of a film by Philippe Garel). It will be used preferentially, for aesthetic reasons.
An activity of grouping certain statements under a preferential statement will sometimes be useful.
Edgar Morin and the ecology of ideas — Morin's idea is that ideas do not live in isolation. They develop in a milieu—cultural, social, historical, political, and scientific—that nourishes, transforms, or makes them disappear. Just as an ecosystem consists of interactions among living beings, a culture consists of interactions among representations, knowledge, values, myths, and beliefs. Ideas interact. One idea can reinforce, contradict, or transform another. Ideas have an environment. They depend on institutions, media, education, technologies, and social structures in which they circulate. An idea can produce unforeseen effects. A representation designed to explain the world can then contribute to modifying behaviors and thus the world itself.
Intellectual diversity must be preserved. A "monoculture" of ideas can make a society less able to understand complexity and adapt.
Ideas can become autonomous. Morin insists especially that humans produce myths, theories, and ideologies, but that these can in turn exert influence on their producers. We are both producers of our ideas and, in a sense, produced by them. There is thus a recursive relation between the individual, society, and systems of ideas. The "ecology of ideas" leads Morin to distrust systems that claim to possess a single total explanation of reality. Understanding a phenomenon rather requires observing relations among different levels: biological, psychological, social, economic, cultural, historical, etc.
This is coherent with his principle of complexity: complexus etymologically means "what is woven together." An idea is therefore not only true or false independently of all context; one must also understand in what network of relations it takes meaning and what effects it produces.
XVII. MNESEEK AND ENCYCLOPEDISM
Encyclopedism has a long history, from Pliny the Elder and Aristotle to Wikipedia and Mneseek.
I would recommend visiting the page devoted to the statement "Encyclopedism" on Mneseek. It gathers a set of historical, theoretical elements…
See: APPENDIX 3: SOME FIGURES OF MODERN ENCYCLOPEDISM
Mneseek is an open, universal encyclopedia, incomplete by definition. It is a kind of pan-encyclopedia, in the sense that all possible and imaginable categories, and thus all intellectual objects, can have their place there. Categories "Animals" or "Places" sit beside "Horticultural baths" or "Musical instruments." Each user can increase the number of these categories or take part in their development. The category "Statements" is a transversal category that ensures the function of meaning; the category "Comment" allows users to add their own interpretations, questions…
XVIII. ARRANGEMENTS
In the Mneseek project, indexing elements such
as links, quotes, and images allows presenting indexed information afterward
according to different "views" or arrangements. First, each indexed
element can itself become a starting point. For example if I index a film
trailer by entering that the director is François Truffaut, François Truffaut
can himself be a starting point for a page presenting all his films… Each
presentation page is an arrangement of elements about an item: a statement, a
film, a book, an animal, a philosophical movement…
Moreover each categorized element can be subject to "treatment." The idea is that treatment is always provisional…
Each category page presents a chronological list (by indexing chronology) of elements answering that indexing. This chronology allows possibly changing the order of presented elements.
There is also optionally a space for ChatGPT presentation of the item. Another arrangement element: presentation on black background (lightbox) on clicking images. Finally each indexed element (links, quotes, images) should be re-indexable in situ, that is modifiable on the very page where it is presented. There is also a differentiation between index pages and category pages. That is the arrangement system as it works. Other arrangements are possible and remain to be determined…
This makes it possible to put in contact at the level of their meanings various information elements, various objects: web links (and thus any multimedia web page: text, image, video, sound), quotes, images on one hand, categories on the other: place, personality… with use of the "statements" category as the basic support of meaning. The particular category "Statement category" introduces a meta level in statements.
XIX. FOR A HERMENEUTIC WEB
Bernard Stiegler and his collaborators
developed within the IRI (Institute for Research and Innovation) in 2005–2018
the idea of a hermeneutic web. According to this conception, human knowledge
rests on interpretations, controversies, contradictory viewpoints. Structuring
knowledge (on the web) must therefore take these questions into account and
allow keeping trace of knowledge elements that are interpretations. The IRI
thus developed the idea of a web where users produce interpretive annotations
rather than simple descriptive metadata. Concretely this means:
- annotating a text, video, or lecture…
- linking these annotations together…
- preserving different readings of the same document…
- favoring debate rather than seeking a single correct interpretation…
The Mneseek site continues these advances (a web organized around interpretive dialogue, hermeneutics resting on mutual understanding). We touch here the relation between meaning and truth. For the question of meaning one can say that every interpretive thought aims to explain, clarify, explicate a text or thought. However meaning is not a guarantee of truth. Thus the different interpretations and their relations become interesting.
