Thinking on thinking

Beauty in programming

2011-05-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

Ahh... nice day today! Finally, could experience and explore the beauty of programming again after some weeks of social science research. The logics of programming is often hidden behind many doors and dark rooms where light switches must be turned on first.
Well, that happened just today: First, taking a class from a C++ project with more than 100 methods, and 5 related classes. Making simplified versions in Ruby. And finally, seeing some relationships between methods and classes.... the hidden code behind abstractions :)

Well, I tried to post something on stackexchange to ask fellow software developers about their experience with beauty in programming, but not much response yet.

Some models for the design thinking process

2011-03-21T14:00:00.001-07:00

Here is a short list on variations on the design thinking process.

The first process can be found on webpages at the d.school at Stanford. We see several stages, with variating degree in intensity: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test and Iterate.

The process starts with reflections on whom to work for, exploring and selecting perspectives, reflections on learning outcomes and prototyping, as well as evaluation of prototypes.

Next, there is a circular model proposed by Tim Brown of Ideo.

Here, we see that Inspiration influences ideation and implementation and vice-versa.

An iterative design thinking process that is taught at TU Munich Business School is shown below:

Here, we start with an analysis phase, a design phase follows, a prototype is build. Then, there is play and review on the experiences.

An approach called "customer journey" to service design can be found here. It is also a circular model, starting with a "pre-service" period, a service period, and a post-service period.

Another circular model to design thinking is given by Prof. Ranjan from India. He calls his model the "hand-heard-head" model of design.

Design of 1st order is about form and function. Design on 2nd order is about Function, Feeling, impact and effect. Design of 3rd order is about Meaning and Purpose.

Still farther East, I. Nonaka proposes a model for innovation and learning that is somewhat similar to design thinking. It is the SECI model of knowledge creation. Nonaka starts with the aspect of empathy and observation, that he calls "socialisation". Here, knowledge that is difficult to articulate is experienced. Then, the implicit knowledge is made explicit by the process of "externalisation". This is mainly about codification of experiences with symbols or models. Third, externalised knowledge is combined in new ways to generate new concepts and ideas. This is called "combination". Last is the process of internalisation, where explicit knowledge is converted again into implicit knowledge in the form of best practices.

A short overview on design-thinkers can be found here.

Repertory grid technique

2011-02-09T01:48:00.000-08:00

In preparation with my MBA thesis at TU Munich on innovation, I have been looking into the repertory grid technique lately.
The method originated from T. Kelley who wanted to access subjective information without posing a biased frame of reference when interviewing people. Given a specified context (either minimum or full) by providing elements of interests (observations of phenomena), qualitities (or constructs) about these elements are elicited by participants in the interview.

Some web pages that describe the method are:

http://azlanadnan.blogspot.com/2003_11_01_archive.html

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/Journals/Towards%20a%20classification.htm

https://github.com/markheckmann/repgrid

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/qualmethfive.html

http://www.pcp-net.de/papers/ueberbli.htm

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~laf/611/Group/Reperatory_Grids_Exercise.html
http://www.personality-project.org/R/

http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/Journals/Towards%20a%20classification.htm

von L BJÖRKLUND - 2005 -
THE REPERTORY GRID TECHNIQUE. 21 more general dispositions or key competencies. The typical textbook items are, at best, indicators of such “habits of mind” ...
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.98.3538&rep...

http://valeriestewart-repertorygrid.blogspot.com/

Next step: What could elements be of the RGT for a web collaboration system?

The forms of tacit knowledge

2011-02-07T05:23:00.001-08:00

So, I am going to explore the role of tacit knowledge to improve our ways of web communication. As a first step, it is interesting to ask what do we understand "tacit knowledge" is?

