Re: ply#1 :zz,skx,virt: "Re: oooo...kay [IS THIS APPROPRIATE?]

[Ted Nelson <ted@xxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a partial reply to ZigZag-relevant elements
 in one of Peter Barus's brilliant rambling letters.

Please let me know if such things are considered
 relevant to this mailing list.

Ted

===================================


>>> But the principal issue of creative work is version management <<
>
>Well, some of us are Swoopers, and some the other thing, uh, you know, some
>just spew out finished gems, others refine and rewrite until nothing is
>left but what looks like an elephant... For writing, these days, WP's have
>become so unmanageable, I just use Notepad. For code, I have a nice thing
>that does a lot of what you are on about, and I'm working on moving to that
>for writing. All I need to do is start putting SUB at the beginning of the
>paragraphs <g>...
>
>>> the geek merely PUSHES THE PROBLEM OUT INTO
> THE USER'S LAP, a bagful of fighting cats. <<
>
>HOOF! HAWF! ROWRBAZZLE!! Hoo boy. heehoo. 


>>> So my first article, 1965, was about how a proper text system
> would keep the parts linked between versions (among other
> properties), and nobody understood it. <<
>
>I DID!!! I thought. I think.


>[how Peter's program builds up from a parts database]
...>That's why my database stuff builds hierarchies the way it
>does. In fact, I'd say an application is determined by the way a user
>stacks up hierarchies. 

Okay, I grant it in **some cases**.

>Your system, to me, just makes it infinitely more
>granular (and elegant, potentially). 

Plus things can be inside things and shared by things
 nonhierarchically.

>Not to get all organic on you.
 
Are you then a Man of Mettle? <g>


>>> The alternative to hierarchy: FINE-GRAIN TRANSCLUSION,
> meaning that small things can be in many collections and contexts, 
> and you can see sideways among the small things to all the
> contexts they're in.  I write about this everywhere (but it's
> taking me a long time to make the stuff available, unforch). <<
> 
>Yeb, fine-grain, uhuh. Heehee! You sly old dog. The H and I thing, right.
>Sort of like crosstabs but looser. Or tighter. Or something.

Well, I guess that summarizes it as generally as one might.

>>> WHERE ALL THIS LEADS:  For the OPERATING SYSTEM
> ITSELF, we need a CLEAN, CONSISTENT, PRINCIPLED
> ENVIRONMENT with FINE-GRAIN STABLE CONNECTIONS
> AMONG SMALL OBJECTS, with transclusion. <<
> 
>Good luck. 



>>> The term "application" as presently used really means an
> ACTIVITY TRAP, <<
>
>For some time I've noticed that people do this with computers: Og the
>caveman is given a bow and arrow, and told this can get more deer. He goes
>out and runs down a deer as usual, and hacks it to death with the arrow.

<LOL>


>>> Example: you buy a Photoshop-like application cluster,
> you get a Canvas Cell, a Brush Cell, Color Selector
> Cell, and use them together or in other contexts. <<
>
>A "cell" contains that much processing stuff?

A cell can be the smallest component, or it can contain
 thousands of other cells, or all your work, which is
 cells in cells transcluded to other cells...


>Isn't this thing subject to the same kind of forces? You know, tendencies
>toward complexity, followed by cataclysms that impose simplicity, followed
>by increasing complexity, etc.? To over simplify.

Of course.  But starting over, you get to have it
 neat and clean for at least a while.


>It is certainly true that marketing has driven the whole Microsoft
>enterprise. Backward compatibility is just for keeping users when you patch
>on something incompatible that should have been in the foundation
>somewhere. Given a clean, consistent, principled etc., there should never
>again be any need for b.c. However, having tried programming with this in
>mind, there is this strange lumpy growth pattern. The code collapses at
>certain points, into much smaller forms that do twice as much, twice as
>well; eventually large chunks of it atrophy and fall off.

Software evolution is indeed strange.


>Your system will not be marketable in a market that is thoroughly addicted
>to Gates' pearls-to-swine "vision" of things. 

LOL

>It renders this obsolete
>(about time), but this is a serious problem, it's like getting rid of the
>need for the automobile (which it could be argued, the computer has done
>already. I hardly ever go anywhere anymore.) But I'm trying to say, "This
>forces the user to be disciplined." I don't mean it the same way; I mean,
>where are the disciplined users, the ones who will dive into this new world
>and explore it? 

Hey, I can't use a billion users right now.
 Half a dozen are keeping my hands full.