Mneseek implements mechanisms for interpreting content and confronting different interpretations (notably with the "comments" category, but also with "annotations"…), in a spirit of pluralism and in relation to meaning. The goal: preserve nuance, complexity, explanation, subtlety, multiple interpretations, alternative readings.
Moreover even before explanation, the first level of interpretation is presentation. Presenting texts, ideas, elements of discourse. That is what certain sites do. For example if you search Google for the second Surrealist manifesto, you will find, a bit lost among commercial sites, sites that make the text physically accessible. Present, make accessible. Already the choice and will to present certain texts, certain elements of discourse rather than others is a significant, political act and testifies to particular philosophical intentions. Why choose to present certain excerpts from the two Surrealist manifestos? The answer to that question seems very interesting. In the end a philosophy takes shape.
The question of traceability — One of the particularities of the hermeneutic web is the requirement of traceability of information. On Mneseek, even if elements are decontextualized, they remain traceable because referenced, that is one can go back to their source. An author's quotes, excerpts from a book or website are traceable.
XX. STUDY, KNOWLEDGE, AND INTERPRETATION OF
WORKS
"The only world that can satisfy man's desire for infinity is that of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom." — Idriss Aberkane, The Age of Knowledge
"Discovering works, exchanging knowledge, sharing cultures across generations, trades, communities, and peoples is, on the horizon of the possible, the only happy alternative to pulsional capitalism." — Philippe Meirieu
"Grasping what, in human works, quenches our own desire to understand." — Philippe Meirieu
"From the depths of the centuries, the sages smile at us, consider us in silence, while we continue to harvest the fruits of their words." — Yu Dan, Happiness According to Confucius
"This flight toward the summit (which, dominating empires themselves, is the composition of knowledge) is only one path through the labyrinth. But this path we must follow from lure to lure, in search of being—we cannot avoid it in any way." — Georges Bataille, Inner Experience
"Progress in knowledge is essentially the transformation of prior knowledge." — Karl Popper, Sources of Knowledge and Ignorance
"One can find pleasure in intelligence while all society says you must get your kicks and not rack your brains." — Philippe Meirieu, The Pleasure of Learning
"It is through encountering works of culture that the individual manages to link their singular experience to a universality taking shape." — Philippe Meirieu, The Pleasure of Learning
"Knowledge liberates." — Philippe Meirieu, The Pleasure of Learning
"Entering the intelligence of things." — Philippe Meirieu, The Pleasure of Learning
"The formidable emancipatory power of human works." — Philippe Meirieu, The Pleasure of Learning
"The often unforeseen and always fabulous encounter of our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world." — Philippe Meirieu, The Pleasure of Learning
Everything depends on what we do with these encounters, these chances, these opportunities that arrive (serendipity).
XXI. INDEXING AND INVENTION — MNESEEK AND
NON-PHILOSOPHY
The Mneseek project maintains relations (to be
developed) with the theory of Non-Philosophy. This discipline created by
François Laruelle is today carried by the ONPhI (International
Non-Philosophical Organization).
Non-philosophical practice is a call to each person's creativity, notably through philo-fictions and hyperspeculation… As an entry point one can note that Non-Philosophy posits the equivalence of philosophical statements…
Indexing statements on Mneseek—each indexes what is salient for them—could be related to the idea of unilateralization in François Laruelle…
XXII. MNESEEK PHILOSOPHY
"What do we hold to? What are our
'cornerstones,' those principles we are attached to almost without knowing it?
Human dignity, personal conscience, the project of improving the world, the
quest for truth." — Chantal Delsol, The Cornerstones
See the article "Mneseek Philosophy."
XXIII. THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT
All images on Mneseek are images that were
purchased or royalty-free images. Wikimedia Commons images used are public
domain images or images under "Attribution" license, that is they are
accompanied by the author's name and a link to their Wikimedia page.
