Wednesday, October 17, 2007

truth

There is no truth in scientific data. Every observation has a probability of error; science has learned that nothing is really true; we deal only with approximations.

Yet we compare the approximations and find principles governing them; principles or laws that we hold up as truth.

This is the purpose of Green Phosphor's Totem project. Totem enables any Second Life user to snarf some data into our database and then rez out a 3d representation of a sql query... a representation that others can view, comment on, explore. My hope is that this will be used for interesting, perhaps controversial, things; and that truth will be revealed.

Truth is only as good as the reliability of the data used to reveal it... so we hope to build a community which will audit and approve of the data used in Totem.

Our initial release of Totem is really only going to be useable by the most geeky of users; "adepts" if I may. You have to learn GQL (Greenphosphor Query Language), which gets its power from embedded SQL commands. I find it fun, but then I am pretty darn old school when it comes to computing. Hence the name Green Phosphor.

Your partner in truth,
Arkowitz