John Zabroski wrote: > You said that our field had become so impoverished because nobody > googles Douglas Englebart and watches The Mother of All Demoes, and > also noted that evolution finds "fits" rather than optimal solutions. > But you didn't really provide any examples of how we are the victims > of evolution finding these fits.
Alan mentioned the Burroughs B5000 compared with the architectures that survived. In Donald Knuth's talk the same design was mentioned as an example of a mistake we got rid of (a guy who still only programs in assembly would say that ;-). So the students got to hear both sides. > So I think I am providing a valuable > push back by being my stubborn self and saying, Hey, wait, I know > that's not true. It just seemed very incongruent to the question of > how we see the present: is it solely in terms of the past? Normally Alan presents seeing the past only in terms of the present as being the problem because this also limits how you see the future. Take any modern timeline of the microprocessor, for example. It will indeed be a line and not a tree. It will start with the 4004, then 8008, 8080, 8086, 286 and so on to the latest Core i7. Interesting parts of the past, like the 6502, the 29000 and so many others can't be seen because nothing in the present traces back to them. -- Jecel _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
