I have been struggling with a concept for which I am sure a word exists, but which I don't know. The concept is a bit like what you get when you place two mirrors face to face in such a way that you get reflections of reflections, but with the difference that these reflections can go on and on to infinity, until your head spins, while in my examples (see the list below) they are usually limited to a single repetition. More like an echo of an echo, in fact.
Humanities (language, art, etc.):
Postscript: just now, at work, I gave some input on giving input. It is contagious.
Humanities (language, art, etc.):
- Songs about music
- Plays about theater
- Books about writing (and blogs on blogs)
- Photos of photos (and paintings of paintings)
- Talking about talking
- Thinking about thinking
- Learning to learn
- Terminology about terminology
- Maintaining maintenance
- Automating automation
- Investing in investments, betting on bets
- Managing project management (projects about projects)
- Planning to plan
- Estimating estimation, evaluating evaluations, assessing assessments, rating ratings
- Information about information (meta-data)
- Reports on reports (and apparently, there are even reports on reports on reports ...!)
- Politikerpolitik
- Having feelings about feelings
- Having opinions about opinions
- Obsessing about obsessions
- Discriminating discrimination (or being intolerant of intolerance)
- Being judgmental about judging
- Being addicted to addiction
- Making lists of lists
- Exceptions to exceptions
- Arguing about arguing
- Friends of friends
- Liking a like (in Facebook etc.)
Postscript: just now, at work, I gave some input on giving input. It is contagious.
:D
ReplyDeleteAmazing blog
http://harryandkeane.blogspot.com
Maybe you were looking for (IT)introspection which gives the possibility to an object to query itself about its nature and polymorphically to adapt its behaviour which, on its turn, is defined in an ancestor object class ( (IT)hierarchy).
ReplyDeleteThrough (IT)recursion the ancestor class is inherited from another ancestor class theoretically infinite times (until your head spins), but most probably until you reach the abstract class. A kind of template that defines the shape of things except contents.
Your description is close also to (IT)reflection which in “reflection-oriented paradigm is dynamic program modification” where the instructions don’t treat simple data but other self-contained data which actually are instructions themselves. The funny thing is that the self-contained instructions guess what? can manipulate data which is actually other meta-data instructions (until your head spins).
That’s the basic of IT(encapsulation) that through meta-composition permit complex things to be decomposed in more manageable simple patterns.
Or if you prefer this is how to make simple things incredibly complex.
Have fun
AGA