Paul,

Thanks for sharing this essay. I think it brings up many important topics
which I'd like to comment on one at a time(or perhaps on my blog) ...

On 12/25/06, Paul D. Fernhout <pdfernhout at 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"<http://www.meshverse.com/2006/11/20/hyperlinking-reality/>,
data often enters into a symbiotic relationship with "reality" where
changing views can change "reality".  The "real" Mars Climate
Orbiter<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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<http://croquet.funkencode.com/2006/04/24/the-64-billion-dollar-question/>for
database and language choices.

Laurence
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