On 12/25/06,
Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout@kurtz-fernhout.com> wrote:
When I was looking at GST vs. Ruby benchmarks today,
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=gst&lang2=ruby
I came across a link at the bottom to the original "Design Principles
Behind Smalltalk" paper by Dan Ingalls, see:
http://users.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/byte_augc81/design_principles_behind_smalltalk.html
This essay attempts to look at Dan's 1981 essay and move beyond it,
especially by considering supporting creativity by a group instead of
creativity by an isolated individual, and also by calling into question
"objects" as a sole major metaphor for a system supporting creativity.
Some of this thinking about "objects" is informed by the late William
Kent's work, especiallyKent's book "Data & Reality":
http://www.bkent.net/
http://www.bkent.net/Doc/darxrp.htm
<snip>
== objects are an illusions, but useful ones ===
In my undergraduate work in psychology I wrote a senior paper in 1985
entitled: "Why intelligence: Object, Evolution, Stability, and Model"
where I argued the impression of a world of well-defined objects is an
illusion, but a useful one. Considered in the context of the section
above, we can also see that how you parse the world into objects may
depend on the particular goal you have (reaching your car without being
wet) or the particular approach you are taking to reaching the goal
(either the strategy, walking outside, or any helping tool used, like a
neural net or 2D map). Yet, the world is the same, even as what we
consider to be an "object" may vary from time to time; in one situation
"rain" might be an object, in another a "rain drop" might be an object, in
another the weather might be of little interest. So objects are a
*convenience* to reaching goals (in terms of internal states), not reality
(which our best physics says is more continuous than anything else in
terms of quantum probabilities, or at best, more conventionally a
particle-wave duality). So objects, as tools of thought, then have no
meaning apart from the context in which we create them -- and the contexts
include our viewpoints, our goals, our tools, or history, or relations to
the community, and so on.
While there are certainly valuable insights in "Data & Reality" and I would agree that some data objects are merely "tools of thought", *many* objects have meaning and exist independent of our view/model. Quantum physics does tell us that the boundries of "things" are hard to define precisely but "things" themselves as aggregates are held together by forces of nature not by external views. A keyboard can be remapped in software and different people using it can have different views of the individual key "objects". Even the keyboard itself could be viewed differently - a word processor, game controller, or a cash register. However, any observer, human, machine or otherwise observer of measurable physical characteristics of the keyboard will not see any changes. The wave-functions underlying all of the sub-atomic particles making up that keyboard have a unique history going back at least to just after the big bang.
Today, more and more so-called information systems
are being used not just for description but to augment/effect the
external world. In this evolving
hyperlinked meshverse of simulation and
"reality", data often enters into a symbiotic relationship with "reality" where changing views can change "reality". The "real"
Mars Climate Orbiter object was destroyed because it was dependent on the data a model object had. If one accepts that a paradigm shift is underway which Croquet offers something of value in, then there are
important ramifications for database and language choices.
Laurence