My grand marketing strategy is to build a new world
 which sits **on top** of Windows etc., and
 makes the complications go away.

And find a niche market-- brilliant generalists, perhaps--
 to get it started.


>So a strategy may be needed to force the world to accept this thing. It
>runs counter to a lot of big business. A lot. So much as to render the
>effort extremely dangerous. Many great inventions have never arrived for
>the same reasons. This has to do with the intransigence of the disease of
>Feudalism.
>
>I think this will divide the computer world into twain, and on one side we
>will have the sweatshop activity trap stuff, and on the other, the
>fulfillment of the paperless, workless, mastery-oriented,
>creativity-rewarding society of abundance, etc.

Hey, it's just another new computer paradigm,
 there are a hundred on the street at any one time,
 and if it succeeds I'm sure the bad guys will
 have a use for it ...

>Or else They will have you quietly murdered...

Naah.  That's why I make myself conspicuous.
 I don't disappear easy.






>At 03:58 PM 6/21/98 -0400, you wrote:
>>> PERFECTLY EXPRESSED! <<
>
>Thenk yow.
>
>>> Yes this is the world as it is.  NO, THIS IS NOT HOW
> COMPUTERS "REALLY" WORK!  Computers deal with
> ARBITRARY CONSTRUCTS-- and the step-by-step
> pursuit of the seemingly reasonable has played itself out
> (both senses) into these familiar constructs.  Simple ideas
> have lead to unspeakable complication. <<
> 
>Yes!!  
>
>>> Example: word processing, a geek's notion of what writers
> want.  Assumes that the objective is a sequential package
> of text with no connection to other packages of text,
> no need to maintain connections, versions, etc.-- "That's
> too difficult," "Why would you want that?" or my favorite,
> "This forces the user to be disciplined." <<
> 
>Interface Design: when I started, I was a person with a certain problem. I
>attacked it as I always do, knowing that when I solved it, several things
>would be true. One, I would not attain mastery until after the job was over
>and done, making mastery useless as a state or event, but only as a
>process; two, the only result of any solution is more, or rearranged,
>problems. Three, I would no longer be a human with a problem, I would be,
>in all likelihood, a Software Engineer. After that, all I would be good for
>would be a Software Engineer's problems, and nobody else cares about
>Software Engineers' problems. 
>
>>> But the principal issue of creative work is version management <<
>
>Well, some of us are Swoopers, and some the other thing, uh, you know, some
>just spew out finished gems, others refine and rewrite until nothing is
>left but what looks like an elephant... For writing, these days, WP's have
>become so unmanageable, I just use Notepad. For code, I have a nice thing
>that does a lot of what you are on about, and I'm working on moving to that
>for writing. All I need to do is start putting SUB at the beginning of the
>paragraphs <g>...
>
>>> the geek merely PUSHES THE PROBLEM OUT INTO
> THE USER'S LAP, a bagful of fighting cats. <<
>
>HOOF! HAWF! ROWRBAZZLE!! Hoo boy. heehoo. This describes perfectly the
>process of Interface Design at my shop, cause none of my users will let
>even one of these slip by. I made the mistake of putting my address on
>disks. I have the Application from Hell out there, it just keeps expanding.
>Now they want it to phone other versions of itself. Christ.
>
>TS people say: "Hello, is your computer plugged in, how can I help you?"
>But I tell them, "Remember, the thing has a plug, and it can be yanked out
>of the wall if it starts to upset you."
>
>>> So my first article, 1965, was about how a proper text system
> would keep the parts linked between versions (among other
> properties), and nobody understood it. <<
>
>I DID!!! I thought. I think.
>
>>> 3.  Hierarchies are generally spurious as mappings of reality
> (biology the interesting exception), and destructive as mappings
> of computer work-- consider all the "aliases" and "shortcuts"
> that are used to get around it, but all at the BIG-LUMP LEVEL
> (files).  <<
> 
>Aha. I arrived at this by river (literally). I think of the Japanese word
>RYU, by which my sword school is represented as a tradition or school or
>flow of knowledge or lineage... something older and deeper than one person
>can comprehend. From that sort of thinking, established before I got a
>computer, I moved into the problem of how to deal with my own information
>problems, as a humble countertop maker (fancy tops, humble me). That
>hierarchy is not bogus, because stuff is made out of other stuff, and the
>other stuff is made out of still other stuff, and all of this has to be
>accounted for when you pay taxes on it all. This results in hours needing
>to be spent. That's why my database stuff builds hierarchies the way it
>does. In fact, I'd say an application is determined by the way a user