As for links and textual elements, their use on Mneseek corresponds legally to the following rights:
- Authorization of links to works already online
- Authorization of links in framing (YouTube…): Mneseek does not host these videos or content and does not manage their rights
- The public's right to information
- Free communication of thoughts and opinions
- Copyright exceptions: educational exception, conservation and study exception, current events exception, research exception
We claim the right to use texts as materials. Materials for new arrangements and for any operation.
XXIV. MNESEEK AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
For documentary questions, recourse to
Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT…) is understood. I have implemented a few AI
modules on the site, experimentally:
1. Under each quote: expansion of the quote + In culture (gives examples illustrating this quote in culture: films, books…) + Opposite opinion (argues the opposite opinion of the quote)
2. Author page (quotes): short biography of the author
3. Statement page: expansion of the statement + In culture + Opposite opinion
4. Personality page: short biography of the personality
5. Director page: short biography of the director
This occasional use of AI (ChatGPT) results can be developed, as well as other uses…
In general the field of natural language processing (computer programming) will be worth exploring.
XXV. LINGUISTIC VERSIONS OF THE MNESEEK SITE
The Mneseek site is currently available in French and English. A device for translating site elements has been set up and can serve to add versions in different languages easily.
CLOSING QUOTES
"Activity is the mother of prosperity." — French proverb
"If it's not fun, don't do it."
"The urgent question we must ask ourselves, if we want to live this second Renaissance lucidly, is what our place will be in it, what our stone will be in this intellectual, economic, political, artistic, scientific, commercial, philosophical… and social cathedral." — Idriss Aberkane, The Age of Knowledge
"One is permitted to affirm only in geometry." — Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
"You know, thinking is the second most beautiful thing in the world. The most beautiful is poetry. If there were poetic thought and thinking poetry, it would be paradise." — Pascal Mercier
"Life ends, but work never." — Arabic proverb
"Who builds little does not trust the future."
"Are you prepared? What are you doing about the profusion?" — Henri Michaux
"Principle of multiplicity and nesting of scales: Hypertext organizes in a 'fractal' mode, that is any node or any link, on analysis, can itself prove composed of a whole network and so on indefinitely along degrees of the scale of precision." — Pierre Lévy
"Unprecedented modes of knowledge emerging from the use of new intellectual technologies on a computer support." — Pierre Lévy
"Translating ancient knowledge into new intellectual technologies amounts to producing new knowledge." — Pierre Lévy
"Until now we have mostly imagined and built virtual worlds that were simple simulations of real or possible physical universes. We propose designing virtual worlds of meaning or shared sensation, opening spaces where collective intelligence and imagination can deploy." — Pierre Lévy
"We remain blind to the different possibilities that technical novelties offer for human becoming, possibilities whose full range is rarely perceived and which should be the object of deliberation, choices, judgments of taste—and not only on the part of machine specialists." — Pierre Lévy
"Information theory" is in fact only a mathematical approach to the transmission and circulation of messages. It has given rise to refinements and transpositions sometimes very subtle. However with the quantitative instruments and concepts it developed, one has never come even remotely close to dealing with signification, in the most ordinary sense of the term." — Pierre Lévy
"If you know exactly what you want to do, why bother doing it?" — Pablo Picasso
"Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path—and leave a trail." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Refuse the fragmentation of knowledge; think of everything." — Karl Popper
"The great project is realized in the smallest gesture, in the small step." — Pope Francis, The Church I Hope For
"To fertilize the past by begetting the future—that is the meaning of the present." — Nietzsche
"A series of small wills makes a big result." — Baudelaire
"Content curation must be reinvented." — myself
"A failed thing is a thing not yet succeeded." — Paul Valéry
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Du tag au like, Olivier Le Deuff
- Les sciences humaines
- Petite philosophie des grandes trouvailles, Luc de Brabandère
- L’argumentation, Christian Plantin
- Les technologies de l'intelligence, Pierre Lévy
- L’intelligence collective, Pierre Lévy
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APPENDIX 1: HISTORY OF INDEXING AND METADATA
Indexing improved progressively with advances in writing and reading devices. Pictographic writing is thus a form of describing and indexing reality. But the mnemonic aid in early writing was useful only to whoever created it. Later ideography and alphabetic conversion would facilitate writing and its transmissive character. Then came the need for landmarks and means of memorization. The "list" quickly appeared as the most effective way to process and memorize information.
