Jabberwock Jot Cloud

Origin of the species of word cloud, a summary of all around Jot101, seditiously aimed at foxing the meanderer with buzzwords. In a world where books are generated without human intervention (see Bookride Half Book / Half Biscuit-the story of Lambert, a robot who wrote 150,000 books) engineers are kings; fine minds - but do they have books on their shelves? Are they steeped in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy or even the non fiction of Goethe or  Franzen? -- possibly. Now - a boat load of flotsam; claptrap masqueraded - ending with a resounding quote from deathless Robert Burton…

The Jabberwock just awake Finnegan version using organic, optimistic search engine keywords, shade grown too - if you get the drift of my banter... talking big data, the world brain of H.G. Wells, an olla podrida, a rag bag of information, trivia and factoids. A hotch potch, a mélange, a damned farrago, a salmagundi, too hot to hoot... Knowledge is power. Truth is beauty. Need to know this (and much more) on earth. Hail that one silent human (in mocha brown) who will actually get it and reap the whirlwind. A coming world of leisure where time is spent in pursuit of knowledge and robots empty the waste paper basket. A dream of no work, all play and jack not a dull boy any more.

The oddest collection, passing strange, a saga, a fantasy, an unlocked roman a clef, with Captain Cuttle and the pedant Casaubon (a maligned man, Madam George). Keeping some sort of record, factoids, footnotes, ephemeroids, factbooks and essential trivia not lost but kept in a safe deposit box. An information bank, an interest bearing investment (they never saw that they needed it). An index of all knowledge, no less. Know more. In the flat box lay the lost monograph- A Proposal for an Information Sharing Galaxy.

An amazing expanding archive, beyond the algorithmic dream, post Mass Observation, many beautiful things no longer lost, bringing forth the one mind of the Gods, the all seeing eye - the library of Babel, Alexandria, far Antioch and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Universal access to all knowledge [A2K]. A vanished world recaptured. Notes and Queries honoured: New Encyclopaedists [Encyc2]. Nothing lost or forgotten. Time spent in research, curiosity and scholarship (the daring to be dull) the Renaissance ideal, the Victorian vicarage - just 4 hours a week of money yielding work. By Timothy! The answer is written on the wind, on the wall of the world. So much to know. Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus... "He had a tale to tell." Madam, I'm Adam. Exit, pursued by a bear.


Robert Burton takes the baton: "---shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion...Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical then tragical matters. Today we hear of new Lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed. And then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned, one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps…

Interview - What's the Big Idea?

  Interview with the jot101 team 

                 
Q. Where did the idea of jot101 and 'jotting' come from?

A. Back in the 1980s I knew a guy called Linus in Bedford Park, London. He was a great collector of esoterica, folklore and myth, writings of mystics and seers. He had made money in stock speculation and lived the life of a Victorian gentleman scholar. He used to write notes and comments about his reading which he referred to as his 'jottings.' They contained much wisdom and knowledge and he kept them in a sort of commonplace book...by the time the web came along he had died and his books and notes had gone to the four winds. They would have been ideal for jot101 and he would have been a great contributor. Knowledge like this is still being lost forever.

Q. So you would like jot101 to be a place where people archive research and notes from their readings?

A. Yes, but also information that they have come across in their work, in travel, from friends, in anecdote, in their family and in old books, periodicals, pamphlets and letters, manuscripts, notebooks and ephemera. Also obscure data synthesised from the web and media, eyewitness reports, documents, photos, snapshots, press cuttings, diaries etc., People are sitting on terabytes of information.

Q. How does it differ from Wikipedia?

A. Much of the material is outside of the scope of an encyclopaedia, and it is not peer reviewed. For example in my trade I come across rare books by authors with Wikipedia entries where the book is not listed in the author's works and I go in there and add it. However there is no good place to record an anecdote about the author from someone who had met them, or a manuscript or letter from an author discussing their life or work and adding to our knowledge and understanding of them. Such items get sold and enter private collections where they are lost for decades, centuries - or for good. This is the kind of thing ideally suited to jot101 and we have recorded  letters, original writings and accounts of meetings.