Here some ideas on tacit knowledge:
* TK is related to subjective information or knowledge. Subjective is often used to contrast objective information.
* TK is related to the context where information is used
* TK and implicit knowledge are related
* TK and affective information is related. Affective information is often used in advertising. Advertising relies heavily on images and metaphors. There are several authors that investigate cognitive processes for advertisment purposes. One of them is C. Scheier.
* In motivation theory, tacit knowledge might be related to intrinsic rewards versus extrinsic rewards. Some ideas on motivation can be found in the context of gaming, such as here ( Usability learning blog )
One of the concepts used here is the concept of Journey.
* TK is related to emotional communication. How can we share stories to find the deeper motivations?
* TK might be related to synthesis and discovery of knowledge rather to analytic knowledge.
* TK might be related to dynamic versus static information, behavior and actions.
* TK might be related to tastes and patterns

What are your ideas on tacit knowledge? Please help!

Implicit and explicit knowledge

2011-02-04T04:51:00.000-08:00

From Nonaka's HBR paper "The knowledge-Creating Company", the following insights can be derived.
First, Western companies try to make decisions based on quantifiable data that often is put together into key metrics, such as increased efficiency, lower costs, improved return on investments.
Japanese companies try to use implicit knowledge for new product development. Here, creating knowledge is not only a matter of processing "objective" information, but depends on subjective insights, intuitions, hunches of individual employees. Often, this requires managers to use images, symbols and metaphors. In this view, a company is not a machine but a living organism. In order to arrive at this view, it takes a shared understanding of what a company stands for, where it is going, what kind of world it wants to live in, and how to make that world a reality. Inventing you knowledge is not the provinence of a specialized R&D department, but a way of behaving.
Central to the knowledge creating company is the activity of making personal knowledge available to others.
The process of turning implicit knowledge into explicit knowledge and vice-versa are especially valuable for an organization. In Nonaka's view, these transitions are the interfaces where knowledge is created.
Explicit knowledge are specification that can easily be communicated and shared in today's web communication systems.
For innovation, "tacit" knowledge is often valuable. Tacit knowledge is very subjective and highly personal. As Michael Polanyi said: "We can know more than we can tell."

interaction and cognitive psychology

2010-07-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

once in a while I stumble across new research on cognitive psychology. this is sad news actually:

Mike Scaife

git version control

2010-04-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

git is becoming more and more a viable tool to work with content in the cloud, on my local desktop or on a remote server. It's incredible efficient.

Here is a nice summary. 20 commands for every-day Git Git from the viewpoint of a committer and project integrator.

doing a survey with ruby on rails (part 2)

2010-03-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

Now, that the tables and models are setup, we implement the View and Controller layers. The scaffold has given already some start, but we'll change these to give our application a better survey character.

First, the index view of the questions. We want to see a simple list of questions that we have so far, and the associated choices.

So, let's edit this view in /survey/app/views/question/index.html.erb. We remove almost everything and replace it with a unlinked list in html like this:

Note how we have used a second unlinked list to display the choices that are associated with a question, and how the modify and destroy actions are removed to be accessible only from inside the question edit. The question can be edited by clicking on it.

At the moment, we don't have any choices yet in our database. Let's add some with putting "http://0.0.0.0:3000/choices" in the URL of our browser.

I add the following for now: "it's great", "much", "ok", "not much", "green", "blue", "red", "yellow"

Now, we arrive at one of the more difficult parts. Putting checkboxes in the new and edit views of the questions.

First, the new action in /survey/app/views/questions/new.html.erb :

We need to iterate over the choices. We can do this like this:

We also insert the loop in the edit view:

To have a short list in our show view on choices, we add in app/views/questions/show.html.erb:

So, that was part 2. By now, you should have a survey app where an administrator can easily enter questions and associate possible choices with these questions.

Next, we need to have users who can take part in the survey.

doing a survey with ruby on rails (part 1)

2010-03-20T02:09:00.000-07:00

This is a basic tutorial that might help you understand the basics of ruby-on-rails. The idea of the project comes from this stackoverflow.com question. My current rails working environment is 2.3.5.

As with every rails project, in the beginning rails gives you a basic project setup using the model-view-controller pattern.

Let's try:


  ./ > rails -d mysql survey

The -d option is important to specify the usage of a database right at the start. In general, I use mysql for this, and the provided database.yml may need a bit tweeking the first time, but will soon be functional for many rails projects.

To create and test the database, you want to check with:


  ./survey/ > rake db:create

if there is no error message.

