On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, William J. Hobler, Jr. wrote:
> It seems to me that Java and its derivatives still follow the model
> of a computer programmer encasing what s/he perceives my future
> needs are in an arcane language that I am unable to alter. This
> seems to indicate that my creative process must be predictable.
> My hat is off to s/he who is so foresighted.
You're basically right about Java. It's an important step, but it's not
_that_ step: it's not the new paradigm. The Web, as originally conceived
and specified, was unidirectional: pointers pointed towards info, which on
request flowed down the pointers to the individual nodes they pointed
_from_ (oddly enough, that was closer to a "neurons/synapses" model than
the present extensions are). Java is another element in a long series of
bidirectional (i.e. tending to equalize the flow of information so that it
needn't be exclusively from the server to the browser) extensions to the
original Web protocols. It is also of interest in relation to what many
perceive as the syntactical and semantic excesses of C++. Its design
philosophy is "small is beautiful".
On the other hand, tiny and even barely noticeable steps do sometimes add
up to (or should I rightly say "generate by emergent processes") globally
important transformations in how we do things.
> What I see as needed, and there may now be available enough
> computing power and information in the Internet, is the ability
> to search out connections between the patterns of process or
> thought or content from one frame of reference to another.
> I as a researcher would like to be researching a concept in
> my discipline and while working on a terminal have an agent
> point out that a similar formula or pettern of logic is applicable
> in some other discipline.
There is _some_ such stuff happening, commercially, coming from people who
know and apply fuzzy set theory and sometimes neural nets. (Don't ask me
names -- I never remember, and I always wind up saying something really
lame like "go surfing".) But in general I don't really believe in any of
that stuff anymore. That is, I don't believe computer programs or
hardware of any sort in any combination will _ever_ have the capacity to
spontaneously discover or create new patterns from arbitrary information.
This "patterning" activity (which is NOT the same as "thinking") is as far
as I can see uniquely human.
> For instance, there are some concepts in the discipline of City Planning
> that are applicable to Information Systems planning. It would be
> nice to not have to wait for the the computer systems person with an
> interest in city planning to recognize the synergy.
One thought that keeps coming back to be, about the Internet and
"groupware" issues, is that the Web is _already_ beginning to function
like a brain. I really _don't_ believe that much more is needed -- of the
formal, commercially defined and priced and distributed sort such as
Notes. Every new URL is a neuron. Every page that contains a reference
to this URL is a synaptic connection; if this page in turn has references
to others, those are also synapses, in the opposite direction. (Remember
the information flow is opposite to the direction of the URL pointers. I
have a collection of a hundred or so bookmarks in my Netscape. Each of
these points TO a place FROM WHICH information can flow to me.)
I suspect that the kinds of examples you give will be resolved in some
emergent way. One day, for example, in your surfing, you will stumble
onto a web page that's being maintained by somebody who has exactly the
combination of interests that's likely to produce the synergy. You
needn't correspond with the fellow -- that's a separate issue. What you
want to do is follow his bookmarks and make them your own. Then revisit
his page once a month or so to see what new connections he's got.
As I see it, the web is at this very moment in the process of structuring
itself, "emergently" -- at the Last Judgement I'll deny I ever coined such
a monstrosity -- as the outcome of all of our individual judgements about
what interests us enough to keep a Netscape bookmark and put it on our
homepage.
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
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The most abjectly pitiful management fantasy of all is in these words:
"Welcome to the real world!"