A stupid newbie question

Justin Walsh jwalsh at bigpond.net.au
Tue Oct 9 08:57:10 UTC 2001


Hi!
At 62 I still love the story of Gullivers Travels.
The background was, if I remember correctly, a war between the Big-enders
and the Little-enders. This, extremely violent, war had been going on for so
long that they had
forgotton that it had started as an arguement over which end of the egg to
crack.
Does Rationalism versus Empiricism, Idealism versus Materialism sound any
better?
I don't think so.
That is what is really going on here, for those who are already switching
off.
Squeak, a free tool, enables ordinary humans, like the gifted authors of
Gulliver and Alice, to
model mere perceptions of the human world faster, cheaper and more
efficiently then ever before.
Slaves are now replaced by microelectronics but, what has really changed?
Alexander the Great (Rank Xerox) had as his mentor, Aristotle (Alan Kay).
If Platos philosopher king Idea was unachievable then perhaps a philosopher
manipulting a king might just work. Good one Aristotle. Humans 1, Nature 0.
We are off to the 20th C!!

The resulting combination of Warrior "King" and  Reason, was just another
human model
based on a new more effective proto-religious* mechanism: militarism,
client/serverism, sheer power.
Do you think, now that all that power is potentially available in a $200
Palm Pilot, that we have improved our status vis a vis Nature? Re the Island
analogy.
If nature could reason (it is really too perfect for that) then what might
it say to us?
Perhaps it might say "grow up humans, grow up, for all our sakes": the
sandbox and etoys
was meant for children not adults.
Wasn't child behavior what inspired Alan Kay in the first place. Wait! There
is a great heritage here: Kant, Fichte Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Faschism,
Communism oops wrong direction! Backuuup!
Dewey, Piaget, Alan Kay, Anarchism that's better, back on track. Or are we?
Is this as good as it gets?
A bung fight between Chaos and Cosmos, disorder and order, necessity and
accident?
To stretch a metaphor or paradox beyond it limits leads to the rediculous ie
Xeno.
Please Alan, let us go back to basics, back to Kant** and start again. Leave
the sandbox.
Let us all grow up peacefully.
>From the first day of Smalltalks release not a single qualitative
improvement has been made.
Why? because it was perfect then: in accordance with the initial
Requirements Definition.
Traditional Cartesian mechanics is not dimished by Quantum mechanics.
Neither will Alan Kay.
Cheers.
* Edward DeBono  "The happiness Purpose".
** attachment





----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: A stupid newbie question


> Ken --
>
> I love your analogies!
>
> But, my counter analogy would be to notice that most of the world
> still has little feeling for equal rights and democracy. They still
> use "tried and true" methods of governance like monarchies and
> fascism. However difficult, I still would prefer to go across the
> ocean to try to create a much better way of living. This can be done.
> It is more work, requires more learning on the part of the
> inhabitants, but it's a better,  more esthetic, and more satisfying
> life.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> At 7:46 PM -0700 10/8/01, Ken Kahn wrote:
> >From: Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
> >
> >>P.S. Arguments that something bad but long established (such as MS
> >>Windows conventions) should be catered to don't have a lot of force
> >>for me.
> >
> >I agree there is no strong need to cater to Windows UI conventions. But
the
> >bigger issue is to whether to build upon an existing environment or build
> >one from scratch. Let me try a biological analogy. Squeak seems to be
about
> >finding a newly emergent island and populating it with plants and
animals.
> >The alternative is to find old islands that already have a rich ecology
and
> >strive to coexist. It is true that the old islands (like MS Windows) may
> >have many warts (rats, mosquitos, posionous spiders, etc.) but they also
> >have plants you can eat, animals you can domesticate, trees for shelter
etc.
> >Making the new islands habitable is a much larger task. The resulting
island
> >may have a nice rationale design while colonizing old islands is a more
> >chaotic distributed process that lacks the elegance of a top-down design.
> >But maybe it is a richer, more adaptive environment.
> >
> >To push this analogy further, back when Smalltalk was being designed most
> >islands were bare or nearly so. Today over 90% of the "islands" out there
> >are running MS Windows. Sure, islands can be sterilized and recolonized
but
> >the point is that there already is an existing ecology one can join and
> >build upon.
> >
> >I'm not arguing that Squeak will fail only that it is trying to do
something
> >very hard and risky. I hope it succeeds.
> >
> >Best,
> >
> >-ken kahn ( www.toontalk.com )
>
>
> --
>
>


----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2001 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: A stupid newbie question


> Ken --
>
> I love your analogies!
>
> But, my counter analogy would be to notice that most of the world
> still has little feeling for equal rights and democracy. They still
> use "tried and true" methods of governance like monarchies and
> fascism. However difficult, I still would prefer to go across the
> ocean to try to create a much better way of living. This can be done.
> It is more work, requires more learning on the part of the
> inhabitants, but it's a better,  more esthetic, and more satisfying
> life.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> At 7:46 PM -0700 10/8/01, Ken Kahn wrote:
> >From: Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
> >
> >>P.S. Arguments that something bad but long established (such as MS
> >>Windows conventions) should be catered to don't have a lot of force
> >>for me.
> >
> >I agree there is no strong need to cater to Windows UI conventions. But
the
> >bigger issue is to whether to build upon an existing environment or build
> >one from scratch. Let me try a biological analogy. Squeak seems to be
about
> >finding a newly emergent island and populating it with plants and
animals.
> >The alternative is to find old islands that already have a rich ecology
and
> >strive to coexist. It is true that the old islands (like MS Windows) may
> >have many warts (rats, mosquitos, posionous spiders, etc.) but they also
> >have plants you can eat, animals you can domesticate, trees for shelter
etc.
> >Making the new islands habitable is a much larger task. The resulting
island
> >may have a nice rationale design while colonizing old islands is a more
> >chaotic distributed process that lacks the elegance of a top-down design.
> >But maybe it is a richer, more adaptive environment.
> >
> >To push this analogy further, back when Smalltalk was being designed most
> >islands were bare or nearly so. Today over 90% of the "islands" out there
> >are running MS Windows. Sure, islands can be sterilized and recolonized
but
> >the point is that there already is an existing ecology one can join and
> >build upon.
> >
> >I'm not arguing that Squeak will fail only that it is trying to do
something
> >very hard and risky. I hope it succeeds.
> >
> >Best,
> >
> >-ken kahn ( www.toontalk.com )
>
>
> --
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Kants Critique of Pure Reason.url
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 152 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20011009/54edcf94/KantsCritiqueofPureReason.obj


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list