Before the thread and subject dies an interesting lecture by His Holiness
the Dalai Lama did mention that a sentient being may be incarnate in more
than one body at once in separate spaces. Unfortunately the Tibetan
Government in Exile have since deleted that lecture from their site so I
cannot look up further information.

I mention that only on a conceptual basis relevant to parallelism and points
of view and make no personal claims.:-)

Regards,
Gary



----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 11:47 PM
Subject: RE: Lots of concurrency


> Mtichel Resnick wrote an excellent little paper a few years ago
> http://www.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/JLS/JLS-1.0.html "Beyond the
> Centralized Mindset" (his bibliography is at
> http://www.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers.html , and many of his papers
> are online).
>
> One of his very interesting opinions about the problems he observed
> was that they didn't seem to be so much about "concurrency being
> hard", but that it was quite difficult for students of most ages
> (even high school students) to be able to take the point of view of
> one of the little particles and to think about what it could see and
> do. This "taking a different point of view other than your own" was a
> centerpiece of some of Piaget's work. In theory, this is supposed to
> get easier as you get older, but it also seems to be something that
> has to be learned, and many don't learn it. The students had a kind
> of god-like, from their POV, way of looking at the world -- much like
> programmers who start off with simple algorithms munging
> datastructures. This doesn't scale well. In good OOP, the programmer
> should take the POV of the object in its environment, and help the
> object become self-sufficient, productive and robust. This way of
> programming really opens the doors to concurrency.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> ------
>
>
> At 11:17 PM +0100 10/30/01, G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:
> >Children and students live in this era:
> >- They can send each other emails, it is possible to send eamils to a
list
> >- They can send each other SMS, it is possible to send an sms to a group
> >- They can chat in a chatbox, private or in a group
> >
> >
> >>  -----Original Message-----
> >>  From: Ken Kahn [mailto:kenkahn at toontalk.com]
> >>  Sent: dinsdag 30 oktober 2001 20:33
> >>  To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> >>  Subject: Re: Lots of concurrency
> >>
> >>
> >>  Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> >>
> >>  >
> >>  > The question I think is interesting is whether telling students to
> >>  > think in terms of objects TALKING to each other makes it harder for
> >>  > them to think of concurrent implementations.  Would some other
> >>  > metaphor (perhaps sending couriers with messages, or thinking about
> >>  > a factory with things concurrently moving from machine to machine
> >>  > at the same time) make it easier for them to think of and understand
> >>  > concurrency?
> >>  >
> >>
> >>  Before settling upon a carrier pidgeon metaphor for
> >>  communcation in ToonTalk
> >>  I considered lots of other alternatives including a postal
> >>  system with mail
> >>  carriers and mail boxes, rivers where you can place floating
> >>  messages to
> >>  those downstream, wires, fax machines, email, and telephones. I never
> >>  considered face-to-face talking since I took for granted that
> >>  objects are
> >>  spread out spatially. I think the answer to Richard's
> >>  question is that the
> >>  right choice of metaphor can significantly facilitate thinking and
> >>  understanding concurrent programs.
> >>
> >>  Wires may be how messages are really passed within and
> >>  between computers but
> >>  wires are not an ideal metaphor. The messages are invisible.
> >>  Wires cannot be
> >>  sent along wires. Directionality isn't apparent. Wireless
> >>  communication is
> >>  even worse.
> >>
> >>  Talking or telephones aren't good because both parties need
> >>  to be available
> >>  at the same time. Many-to-1 communication by telephone is
> >>  confusing. While
> >>  phone numbers can be communicated over the phone that would
> >>  lead to a model
> >>  where numbers denote objects or communication channels. So
> >>  can they be made
> >>  up and dialed at random? Not good.
> >>
> >>  Even the postal system doesn't provide an ideal metaphor. If
> >>  you want to
> >>  send the receiving end of a communication channel to someone
> >>  do you have to
> >>  pick up your mail box and send it by mail to someone? And
> >>  then does the
> >>  postal system know that the mailbox has moved or do you need
> >>  to think about
> >>  forwarding addresses?
> >>
> >>  A bird that when given something flies to her nest and leaves
> >>  it there and
> >>  returns works out very well. You can give a bird a box that
> >>  might contain
> >>  other birds and nests - not too strange. The only strange
> >  > thing is that a
> >>  bird always finds her nest no matter where it has been moved
> >>  to. But that
> >>  doesn't seem to cause any confusion.
> >>
> >>  > All I know about Ken Kahn's ToonTalk is what I've read in
> >>  this thread,
> >>  > but it sounds as though uses a "physical" rather than "verbal"
> >>  > metaphor, so I think his observations are particularly
> >>  interesting here.
> >>  >
> >>
> >>  You all are welcome to try out ToonTalk. There is a free
> >>  trial version and
> >>  you are all welcome to try to beta version as well. It only
> >>  runs on PC with
> >>  Windows (or Macs emulating a PC with Windows - don't know about Linux
> >>  emulators). Details at www.toontalk.com
> >>
> >>  Best,
> >>
> >>  -ken kahn
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
>
>
> --
>
>
>