Rather than Wikipedia, jot101 is nearer to a mix of YouTube and the Victorian journal Notes and Queries. YouTube in the way that people simply upload things they have found which are then in categories and searchable, and Notes and Queries in its dogged curiosity and thirst for knowledge - however abstruse. Mass Observation with its eyewitness reports is another influence. On our home page we have used the original motto of the early issues of N & Q, spoken by Captain Cuttle in Dickens' Dombey & Son - "when found, make a note of..."

Q. Why is jot101 just a blog? Have you considered building a website and attracting contributions?

A. It's early days. Festinare Lente. We already have a few contributors and have been going less than a year. We are feeling our way. The long game etc., I am surprised at the amount of stuff worthy of posting. If I didn't have to make a living I could probably do 30 postings a week. It is inexhaustible. My California based tireless tech support in this enterprise, Soren Wagner, is looking at building a site for people to contribute 'jots'. Where people seamlessly upload new information that they have found without having to create a website or a blog. Back in Europe I am raiding our endless expanding archives for more material. Every posting here is a form of 'jot.'  See our concise definition using actor Terry-Thomas as an example. [Interview to be continued] Nigel Burwood + Soren Wagner

What is a jot? The Terry-Thomas explanation.

Using the much loved British comedy actor Terry-Thomas as an example we show what is, and what is not, a jot.


Terry-Thomas was born in 1911 Thomas Terry Hoar Stevens at 53 Lichfield Grove, Finchley. 

NO. Common knowledge.

Terry-Thomas's favourite drink was champagne. My father had a bar in Majorca and in the early 1960s Terry-Thomas holidayed there. He claims that T-T met Belinda Cunningham his third wife in his bar.It was called El Garito and catered for a louche Bohemian crowd. Terry-Thomas always called for champagne.

YES. Slight, but new information.

Terry-Thomas with his gap toothed smile and permanent cigarette holder always reminds me of my Uncle Derek who was thrown out of the Army in 1955 for stealing the mess takings. He was a 'bounder' too! 

NO. Irrelevant information, adds nothing.

Terry-Thomas who everybody thought was such a 'bounder' and so terribly funny never made me or anyone in my family laugh. I think he was pretty lame.

NO. Opinion, and no new information. Also hard to believe...

I met a guy who had worked on a movie with Terry-Thomas. It was being shot in one of the hardest parts of Glasgow and after filming T-T insisted on dragging him and the crew to an exceptionally thuggish hardcore pub. T-T was in fine form, loud and posh and full of the joys of life and celebrity. He didn't change his style one iota for the local hard nuts. The guy thought there would almost certainly be a punch up but strangely the locals thought he was great and admired him for being exactly who he was and not changing his style. 

YES. Good story, hopefully true and new information. As the Italians say se non è vero, è ben trovato... If it is not true, it is well conceived. A few more facts like the date, the name of the movie and the name of the pub would be even better.

So a jot adds new and original information, it is not totally irrelevant and it is not opinion. Every single posting on jot101 is a jot.

Who are you aiming at?

Someone emailed asking 'for whom is this site intended?' Not sure -we are still finding our way. Apart from Barry Cox (all glories to his name) no-one has added anything. Not a problem as we have unlimited reserves...this is a scintilla of HG Wells' World Brain, a drop in the vast ocean of knowledge... Short answer - we are aiming at:

Enthusiasts, scholars, readers & re-readers, polymaths, historians, beatniks, robots, bibliomaniacs, collectors, academics, curators, archivists, scientists, botanists, gourmets, goths, gurus, gossips, geeks, pataphysicians, hipsters, bores, geniuses, diarists, pedants, intellectuals, flaneurs, ramblers, boulevardiers, bluestockings, hoarders, quizmasters, know-alls, art dealers, theorists, philosophers, jesters, occultists, walking encyclopaedias, antiquarians, autodidacts, autobiographers, nuns, monks, eggheads, child prodigies, analysts, data miners, savants, renaissance men and women, revolutionaries, obsessives, omnivores, entrepreneurs, engineers, sophisticates, arguers, inventors, lexicographers, burners of the midnight oil, keepers of the flame, seekers of the Grail, Utopians, topographers, voyagers, travellers, explorers, perpetual students, poets, princesses, pundits, punks and pamphleteers…

Last days at the great book barn clearance