Coming back to our MVC pattern, at the moment, the directories /survey/app/models, /survey/app/views and /survey/app/controllers are still empty.

Basic resources (what the combination of a view-model-controller often is), can easily be done with scaffolding.

So, let's make a resource for our "question" and one resource for a "choice".


   script/generate scaffold question whatabout:string
   script/generate scaffold choice desc:string

With


   rake db:migrate

we create our new tables in the database.

Now, we need to associate a choice wih a question. We want to select the choices that a user can enter in the survey. So, we use a m:n relationship between choices and questions. (The steps behind this are explained more in detail here, here and here).

So, to implement the associations, we need to modify our table and the models accordingly.

First, we create a helper table with:


script/generate model questions_choice

In the new migration, we add references to our "choices" and "questions" tables like this:


class CreateQuestionsChoices < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :choices_questions, :id => false do |t|
        t.references :choice, :question
        t.timestamps
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :choices_questions
  end
end

Let's check that we have no problems so far with a:


  rake db:migrate

Next, we edit our models:

We say:


# question.rb
class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_and_belongs_to_many :choices
end

# choice.rb
class Choice < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_and_belongs_to_many :questions
end

# questions_choice.rb
class QuestionsChoice < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :question
  belongs_to :choice
end

As a result, we should be able to access the table "Questions" from the table "Choices", and vice versa. "belongs_to", "has_and_belongs_to_many" are method calls of ActiveRecord. In a sense, Ruby let defines us our own domain-specific language easily, and that is basically what Rails is.

To show that the models are working, it is helpful to check with the Ruby interpreter first. For this, we start:


   ./survey/ > script/console -s

The -s option says we want to use a sandbox, i.e. our modifications in the database are rollbacked after we exit from the console.

So, first


   q = Question.new
   q.whatabout="Our Rails tutorial"
   q.save

gives us a first question where we can add choices to. We do this with


   c = Choice.new(:desc => "it's ok")
   q.choices << c

Ruby knows from our models how to set the foreign key question_id and choice_id in the join table by using the operator "<<". We can repeat editing and adding new choices for our first question database.

Within the console, we can list all our choices for a question with:


 q.choices.each {|choice| puts "#{choice.id}  #{choice.desc}"}

In the next part of the tutorial, we will have a look on how we can provide a user interface for our models on questions and choices

network computers

2009-12-16T04:08:00.000-08:00

web browsers are in essence some form network computers. computers can be a path to information as explained very nice in this talk by eric schmidt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8bEApvblg

he also explains that the information industry is actually much bigger than the IT industry, and that google sees itself as an information company. Personally, I think one ingredient in a company around information, is the ability to analyse data.

there is a nice book on data analysis here: http://www.google.de/#hl=de&source=hp&q=head+first+data+analysis&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=&aq=f&oq=head+first+data+analysis&fp=c6a75e802a8b0e7

how can we get smarter?

2009-10-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

how can we get smarter? maybe here is an interesting path:
Concept of "collaboratories"

also very interesting innovation marketing lecture by Clayton Christonson: Understand the job of what a customer is trying to accomplish

Christensen is very inspiring. Makes me popup the question if it is better to master the basics or to study with masters directly. This could make an interesting business called "growthcurve.com" where you could record what knowledge and insight you had to master to be at the point where you are now

git cheatsheet

2009-08-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

nice little cheatsheet about git:

git cheatsheet

distributed applications

2009-08-13T23:21:00.001-07:00

internet is all about pushing and pulling information from different places at different times. the basic idea behind this are the URL and the HTTP protocol. Also, the network gets encapsulated by the cloud concept.
An interesting variation on this seems the CouchDB project.
Here is an interesting video:
CouchDB overview

J. Chris Anderson often uses the REST concept and that he has been learning internet programming by "view source" HTML and later rails.

