On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Alan Kay <alan.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: > The most recent discussions get at a number of important issues whose > pernicious snares need to be handled better. > > In an analogy to sending messages "most of the time successfully" through > noisy channels -- where the noise also affects whatever we add to the > messages to help (and we may have imperfect models of the noise) -- we have > to ask: what kinds and rates of error would be acceptable? > > We humans are a noisy species. And on both ends of the transmissions. So a > message that can be proved perfectly "received as sent" can still be > interpreted poorly by a human directly, or by software written by humans. > > A wonderful "specification language" that produces runable code good enough > to make a prototype, is still going to require debugging because it is hard > to get the spec-specs right (even with a machine version of human level AI > to help with "larger goals" comprehension). > > As humans, we are used to being sloppy about message creation and sending, > and rely on negotiation and good will after the fact to deal with errors. > > We've not done a good job of dealing with these tendencies within > programming -- we are still sloppy, and we tend not to create negotiation > processes to deal with various kinds of errors. > > However, we do see something that is "actual engineering" -- with both care > in message sending *and* negotiation -- where "eventual failure" is not > tolerated: mostly in hardware, and in a few vital low-level systems which > have to scale pretty much "finally-essentially error-free" such as the > Ethernet and Internet. > > My prejudices have always liked dynamic approaches to problems with error > detection and improvements (if possible). Dan Ingalls was (and is) a master > at getting a whole system going in such a way that it has enough integrity > to "exhibit its failures" and allow many of them to be addressed in the > context of what is actually going on, even with very low level failures. It > is interesting to note the contributions from what you can say statically > (the higher the level the language the better) -- what can be done with > "meta" (the more dynamic and deep the integrity, the more powerful and safe > "meta" becomes) -- and the tradeoffs of modularization (hard to sum up, but > as humans we don't give all modules the same care and love when designing > and building them). > > Mix in real human beings and a world-wide system, and what should be done? > (I don't know, this is a question to the group.) > > There are two systems I look at all the time. The first is lawyers > contrasted with engineers. The second is human systems contrasted with > biological systems. > > There are about 1.2 million lawyers in the US, and about 1.5 million > engineers (some of them in computing). The current estimates of "programmers > in the US" are about 1.3 million (US Dept of Labor counting "programmers and > developers"). Also, the Internet and multinational corporations, etc., > internationalizes the impact of programming, so we need an estimate of the > "programmers world-wide", probably another million or two? Add in the ad hoc > programmers, etc? The populations are similar in size enough to make the > contrasts in methods and results quite striking. > > Looking for analogies, to my eye what is happening with programming is more > similar to what has happened with law than with classical engineering. > Everyone will have an opinion on this, but I think it is partly because > nature is a tougher critic on human built structures than humans are on each > other's opinions, and part of the impact of this is amplified by the simpler > shorter term liabilities of imperfect structures on human safety than on > imperfect laws (one could argue that the latter are much more of a disaster > in the long run). > > And, in trying to tease useful analogies from Biology, one I get is that the > largest gap in complexity of atomic structures is the one from polymers to > the simplest living cells. (One of my two favorite organisms is Pelagibacter > unique, which is the smallest non-parasitic standalone organism. Discovered > just 10 years ago, it is the most numerous known bacterium in the world, and > accounts for 25% of all of the plankton in the oceans. Still it has about > 1300+ genes, etc.) > > What's interesting (to me) about cell biology is just how much stuff is > organized to make "integrity" of life. Craig Ventor thinks that a minimal > hand-crafted genome for a cell would still require about 300 genes (and a > tiniest whole organism still winds up with a lot of components). > > Analogies should be suspect -- both the one to the law, and the one here > should be scrutinized -- but this one harmonizes with one of Butler > Lampson's conclusions/prejudices: that you are much better off making -- > with great care -- a few kinds of relatively big modules as basic building > blocks than to have zillions of different modules being constructed by > vanilla programmers. One of my favorite examples of this was the "Beings" > master's thesis by Doug Lenat at Stanford in the 70s. And this influenced > the partial experiment we did in Etoys 15 years ago. > > There is probably a "nice size" for such modules -- large enough to both > provide and be well tended, and small enough to minimize internal disasters. > > An interesting and important design problem is to try to (a) vet this idea > in or out, and (b) if in, then what kinds of "semi-universal" modules would > be most fruitful? > > One could then contemplate trying -- inducing -- to get most programmers to > program in terms of these modules (they would be the components of an IDE > for commerce, etc., instead of the raw programming components of today). > This tack would almost certainly also help the mess the law is in going > forward ... > > Note that desires for runable specifications, etc., could be quite > harmonious with a viable module scheme that has great systems integrity. > > Cheers, > > Alan >
Reminds me of Margulis' endosymbiotic theory that cells are communities of smaller organisms that glommed together and inter-adapted to the point of appearing to be organelles in a single organism. Mitochondria being an example of being between organism and organelle. ~Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonForman "The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity." --H. P. Wells, "A Short History of the World" _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
