copy yourself ?

diegogomezdeck at consultar.com diegogomezdeck at consultar.com
Mon May 26 10:11:02 UTC 2003


Richard,

You added to my phrase the worl "physical".  I only said: "real objects"
(physicals are included, but other objects algo are).

Thank you very much for giving to my email an oportunity,

Diego

> diegogomezdeck at consultar.com thinks that computational objects
> are, or should be, like physical objects.
> 	The Object Orientation paradigm is good just because the
> 	"computational objects" are similar to real objects (or objects we
> 	perceive as reals (to be matrix-compatible)).
>
> At various times I've learned, or tried to learn, Simula 67, Smalltalk,
> T, CLOS, ECMAScript, Objective C, C++, Object Pascal, NewtonScript
> (total failure there, I'm afraid; maybe if I'd had a Newton to play
> with it would have been different), Eiffel, Sather, Cecil, Self,
> XLispStat, and a couple of others remembered with less fondness.  I've
> read (or tried to read) OOPSLA proceedings until my head buzzed.  I
> think I have a fair idea of what the object orientation paradigm is
> about.  (That is NOT to claim any skill in its application or any hand
> in its advancement; I am claiming knowledge, not ability.)  And for
> what it's worth, I have an MSc in underwater acoustics, so I have
> _some_ academic as well as practical idea of how physical objects
> behave.
>
> And I honestly cannot see ANY useful resemblance between
> computational objects and real physical objects.
>
> Computational objects do not have mass; do not occupy space; do not
> emit or absorb photons (so don't have colour); it makes no sense to ask
> about the velocity of sound through a Workspace or the tension in a
> String.
>
> Even in Morphic, which gives a pretty good illusion of reality,
> if you "drop" a morph, it doesn't fall.  The "shadows" we see on the
> screen are totally unaffected by the location of light sources in the
> room.
>
> 	The gap between the virtual-objects and the real ones is not zero,
>
> "not zero" appears to be a euphemism for "mindbogglingly immense".
>
> 	but we have to go in the direction of reducing the gap and
> 	not in the direction of make our virtual-objects more different.
>
> Why?  If I write a letter to my mother on paper with ink, I will have
> *no* success trying to push it through a wire.  If I send her e-mail,
> she'll get it in minutes through that same wire which was totally
> impermeable to paper.  Making e-messages more like physical objects
> would make them *less* useful, not *more*.
>
> 	We're playing with concrete objects and we're creating
> 	abtraction/reduction to classify to univers from our first
> 	minutes as human beings.
>
> To the extent that this is true, so what?
>
> 	Everybody (including all the smalltalk experts) are much more
> 	trained in working with real objects than with virtual ones
> 	(computational objects in your words).
>
> And we are arguably much more trained in working with *social*
> concepts than with physical ones.  Babies are born with nontrivial
> social skills; far better than their physical skills.  Computational
> objects at present resemble *social* entities much more than they do
> *physical* entities.  They are like language, and music, not
> billiard balls and rocks.  If my children are any guide, they are
> fluent talkers (that is, good at dealing with social and "virtual"
> concepts) before they stop bumping into doors.
>
> 	If you agree with me in the last sentence surely we'll agree on
> 	the big convenience of trying to emulate the real objects.
>
> Not in the least.  The fact that I've been breating air longer than
> I've been typing does not in the least imply that typing should be made
> more like breathing.
>
> Emulating physical objects is a *useful* thing to do *some of the
> time*.
>
> But take information retrieval, a very common task for computers.
> What physical objects, other than human beings, are relevant to that
> task?  How would making some of the components subject to emulated
> gravity, or emulated proton decay, or emulated combustion, or whatever,
> help my student make a better information retrieval system?
>
> 	If we resign to the phrase "COMPUTATIONAL OBJECTS ARE NOT
> 	PHYSICAL OBJECTS" we'll finish with just another artificial
> 	model (just like relational- algebra, etc).
>
> Well, I've got nothing against relational algebra.  (I spit on SQL, of
> course.  Anything which has the very inventor of relational
> algebra practically incandescent with rage as a something which
> claims to be relational but isn't, probably _isn't_ a good example of
> relational algebra.)  Relational algebra as Codd and Maier and
> people like that developed it is a _very_ nice tool for certain jobs.
> (I certainly found it easier to master and far more convenient for
> developing queries than SQL.)
>
> Frankly, no matter what we do, we are going to "finish with just
> another artificial model".  What else could we end up with?  It's not
> as if some pagan deity was going to breathe life into our statue or
> turn our wooden puppet into a real boy, eh?  ANYTHING humans make is
> going to be a human-made (= artificial) thing, and none the worse for
> that.  The best we can hope for in our models is beauty and utility.
>
> Let me put it this way:  my Macintosh is still running 8.6, because
> MacOS 9 was headed down a "photo-realistic" path and I didn't like it.
> My colleagues are running MacOS X (on more recent machines).  Sometimes
> I think I'd like it (hey, if it has UNIX underneath it has to be good).
> Then I look at the "photorealistic" icons, try it for a bit, and
> realise once again that the more an icon looks like a "real" object the
> harder it is for me personally to use.
>
> Some of Popper's work, especially his attack on quantum mechanics,
> hasn't stood the test of time.  But his metaphor of the three worlds
> makes a lot of sense.
>    World 1 = the objective phsyical world
>    World 2 = subjective mind
>    World 3 = objective ideas existing independently of their origin
>              in World 2.
> What has that to do with this thread?  This:  people live in Worlds 2
> and 3 just as much as they live in World 1.  Object models are part of
> World 3.  They do not resemble, and need not resemble, world 1 objects
> any more than mathematical theorems or poems do.





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