On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Julian Leviston <[email protected]>wrote:
> > On 21/08/2011, at 12:22 AM, John McKeon wrote: > > > > On Saturday, August 20, 2011, Alan Kay <[email protected]> wrote: > > (For example) > > Try to imagine a system where the parts only receive messages but never > explicitly send them. > > This is one example of what I meant when I requested that computer people > pay more attention to what is in between the parts, than to the parts -- the > Japanese have a great short word for it: "ma" -- we don't, and that's a clue > that we have a hard time with "what is in between" > > Cheers, > > Alan > > > > I like: the ether (it has a more Maxwellian flavor for me :) > Then try to imagine an object not in it > _______________________________________________ > > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > > I find Alan's email slightly obscure - I thought I understood what it > meant... but then John, yours is so abstracted away from anything I know to > be in reality, that I find I don't really understand Alan's email either. In > concrete terms, what are you talking about? Could you explain it simply? > > What I thought Alan was talking about was just the reification of message > sending... but I think I'm totally lost now. > > Sorry! > Thanks for asking Julian, I was in the middle of a follow-up message, to explain myself, when your message appeared. You should be made aware that Dr Kay's message grew out of the OOP <http://vpri.org/mailman/private/fonc/2011/002593.html>thread from yesterday. That email message led to spend half the night watching Dr Kay's videos :) In the oopsla 97 keynote<http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-2950949730059754521>(I think), he uses the word "interstitial" as an english translation for *ma.* I thought of it differently, for a different point of view. The ether was a term used by 20th century physicists to mean "that stuff that makes up space". Newtonian mechanics kind of requires that there be something there, through which light travels, or something like that. So the messages are the ether, and the idea is that all objects exists within it. Dr Kay likes to use biological analogy for examples of truly well designed systems. I like Astronomy, so I'm thinking Solar System. Now try to think of the solar system without the sun - can't happen (duh). But more importantly, there isn't an object in the system that makes a move without the sun. The ether is what is between all the objects (planets for one, humans and all other biological entities for another) and the sun. How are the messages passed around? I see two ways to model this. One is where the objects send messages to the sun (give me light) and hope for a response. The other model has the sun pumping out its messages "into the ether" to which all objects may (or may not) respond. Much better scaling. Take it to the biological analogy. One paradigm has each cell sending messages back and forth, to and from the body (poor scaling), or it can sit and listen to the flow of messages from the body and respond when it deems it should ("Oh yes, I respond to the B12 message"). Of course, each object being its own sub-system, we can imagine each having its own "topologically local" sun so our objects see only a filtered stream of messages. The structures within any given cell really only listen to its nucleus, say. Just one of those blue moments? (See the video) By way of a belated introduction, prior to that email I had only been a lurker on this list for the past several weeks having come across it after the Hasso-Plattner talk<http://www.tele-task.de/de/archive/lecture/overview/5819/> (I've been glued to it ever since :) I came to Squeak/Smalltalk four years ago via Seaside for writing my CRUD apps on the web. I hope you all don't mind me barging in here like that :) Happy trails, John > Julian. > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >
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