Here is a short tutorial on REST maybe interesting to look into one day:

PHP rest tutorial from yahoo

webapp with hobo

2009-08-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

Hobo sounds similar to holo and it makes me remember starship Enterprise. In any case, hobo is also a framework for making CRUD application with Rails and it helped me to deploy a first experiment of an app to Heroku: electric-moon-35.heroku.com

Some ressources were helpful for learning how to do this:
* First the the heroku quickstart docs
* The docs about debugging with Heroku
* A message in a mail server on problems with plugins and installing gems: NoMethodError undefined method
* That there exists something like and authentication problems with Herokugardens
* The increasingly popular GIT version control and GIT version control

ruby experiments

2009-07-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

wow.. had a really nice time about learning programming web-apps with rails on ruby:

* Heroku: Very convenient Hosting service heroku.com get in touch with cloud computing
* Railcasts: Very nice tricks to get ruby programs working: Railcasts.com
* Sample CRUD app: Vimeo tutorial by eric berry
* More rails tutorials: rails tutorials
* probably my first ruby book rails book

software and computers

2009-07-06T11:35:00.001-07:00

wow, this talk is great.

why software is there, Moore's Law, entrepreneurship, relationship between software and engineering, software and business, online learning, access to information:

gates is a really a good speaker

Marketing, getting appraisal is a big part of Software.

interaction design

2009-06-26T13:25:00.001-07:00

nice oreilly webcast:

interaction design

SQL podcasts

2009-06-21T03:11:00.000-07:00

interesting list of SQL podcasts:

SQLDownUnder

Unit testing

2009-06-21T03:06:00.000-07:00

eclipse webcast

especially towards the end this discussion gets interesting, testing JavaEE, Servlets, etc.

"Not care how a class does something, but only WHAT it is supposed to do."

ArrayList and parameter types

2009-06-17T02:05:00.000-07:00

Interesting forum discussions on what it means to use a "heterogeneous collection" in Java:

forums.sun.com

Also, a reference book at google books on Java:

a google books/book on java

limits of control

2009-06-13T14:40:00.001-07:00

Tonight I saw a nice movie by Jim Jarmusch "The Limits of Control". The movie is based on projection and mirroring concepts. The main character is just a sort of wall that allows the viewer to enter the narrative directly.

Well, apart of very nice pictures including many pieces of art, the movie gives some clues of what make virtual worlds interesting. Virtual worlds represent toy models that allow viewers to interact in ways our real world does not allow.

travel plans

2009-06-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

from TV: VOX.de
from magazines:
elle
zeit.de
gq
vogue

basic concepts in databases

2009-04-24T13:52:00.001-07:00

basics are important.

here is a nice short overview on why maths plays a role in database:

Youtube presentation: common sense way of expressing a relation database

academic lecture on entities

berkeley webcast honour to Jim Gray

Interview with Jim Gray

open database

catalogues = databases

2009-04-17T03:12:00.000-07:00

I am studying for my database course M359 at the OU right now. And have to work on some lag in my study schedule. Insights so far:
1 a catalogue can be seen as a database. as such, a phone book, a prospectus, etc. can be seen as forms of databases
2 the logical views carries information which we would not have from hardware and OS perspectives on datastructures

The use of logical description in databases is a bit new to me. My understanding of logics in software always reduces to very abstract forms of symbolism, which is maybe too redustionistic here. The definition of logic in wikipedia is as follow:

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical trivium, as well as a branch of mathematics. The word derives from Greek λογική (logike), fem. of λογικός (logikos), "possessed of reason, intellectual, dialectical, argumentative", from λόγος logos, "word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle"

I have discovered an interesting book on the principles of database design from APress. The title is "Beginning database design" from Clare Chandler. As every good introduction, the book starts small with known matters and builds up complexity slowly. I found helpful to be reminded that simple Excel sheets are often simple forms of databases where data is collected in rows and columns. But only good database design allows to extract usefull information from many tables of data.

bit.fall project

2009-04-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

totally amazing how algorithms can control water particles:
bit.fall project 1
bit.fall project 2

how to manage geeks

2009-02-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

the wisdom of eric schmidt, ceo of google:

great interview with woz

2009-02-02T07:21:00.001-08:00

about the humanistic idea in computing, design, art:

Woz interview

Interview with Daniel Tammet

2009-01-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant who was interviewed in the New Scientist on January 3rd, 2009. I found his answer on connecting human minds rewarding:

"The abilities of savants have been pigeonholed as somehow supernatural, almost inexplicable and certainly not as part of the natural continuum of human talent. This has deformed how the public and, crucially, scientists, view the brain and human potential. It is insulting and potentially dehumanising. The future is an immensely scary place, full of all kinds of challenges. We will need every kind of mind, so why not bring along every kind of intelligence?" (c) The New Scientist

Enjoy maths!

