The PataPata project (by me) attempted to bring some ideas for Squeak and
Self to Python about five years ago. A post mortem critique on it from four
years ago:
"PataPata critique: the good, the bad, the ugly"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/critique.html
I am wondering if there is some value in reviving the idea for JavaScript?
Firebug shows what is possible as a sort of computing microscope for
JavaScript and HTML and CSS. Sencha Ext Designer shows what is possible as
far as interactive GUI design.
Here are some comments I just posted to the list there that touch on system
design, Squeak, Self, and some FONC issues:
"Thoughts on PataPata four years later..."
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=4CACF913.8030405%40kurtz-fernhout.com
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=4CAF294B.8010101%40kurtz-fernhout.com
Anyway, I still think the telescope/microscope issue in designing new
computing systems is important, as I suggested here in 2007:
"[Edu-sig] Comments on Kay's Reinvention of Programming proposal (was Re:
More Pipeline News)"
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2007-March/007822.html
"There is once again the common criticism leveled at Smalltalk of being too
self-contained. Compare this proposal with one that suggested making tools
that could be used like telescope or a microscope for relating to code
packages in other languages -- to use them as best possible on their own
terms (or perhaps virtualized internally). Consider how the proposal
suggests scripting all the way down -- yet how are the scripting tools built
in Squeak? Certainly not with the scripting language. And consider there are
always barriers to any system -- where you hit the OS, or CPU microcode, or
proprietary hardware specifications, or even unknowns in quantum physics,
and so on. :-) So every system has limits. But by pretending this one will
not, this project may miss out on the whole issue of interfacing to systems
beyond those limits in a coherent way."
Biology made a lot of progress by inventing the microscope -- and that was
done way before it invented genetic engineering, and even before it
understood there were bacteria around. :-)
What are our computing microscopes now? What are our computing telescopes?
Are debuggers crude computing microscopes? Are class hierarchy browsers and
package managers and IDEs and web browsers crude computing telescopes?
Maybe we need to reinvent the computing microscope and computing telescope
to help in trying to engineer better digital organisms via FONC? :-) Maybe
it is more important to do it first?
But sure, everyone is going to say, we have all the debuggers we need,
right? We have all the inspectors, browsers, and so forth we could use?
I know, inventing a "microscope" probably sounded crazy at the time too:
http://inventors.about.com/od/mstartinventions/a/microscopes.htm
"1590 – Two Dutch eye glass makers, Zaccharias Janssen and son Hans Janssen
experimented with multiple lenses placed in a tube. The Janssens observed
that viewed objects in front of the tube appeared greatly enlarged, creating
both the forerunner of the compound microscope and the telescope."
After, all, everyone in 1590 probably thought biology was already well
understood. :-) Dealing with "Evil humors" and "Bad air" and "Bad blood"
(requiring leaching) were obvious solutions to what ailed most people --
there was no need to suggest tiny itty-bitty creatures were everywhere, what
an absurd idea. Utter craziness.
BTW, the guy who proposed less patients would die if doctors washed their
hands before examining them (before much was known about bacteria)
essentially got beaten to death for his troubles, too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
This guy (Herbert Shelton) was hounded by the police and the medical
establishment for suggesting about a century ago that sunlight, fasting, and
eating whole foods was a recipe for good health:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm
That recipe for good health is one we are only rediscovering now, like with
the work of Dr. John Cannell and Dr. Joel Fuhrman putting the pieces
together, based on the science and scientific tools and communications
technology that Herbert Shelton did not have.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
Still, Herbert Shelton missed one big idea (about DHA) that probably did him in:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/lack_of_DHA_linked_to_Parkinsons.aspx
So, it can be hart to introduce "new ideas", between the risk of being
beaten to death by the establishment (after all, how could a gentleman
doctor's hands be "unclean"?) and the problem of only being 95% technically
right and getting 5% technically or socially very wrong.
Could the "semantic web" be the equivalent of the unknown bacteria of the
1590s? What would computing look like as a semantic web? Alan Kay said in
one talk that a baby can grow 20 times in size without being taken down for
maintenance. Is the web every "taken down" in its entirety for maintenance?
As I said at the end of my second post linked above: "It's taken a while for
me to see this, but, with JavaScript, essentially each web page can be seen
like a Smalltalk ObjectMemory (or text-based image like PataPata writes
out). While I work towards using the Pointrel System to add triples in a
declarative way, in practice, the web of calling cgi scripts at URLs is a
lot like message passing (just more like the earlier Smalltalk-72 way
without well-defined syntax). So, essentially, a web of HTML pages with
JavaScript and CGI on servers is like the Smalltalk system written large.
:-) Just in a very ad hoc and inelegant way. :-)"
Anyway, maybe that is not what FONC is about as far as actual new tools
(which focuses on being more self-contained or reinventing everything)?
http://www.viewpointsresearch.org/html/work/ifnct.htm
But, it seems like there is a need for even better microscopes and
telescopes to begin to think about all that stuff already around us
(especially tools in the hands of the next generation). And, then, with that
better knowledge of our surroundings (and history), and with other tools
those microscopes and telescopes help us build, then together we can
reinvent that emerging dynamic semantic web as needed (or at least improve
some parts of it and learn to live better with the rest of it, like we have
not wiped out bacteria, but we have learned to appreciate them more,
including the good stuff they can do for humanity). Examples:
"Winemaking"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winemaking
"Scientists Develop Plastic-Producing Bacteria"
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/09/22/scientists-develop-plastic-producing-bacteria/
"Teen Discovers Plastic-Decomposing Bacteria"
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/24/0335242
And even this, about something as basic as mother's milk:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/science/03milk.html
"A large part of human milk cannot be digested by babies and seems to have a
purpose quite different from infant nutrition — that of influencing the
composition of the bacteria in the infant’s gut."
So, through the tools of science, and not just microscopes, but also
communications tools, we have moved from thinking of health in terms of evil
spirits to seeing it as a partnership with certain bacteria and more an
issue of ecological management. :-)
Anyway, in part, this is just about following Dan Ingalls' and Alan Kay's
lead like with trying out JavaScript with the Lively Kernel.
http://www.lively-kernel.org/
But it is also about something else -- something about tools, and asking,
what are the tools that we need to survive and prosper in this emerging
JavaScript, HTML, CSS, RDF, etc. semantic web we all ready live in and are
building more-and-more of around ourselves as a global community?
Anyway, just some things for VPRI and others to think about in terms of new
projects.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
====
The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of
abundance in the hands of those thinking in terms of scarcity.
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