The list — Indexing can emerge as a list as a device for organizing space. The list finds its place among columns. The logic is that of calculation and especially counting. The list is an instrument of "power" rather than "knowledge"; it allowed Egyptian scribes to measure agricultural production and set tax accordingly. Then it made it possible to establish catalogs of works in libraries. Library science and documentation would continually improve catalogs and classification systems (up to Dewey).
The first Greek library catalogs, such as those by Callimachus, were done less rigorously than documentary processing done today by professionals. The established order followed no precise rule except the poet's reading rhythm. It was then a matter of producing a form of synthesis of knowledge.
Moreover works were volumina, scrolls of papyrus that were impractical. Papyrus, judged too fragile and not easy to transport without degradation, would give way to parchment, a material from the animal world. Then a new technical object would appear that would allow indexing to develop: the codex, what we more commonly call a book. The codex is more practical, more conducive to comments and scholia, those marginal notes. Rules in the text can better organize around chapters and rubrics. Catalog-type lists were then perfected with lists of authors, titles, and incipits (beginnings of works) and especially, thanks to the codex facilitating pagination and alphabetical ordering. The table of contents appeared, but page references were ineffective because of pagination differences between copies. The text was then cut into paragraphs classified according to an alphabetical system—which would spark debate as to whether it was compatible with divine order.
Indexing is linked to writing, but it is also inseparable from reading since it must facilitate and signal what must be read. It is therefore not surprising that Hugh of Saint Victor, twelfth-century philosopher and mystic theologian and author of Didascalicon de studio legendi (an art of reading, of cultivating oneself), was among those who improved the processing and organization of manuscripts. Hugh reorganized the space of the page to allow studious silent reading whereas the tendency had been toward oralized reading.
The index — The need to find information very quickly (statim invenire) grew increasingly in the medieval period, notably with the preaching friars and mendicant orders. Being able to cite Bible passages easily, these traveled with their biblical works to convince and enlighten people they met. For that one had to create organized lists of keywords: indexes.
Indexing improved gradually during the Middle Ages. One can cite the work of Jean Hautfuney, Avignon priest, who around 1380 indexed a multi-volume work that enjoyed great success 80 years after its first publication: Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum historiale. The goal was to make a table for the diligent and intelligent reader (diligens et intelligens lector) so they could find the information that interested them with associated cross-references. Nearly 5,800 keywords were thus recorded to find passages referring to saints' lives, miracles, but also more conceptual elements such as wisdom. Hautfuney already envisaged problems of synonymy and designed "an important thesaurus of concepts, those a fourteenth-century user sought first." Printing would of course facilitate "the order of the book," but part of the structures were already in place. In the sixteenth century the first constituted bibliographies appeared, notably the colossal work of Zurich librarian Conrad Gesner (1515–1565), who listed 16,000 works, most in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. Gesner foresaw that his bibliography could serve as a catalog for librarians or bibliophiles, who need only note on their copy the reference—the call number—of the work as classified in their own library. Order rests on alphabetical order of authors' first names.
The library of Duke Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the largest in the world in the seventeenth century, is also interesting because this collector established his own catalog whereas the tendency was rather to entrust the patron's library to a scholar. He established a classificatory system and call numbers also linked to format of works for space economy. This catalog would later be greatly improved by philosopher Leibniz (1646–1716), who succeeded him as librarian—a professional career he would pursue for 40 years. His meeting with Gabriel Naudé, Mazarin's librarian, author of Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627), led him to constitute a universal library covering all knowledge. Leibniz took great interest in classification and indexing work and deplored precisely the lack of keywords in bibliographic descriptions.
In 1682 librarian Adrien Baillet designed for Chrétien-François de Lamoignon an alphabetical catalog in 32 volumes containing an elaborate index with cross-references and usage rules. Baillet, also known as Descartes's biographer, is the author of a work published anonymously giving the true identity of authors using pseudonyms.