2009-01-02T12:28:00.001-08:00

Dawkin's successor in Oxford

Quote by Marcel Proust

2008-12-22T11:16:00.001-08:00

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

dennett on ideas

2008-11-29T09:42:00.001-08:00

extremely interesting interview on philosophy and "verbal ballet":

Dennett Interview

Beauty

2008-11-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

1. The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality.

Compilers and patterns

2008-11-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

I was just reading another interesting "philosophical" piece on the difference between functional and procedural languages here

It is true that from functional viewpoint patterns can be easily described with recursion and thus easily reduced to simpler structures. It is not necessary to first define and create classes, and then let them call theirselves recursively as demonstrated here:


new Mul(
          new Sub(new Num(6), new Num(2)),
          new Add(new Num(2), new Num(3))).calc()));

Again recursion can make the translatation between structures a transparent process.

The pattern here is

group thinking

2008-11-08T14:22:00.000-08:00

a very interesting talk by jonathan haidt about 5 forces that cause "values" within a group:

The moral mind

You can take a quiz at YourMorals DOT org

to learn more on your personal political viewpoint.

More on recursive descent

2008-10-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

My program to parse that complicated set of measurement data is slowly progressing. It teaches myself a lot about the nature of recursion, the Backus-Naur-Form (BNF) and how to make a parse tree. On a side-note recursion teaches to break a cyclical structure into a short description, on each level of the description something is added (or removed depending on the direction) and the description gets more abstract. Of course with every abstraction layer where parts of a description are removed we lose information but that information can be re-constructed from the parse tree.

recursion

2008-10-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

our brain is certainly able to do recursion. i am just realizing this fascinating concept in sequenntial abstractions, by wondering how to parse a complicated logfile for some weeks already. parsing assumes to build an abstract structure that gives an overview or a map of the structures below. Parsing is about selecting, organizing and modifying pieces of code or data. the abstract structure needed by parser is a tree. a tree can have branches or leaves (the branches can be seen as smaller trees which shows again the usefulness of the concept of recursion)

the future of computing

2008-10-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

Cloud Computing: Navigating the next frontier

"The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet (based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams) and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals.[1] It is a style of computing in which IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”,[2] allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud")[3] without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them." (C) Wikipedia

see also a video here:
Google Talks

PS more of Google talks:

"You can learn to like problems, like you can learn to like ice cream." (= also separation between problems and interpretation of problems, advanced Eastern psychology....)

patterns in software

2008-10-05T10:11:00.001-07:00

interesting interview with Kent Beck

Inventing computers

2008-10-05T09:48:00.000-07:00

Interesting views on what makes computers tick are described in Woz biography on how he invented the Apple computer, the first personal computer, or home computer. I find important on how he was able to think about signals, components that process signals, and software as flexible ways of combining components. Also, one of the breakthroughs that made computers possible was the invention of dynamic memories. On wikipedia and google picture search, it is possible to see some of Woz' hand written tables on 0's and 1's and pictures on what components need to be combined to get some magical effects.

Furthermore an interesting list of readings on how computer concepts shape our ways of how we perceive the world around us:

science, computers, reading list

changing minds

2008-09-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

An interesting list of words - all beginning with "re-" and involved in changing minds as explained in a book by Howard Gardner:

