Lots of concurrency

Alan Kay Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Mon Oct 29 07:31:14 UTC 2001


If one is actually playing *music* when playing Bach on the pipe 
organ, than one is indeed thinking deeply about all the parts at 
once, how they intertwine and what they might "mean", both separately 
and in combination. Same when one is improvising in counterpoint. 
Same, if one is sight reading and trying to have real music flow out. 
I'm afraid that one really does think about these in parallel 
combination (as I said, very much like watching a theatrical 
production with multiple actors on the stage, but sonically). It's 
learnable, and lots of people have learned how. I believe that many 
advanced thinking "skills" have quite a bit in common with all this. 
You can learn how to have multiple "thinkers" working on different 
aspects of ideas, all together.

Cheers,

Alan

----
At 11:05 PM +0000 10/28/01, Gary McGovern wrote:
>Hello Alan,
>I have to pull you up on something here. A person playing keyboard, driving
>a car and so on doesn't always think about what they are doing. Often it is
>trained into the body or mind or whatever through repetition and practice
>and maybe in a linear fashion.
>Regards,
>Gary
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Alan Kay" <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
>To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 4:13 AM
>Subject: RE: Lots of concurrency
>
>
>>  But Herb didn't play Bach on the pipe organ *or* think about what he
>>  was doing when driving a car, or even just walking and talking and
>>  looking and feeling ....  his intellect was "amazing" (in a very
>>  special sense of that word)...
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>
>>  Alan
>>
>>  -------
>>
>>  At 9:46 PM -0400 10/25/01, Mark Guzdial wrote:
>>  >As far as I know, Herb Simon didn't argue about naturalness of
>>  >parallelism in programming languages.  Herb Simon was one of the
>>  >pioneers of cognitive science, and he argued that the mind was
>>  >single-threaded.  (Simon was also one of the most amazing intellects
>>  >of our time -- a Nobel prize winner in Economics and a Turing Award
>>  >winner in computer science)
>>  >
>>  >Mark
>>  >
>>  >>Fascinating and important questions being debated in this thread; I just
>>  >>wanted to ask Mark (or anyone else who knows) what the Herb Simon
>arguments
>>  >>and evidence in opposition to the "naturalness" of
>parallelism/concurrency
>>  >>in programming languages he was referring to.  Perhaps a brief textual
>>  >>summary of the arguments, and maybe a pointer to the evidence?
>>  >>
>>  >> - Jerry Balzano
>>  >>
>>  >>At 10:38 AM -0700 10/25/01, Mark Guzdial wrote:
>>  >>>We're getting into some of my favorite literature, so I wanted to jump
>in
>>  >>>here.
>>  >>>
>>  >>>>And I think it is just an illusion
>>  >>>>that this parallelism is only at a low level (e.g. neurons). Read
>Minsky's
>>  >>>>Society Theory of Mind ( http://www.media.mit.edu/people/minsky/ ) for
>>  >>>>example.
>>  >>>
>>  >>>But also consider Herb Simon's arguments in opposition -- and Simon
>>  >>>has a lot more empirical evidence in his favor.  I don't have an
>>  >>>opinion on which is right yet, but I don't think that this is a
>>  >>>settled point.
>>  >>
>>  >>
>>  >>
>>  >>-------------------------
>>  >>Dr. Gerald J. Balzano
>>  >>Teacher Education Program
>>  >>Dept of Music
>>  >>Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
>>  >>Cognitive Science Program
>>  >>UC San Diego
>>  >>La Jolla, CA 92093
>>  >>(619) 822-0092
>>  >>gjbalzano at ucsd.edu
>>  >
>>  >--------------------------
>>  >Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA
>30332-0280
>>  >Associate Professor - Learning Sciences & Technologies.
>>  >Collaborative Software Lab - http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/csl/
>>  >(404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial at cc.gatech.edu
>>  >http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html
>>
>>
>>  --
>>
>>
>>


-- 




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