>stacks up hierarchies. Your system, to me, just makes it infinitely more
>granular (and elegant, potentially). Not to get all organic on you.
> 
>>> The alternative to hierarchy: FINE-GRAIN TRANSCLUSION,
> meaning that small things can be in many collections and contexts,
> and you can see sideways among the small things to all the
> contexts they're in.  I write about this everywhere (but it's
> taking me a long time to make the stuff available, unforch). <<
> 
>Yeb, fine-grain, uhuh. Heehee! You sly old dog. The H and I thing, right.
>Sort of like crosstabs but looser. Or tighter. Or something.
>
>>> WHERE ALL THIS LEADS:  For the OPERATING SYSTEM
> ITSELF, we need a CLEAN, CONSISTENT, PRINCIPLED
> ENVIRONMENT with FINE-GRAIN STABLE CONNECTIONS
> AMONG SMALL OBJECTS, with transclusion. <<
> 
>Good luck. Here's a piece of my work:
>
>The reason "democracy" has never been tried on a level field is because we
>as individuals all hope to grab Ultimate Power (or whatever your version of
>that is). If we had a fair game, this would preclude anybody from grabbing
>U.P., so every time we get close to this state of affairs, we sabotage it.
>Better the faint hope of escape than a comfortable prison.
>
>I think this has more to do with the crap we accept as "systems" than we'd
>like to admit.
>
>>> The term "application" as presently used really means an
> ACTIVITY TRAP, <<
>
>For some time I've noticed that people do this with computers: Og the
>caveman is given a bow and arrow, and told this can get more deer. He goes
>out and runs down a deer as usual, and hacks it to death with the arrow.
>When somebody wants a computer to do accounting, they duplicate the actions
>of an accountant. Not being an accountant, I built something that did the
>accounting first, and none of the accountants understand it, so I built
>something that sends them out the conclusions, and that keeps them happy,
>because now they can call my thing an "inventory module". Using a computer
>changes the whole problem, as the observer changes what is observed. 
>
>>> Example: you buy a Photoshop-like application cluster,
> you get a Canvas Cell, a Brush Cell, Color Selector
> Cell, and use them together or in other contexts. <<
>
>A "cell" contains that much processing stuff?
>
>Isn't this thing subject to the same kind of forces? You know, tendencies
>toward complexity, followed by cataclysms that impose simplicity, followed
>by increasing complexity, etc.? To over simplify.
>
>It is certainly true that marketing has driven the whole Microsoft
>enterprise. Backward compatibility is just for keeping users when you patch
>on something incompatible that should have been in the foundation
>somewhere. Given a clean, consistent, principled etc., there should never
>again be any need for b.c. However, having tried programming with this in
>mind, there is this strange lumpy growth pattern. The code collapses at
>certain points, into much smaller forms that do twice as much, twice as
>well; eventually large chunks of it atrophy and fall off.
>
>Your system will not be marketable in a market that is thoroughly addicted
>to Gates' pearls-to-swine "vision" of things. It renders this obsolete
>(about time), but this is a serious problem, it's like getting rid of the
>need for the automobile (which it could be argued, the computer has done
>already. I hardly ever go anywhere anymore.) But I'm trying to say, "This
>forces the user to be disciplined." I don't mean it the same way; I mean,
>where are the disciplined users, the ones who will dive into this new world
>and explore it? A great many applecarts are precareously balanced on the
>status quo (if there is such a thing as a status quo, a notion I find
>questionable).
>
>So a strategy may be needed to force the world to accept this thing. It
>runs counter to a lot of big business. A lot. So much as to render the
>effort extremely dangerous. Many great inventions have never arrived for
>the same reasons. This has to do with the intransigence of the disease of
>Feudalism.
>
>I think this will divide the computer world into twain, and on one side we
>will have the sweatshop activity trap stuff, and on the other, the
>fulfillment of the paperless, workless, mastery-oriented,
>creativity-rewarding society of abundance, etc.
>
>Or else They will have you quietly murdered...
>
>Peter
>
>
________________________________________________________
Theodor Holm Nelson, Visiting Professor of Environmental Information
 Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Fujisawa, Japan
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/    PERMANENT E-MAIL: ted@xxxxxxxxxx
 Home Fax: 0466-46-7368  From USA: 011-81-466-46-7368
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http://www.xanadu.net
_________________________________________________________
Quotation of the day:
"No man can sit on more than three cats at one time."  Ted Nelson, 98.06.19.