* research

* resistances

* representations

* resonance

Furthermore an interview with Howard Gardner about education: edge.org

They're questions which kids ask all the time: who am I, where do I come from, what's this made out of, what's going to happen to me, why do people fight, why do they hate? Is there a higher power?
These are also the questions that historically have been looked at in religion, philosophy, science. While it's great for people to ask these questions on their own, and to make use of their own experience, it's crazy for people not to take advantage of the other attempts to answer those questions over the millennia.
And the disciplines represent to me the most concerted efforts to provide answers to those questions. History tells us where we come from. Biology talks about what it means to be alive. Physics talks about the world of objects, alive or not.
...
there's a joke in my field which is ÷ in elementary school we love the kids, in high school we love the disciplines, in college we love ourselves. I don't think disciplines ought to be loved for their own sake; they ought to be seen as the best way to answer questions that human beings are interested in. Therefore I see the purpose of education as helping people understand the best answers that cultures and societies have come up with to basic questions, what I would call essential questions. So at the end we can form our own personal answers to those questions, which will be based to a significant extent on how other people have approached them, and will at the same time allow us to make our own syntheses.

data mining

2008-09-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

Prof. Higgs, inventor of the particle concept that might raise gravity, explains in an interview in the new scientist that the particle might have been found already with Fermilab or the former cyclotron at CERN, but the main difficulty is and will be the data mining problem. Searching traces in a lot of data is always a challenge as the Google business models succesfully shows. Equally, finding the effect of genes on a phenotype, or the effect of signals in the brain is a domain where better data mining techniques might be needed.

mindset

2008-09-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

As hint from an interview in "The New Scientist" I am reading a great book on Mindsets by Stanford psychologist C. Dweck. The book explains how we can have two forms of mindsets: a static mindset and a growing mindset. The static mindset deals with difficulties and frustrations by avoiding them, whereas the growing mindset sees difficulties as challenges and chances for development and growth. The book mainly deals with achievements of kids, but also with other personalities from sports, science and business, and It's great to learn how effort was rewarded in many paths of lifes.

culture-change and software

2008-09-07T04:55:00.000-07:00

an interesting blogpost on what makes a company succeed in business:

Our culture shifts its relationship to technology.

Google allows to access information easy... semantic networks might provide the next steps to provide better acces to information.

software as business

2008-08-09T07:33:00.001-07:00

Eric Schmidt interview

balance of ideas

2008-08-09T07:11:00.000-07:00

an interview with physicist Georg Smoot: Cosmic Explorer

Why did you come to the Lindau meeting of Nobel laureates and young researchers?

When you're young, you think Nobel laureates are gods, that you're never going to be like them. But when I went to the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970s and met seven of them, I found that they were smart and worked hard but were not so different from anyone else. So part of coming to Lindau is to encourage students, to show that all you have done is to work hard and have good ideas. I get a lot out of it too. The students are idealistic and hopeful, which is refreshing. Decades of university life can make you a little cynical.

What advice can you offer on how to win a Nobel?

You've got to know how long to hold on to an idea before you should throw it away. Knowing that balance is the hardest thing. I once told the team working on COBE that I would give away two aeroplane tickets to anyone who could find a mistake in the data, to keep people focused on checking things.

(Copyright New Scientist 2008)

computer and art

2008-08-01T00:07:00.000-07:00

very fascinating to show how algorithms can interact with you in art:

atari art

ben fry

nobel prizes

2008-07-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

wow.... i am just back from a great weekend in alpine europe, starting
in lindau on friday evening where we were staying in the same hotel as
the nobel prize winners who attend the lindau meeting. actually we had
dinner opposite to peter gruenberg
http://www.lindau-nobel.de/LaureateDetails.AxCMS?UserID=8621

then, the next day, breakfast among a lot of americans who were talking about harvard and why europeans would escape europe in 1930ies, afterwards we took a bath
with americans who were enjoying the sun for less than 30 minutes before they were heading to take the train back to zuerich.

today we have spend the day in solothurn a small swiss city that was
influencing heavily the french-swiss connection in 17th century, later
influencing the french revolution by providing generals and strategies, and a family that build the swiss
ambassy in paris.

studying

2008-05-26T00:11:00.001-07:00

hm... I am studying at the Open University for computer science and object oriented programming. no updates regarding the psychology of algorithms. only that conflicts can be used productively in creative acts. I will need to send an update later....