The end of the Middle Ages saw the practice of commonplaces, which would develop during the modern period. Commonplaces are notebooks made by students where one finds a mix of notes from readings during courses. Some users organize their commonplaces as well as possible and develop mnemonic means to find elements later. The border between erudition, new thought, and desire to shine in public sometimes becomes hard to distinguish. Other authors push the practice to make full works. Montaigne's Essays are a more elaborate form of commonplaces, offering a synthesis akin to a novel work.
Index technique has not always been appreciated. Critics are numerous, especially from those who consider that privileging segmented, calculated reading that breaks the coherence of the work can resemble violating the work. Some authors refuse them outright, as Jean-Pierre Camus in volume 5 of his Divertissements (1610). He deplores these tables which in his view favor laziness. The index is described as an "instrument of stupidity." He enjoins the reader to integral reading so the latter performs their own selection work. Conversely, other authors plead in favor of the index. Table and index sometimes appear as means of offering order to a work lacking rigor.
Indexing evolved strongly during the twentieth century, so that several forms of indexing are counted: thesaurus, folksonomies, subject headings, automated indexing, classifications.
Thesauri are languages designed to index documents efficiently, coherently, and orderly in documentation centers or organizations. They generally cover a field of knowledge though general thesauri exist. In libraries subject headings are frequently used to index monographs. Classifications seek to structure knowledge in large categories and tree form, assigning indices to the document while trying to resolve physical shelving. Automated indexing performs indexing by computer processing.
The digital marks an important stage in indexing practices: separation of "metadata" and original content.
Everyone seeks to mark their resources, appropriate them, find their notes and personalization elements again. Each reader, within works they consider major, seeks to mark them with their own legend, notes they can reread later.
Source : "Du tag au like", Olivier Le Deuff
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APPENDIX 2: CATEGORIZATION — CLASSICAL AND RELATIVIST APPROACHES
Putting into category consists of two distinct
operations: 1. The first defines the perimeter of the class (what can I put in
this category?). 2. The second describes links between this class and others
(how is this category different from its neighbor?). This double operation can
be done in two different modes: the classical viewpoint and the relativist
viewpoint.
A. The classical viewpoint The category is defined by a set of properties. Restaurants are for example places where, for payment, one can have a meal. According to this view categories can nest like Russian dolls. The company canteen, the tavern, and the roadside restaurant are all restaurants that are themselves businesses. The restaurant is a concept expressible "in extension": it extends to Fouquet's and the Antwerp station tavern as well as the McDonald's on my street. One can also speak of a restaurant "in intension," saying there are tables, chairs, food, someone to cook, etc. The greater the intension, the smaller the extension… In other words, the more one specifies in detail what a restaurant is, the fewer examples one can give.
The classical viewpoint assumes two hypotheses: 1. Categories are homogeneous. All businesses that can be called "restaurant" are so to the same degree. 2. Categories are decidable. It is always possible to say whether an entity is a restaurant or not. This way of seeing things comes from Greek philosophy. It made it possible to structure thought on the basis of judgments and reasoning. But this way of seeing things also has glaring weaknesses. Only in mathematics does a definition capture a concept perfectly. Formal logic has its formal flaws…
B. The relativist viewpoint Intuitively the two previous hypotheses are untenable: within categories it is not really uniformity or homogeneity. One cannot say exactly why but an oak is more representative of the category "tree" than a cherry or poplar. A German shepherd is more representative of "dog" than a greyhound or basset. It is as if every category had its emblem, its arithmetic mean, its prototype that could act as ambassador of the class. A sparrow is a bit more "bird" than a parakeet or chicken that are nevertheless birds, and it is not only a question of quantity or number. When one asks someone to cite elements of a category, a sequence appears. Apple comes before kiwi, blue before violet. Certain elements are "a bit more" than what should be the same thing. For the French, F is "more" a letter of the alphabet than O, Italy is "more" a country than Singapore. And if we speak of bachelors, you think of many people but not immediately the pope. Try this test: A taxi is a vehicle. True or false? A tank is a vehicle. True or false? A space shuttle is a vehicle. True or false? The answers are three times "true." But each time it will take a few more moments to hear it… As if one could be a bit more or less "vehicle"! A wholly new approach then becomes possible. The category is defined by its prototype and no longer by its perimeter. Membership in the category becomes a question of distance to the prototype, not shared characteristics. If the classical approach was a "yes or no" view of things, the relativist approach is all nuance and continuity. Ludwig Wittgenstein presented in 1953 the idea of family resemblance, taking games as example. They indisputably form a category. But who could give the common characteristics of rugby and crosswords? It is more adequate to speak of resemblance step by step. Rugby has kinship with football, which has kinship with tennis, tennis with chess, chess with Scrabble, and Scrabble with crosswords. Success and pun are also part of games, as are Sim City, poker, Rubik's Cube, or even seduction. The list is long. Children playing house or jugglers with pins testify that the category of games exists not thanks to common properties (such as being several or the role of chance) but by step-by-step resemblance, a bit like members of the same family (whence Wittgenstein's name for the idea). What would the typical game be? A sport like football no doubt, or Monopoly. Experience shows chosen prototypes are a compromise between visualization and abstraction.
