On 05/03/2012 09:25 AM Laura Creighton wrote:
Listening to the whispers of your own creativity is always hard and
fraught with error, but I am getting the strong sense that what we are
up against is the idea that _processes_ are _things_ that are made up
of _lines of code_ which _run_ on a _core_.
Well, a sheep is a _thing_ in a very real sense that a flock is not 'a
thing' but only 'a way of looking'. And the 'running' part can be thought
of as 'happening all the time' -- it is just from time to time we need
to provide a coherant way of looking at things -- to present them as if
they were a story, with a beginning and end and which happened over this
period of time, sequentially. So we are selecting what story to tell,
leaving out many that could be told were we interested in a different
one.
This is an odd way to think. Sort of like how the Copenhagen explanation
for quantum mechanics implies that classical concepts can be used to describe
quantum phenomenon. You try, and try, and try to think that way until your
brain hurts. And one day you explode, and say 'there are no things here',
'there are no concepts', THERE IS ONLY THE MATH AND THE MATH WORKS.
At this point you can begin to get 10/10 rather than 0-3 on your problem
sets again.
I fear that using multiple cores may be a similar problem to those who
are so very used to sequential operation. We need a non-sequential way
to think, and so far we haven't been very good at this.
Laura
Hi Laura,
Loved your pastoral imagery ;-)
Apt metaphors are powerful, and fun to conjure, though difficult to get right.
It struck me that there might be something to be learned from another
example of dealing with sheep contending, and how solutions evolved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHANET#The_ALOHA_protocol
BTW, does the throughput graph imply anything for what you are doing?
Regards,
Bengt Richter
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