san francisco dreaming

2008-03-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

a former economist journalist, Wired editor and network dreamer from silicon valley:

the long tail

how life can be seen as software

2008-03-14T05:42:00.000-07:00

very fascinating, Craig Venter:

transforming software into hardware = DNA

When in the ocean museum of Lisbon it was great to see a bath of medusa's swimming. Maybe one of the simplest life forms on earth so fascinating how simple structures create more complex structures.

passion for physics

2008-03-08T00:45:00.000-08:00

very interesting writing style, views:

What is your relationship with time?

human are just story tellers

2008-03-01T11:05:00.000-08:00

about interesting new technologies:

World telescope

about software technologies:

Alan Kay 1

Alan Kay 2

Playing chess = composing music

2008-02-25T09:39:00.001-08:00

Interesting interview about the recognition of patterns in chess, that it is similar to recognize patterns in words, phrases in music, etc.:

How chess can sharpen your mind

Memories and joy

2008-02-12T12:43:00.001-08:00

Children can play and play and play. Here in Europe prominent toys are coming from Lego or Playmobil that help us to explore space, time, social interactions. Probably the feeling that helps us fuelling our desire for play is joy. It is great to let our memories wander for a while and re-experience the joy that was acting like a friend helping us to learn more.

Objects and intentions

2008-02-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

As I am learning more on object-oriented programming, I come again to the conclusion that in the design of algorithms it is helpful to take the intentional stance, i.e. what would the algorithm like to do, what believes do we assume the algorithm has, etc.

See more on this at: wikipedia on intentional stance

And when we mix objects, intentions and nature we maybe arrive at paintings like these

Bach as computer

2008-01-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

there was a very interesting interview recently in the FAZ newspaper on Bach as a computer composing music. somehow it must be inspired by goedel, bach, eschenbach the mysteries behind algorithms. bach as taking the hand of the listener, guiding him in the universe of logic, to show the subtleties of our existence. bach computes incredible forms like einstein did with the laws of mechanics.

parallelity in computation - is the opposite of looping sequences. most programs today are looping sequences of some kind. parallel programs would be based on more different forms of symbols in time-space,

space, ambiguity, contradiction....

great isn't it?

meaning in business

2007-12-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

from the macintosh lead engineer:

Guy Kwasaki

Shakespeare

2007-12-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep".
(Prospero in the Tempest)

Free to Choose

2007-11-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

about the fact that free markets help people to collaborate and have peaceful interactions. Milton Friedman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU&feature=related

Bernstein on music at Harvard

2007-11-07T22:49:00.000-08:00

metaphor is the powerplant of music, names the unnameable und communicates the unknowable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14VhzlcSuT0

Research and fun

2007-11-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

A very inspiring lecture by computer scientist Ivan Sutherland on the usage of shared computer time, the invention of the currency "yen" for trading computing time, and doing science in unusual places and making friends by scientific intellectual interactions:

http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1125352335/

Micro activities

2007-11-04T05:30:00.000-08:00

Well, it can be argued that markets caused and will solve our climate change problems. From Fred Pearce in "The New Scientist":

"We need markets and social systems that make the coices for us. Humans shouldn't have to be experts at everything. I want my drains to work and my computer to function without knowing the details of exactly how they operate. This is why a carbon tax would be good. In Denmark we have a 180 per cent tax on cars. That means I've never owned a car. I cycle everywhere - not because I am especially good, but the system encourages me not to buy a car. All the same, the solution will come in the main, not from carbon dioxide taxes but from smarter technologies."

dynamics in space

2007-10-07T00:47:00.000-07:00

Lately, I saw on BBC world an interview with Steve Nash, an NBA basketball player on the importance of practice, practice, practice. Then, I went to see a video on youtube.com about his skills in action, and it was stunnning to see how much control he had about his body and the direction of the basketball. In the interview he also used a lot of mathematical terms, like "linear", "equation", "equilibrium". I conclude that his perception on movements and forces must have been very sharp. Whatever it is that controls our movements or allows reflection on it, our machineries to process laws of mechanics come back in many other realms as well, such as in economy (growth and output curves), thermodynamics (entropy and energy) or recently in collaborative systems.