The prototype will have a large number of properties common to many other elements (doubly imprecise definition) while allowing instant mental image. I "see" a bridge table or operating table, but when told "furniture" I "see" nothing. Table will then be the prototype, the most abstract concept that nevertheless triggers instant visualization, for I see the legs…
The relativist approach is perhaps not very rational; it is subjective and psychological aspects rival philosophical ones. If one says someone is a giraffe, one thinks of height. If one says shark, one thinks of temperament. Why think of physique in one case and behavior in another?
The relativist approach draws on nominalism, famous in the Middle Ages during the quarrel of universals. For nominalists common properties of objects are only words and names; seeking them is vain for they are illusions. Red does not exist even if there are red fish and red crosses. Pilgrims do not exist even if many people go to Santiago de Compostela.
Source : "Petite philosophie des grandes trouvailles", Luc de Brabandère
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APPENDIX 3: SOME FIGURES OF MODERN ENCYCLOPEDISM
Paul Otlet — Nicknamed "the man who wanted
to classify the world." Born in Brussels, utopian, pacifist,
philanthropist, and anti-colonialist. In 1905 he created the Universal Decimal
Classification (UDC) and the 125 × 75 mm bibliographic card standard, still in
use in libraries worldwide. He instigated the Mundaneum World Palace in
Brussels. His goal: unite peoples through a universal civilization,
metaphorically a "world bridge" (1937). At its peak the Mundaneum
gathered 16 million cards, "indexing all subjects from the history of
hunting dogs to finance!" A century later Le Monde nicknamed this
universal indexing project "the paper Google." Otlet wanted to
establish "the moving image of the world, its memory, its true
double."
Mundaneum archives have been in Mons since 1993.
Vannevar Bush and the Memex — As We May Think (July 1945, The Atlantic Monthly). Bush argued that after WWII scientific research should improve material means of access to all human knowledge. Most indexing systems in the scientific community were artificial: each item classified under a single heading, storage purely hierarchical. Yet the human mind works by association, jumping along an entangled network. Bush proposed the Memex: a vast multimedia documentary reservoir; peripheral devices for rapid integration; miniaturization (microfilm, magnetic tape); access via television screen with speakers; besides classical indexing, simple commands to tie links independent of hierarchy—precursors of hypertext—so associated items recall instantly. Bush imagined users tracing transversal personal paths in the vast continent of knowledge; these links materialize in the scientist's auxiliary memory a capital part of research itself.
Source : Les technologies de l'intelligence, Pierre Lévy
Theodore Nelson and Xanadu — In the early sixties Nelson coined hypertext for nonlinear writing/reading on computer systems. He pursues the dream of a vast real-time network containing all literary and scientific treasures of the world—a Library of Alexandria of the contemporary universe—where millions could write, interconnect, interact, comment on texts, films, and recordings, annotate comments, etc. Xanadu as ideal horizon of hypertext would materialize humanity's incessant multiple dialogue with itself and its past.
Source : Les technologies de l'intelligence, Pierre Lévy
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar (1837)
"[...] nature hastens to render an account of herself to the mind. Classification begins. To the young mind, everything is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem. It presently learns, that, since the dawn of history, there has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, and identity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact, one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on forever to animate the last fiber of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight.
Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul?"
The Mneseek project obviously draws inspiration from these forerunners