Growing identity

2007-09-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

In a video cast on TED, Steven Pinker argues that we humans have never lived in such peaceful times, i.e. that violence and aggression has been decreasing for many hundreds of years. Living in Europe, there are still many traces of the many wars between different "tribes" and this made me remember a conversation I had last weekend with a person that grew up imediatly after the world war. He was saying that their highest goal was to have a roof on top and something to eat. Now, our generation must be living in great times, he was arguing. I answered that nowadays the challenge is the quest for identity, as we can easily get lost in the sea of information, certainly in a global world where borders are vanishing. The hierarchy of roles is lowered, and who you want to be, what you want to do, what stories you are going to tell, maybe is equally challenging as finding a place to cover for the rainy days.

Knowing what and knowing how

2007-09-09T04:47:00.000-07:00

It is common to ask two sorts of questions when we explore a new world: "What" do we see, feel, experience, know? (structural descriptions) And "how" do we know? (functional descriptions)

Minsky describes that better concepts to represent knowledge would be "actors", "situations" and "actions". Depending on a context (= situation), an actor can issue only a limited set of actions. (Furthermore there is the concept of negative expertise, i.e. know-how that we employ to avoid a paradox.)

It can be argued that knowledge results not so much from learning new skills, but from finding new ways to organize knowledge that someone already has. This is the point of Papert's principle: "Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows."

processing of information

2007-09-03T03:34:00.000-07:00

I was reading in a very interesting article about the invention of the Dynabook and Smalltalk, that "hardware is just crystallized software"

http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html

Social algorithms

2007-08-25T01:13:00.000-07:00

The concept of algorithm is really powerful to explain phenomenon related to minds. It might be possible to attribute desires and beliefs to the symbol-manipulating effects of algorithmic processes, and as such we can understand "virtual" algorithmic systems by using the vocabulary to describe own behavior. Daniel Dennett refers to our antropocentric views as intentional stance which might also be useful in many realms, to understand the complicated lives of our fragile ecosystem, or the miosis of cells by DNA programs, or the decision-making processes in our brains, the interactions in groups and societies, or the design of complicated artifacts.

Of course there is some resistance to the idea that minds or even the fascinating games of live might be seen as cold, mechanistic, algorithmic processes. I don't think so. I think the new point of view rather provides much more interesting ways to look at ourselves, very much similar to the joy of doing mathematics, as Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who gave the final resolution to Fermat conjectures puts it:

"Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark unexplored mansion. You enter the first room of the mansion and it's completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture, but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it's all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark. So each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes they're momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of - and couldn't exist without - the many months of stumbling around the dark that precede them."

memes and beliefs

2007-07-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

hello,

in daniel dennett's book on the causes and effects of religion there are quite some interesting insights that memes may have on groups. This is a bit related to the idea of functionalism, i.e. seeing a society of people in the form of an organism as was introduced by French antropologist and sociologist Emile Durkheim. And like in complex living organisms, different organs have different functions. It seems as well that religion has a certain function in societies, maybe with the main function of leveraging collaboration between people. Relgion as such is a collection of memes with having the most important meme of the god concept. Without god, there would be no religion. Dennett makes the point, a religion without god, is like going to a football games where there is no ball. Of course, the idea that god is the cause behind good and bad is very questionable. Like in the joke "First, I was praying to god to get a new bicycle, and nothing happened. Thus, I stole a bike, and now I am praying to god for forgiveness..."

Another point mentioned in the book "breaking the spell" are some good points on evolution of memes, i.e. ideas that replicate themselves in forms of tournaments. It is nicely explained on how memes take control of our brains, and that in principle we are helpless transmitters. In principle, because one important meme idea itself is to strive for the good things in life, and trying to avoid bad memes. As such, you also can see culture as a very interesting form of software, which need to get service packs once in a while to remove bugs.

Nest building meme

2007-07-11T22:56:00.000-07:00

Hm... interesting to see that wikipedia almost has no information on bird courtship, especially with respect to male nest building to impress female birds. Two links:

http://www.paulnoll.com/Oregon/Birds/courtship-nests.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglodytidae

Compilers versus interpreters

2007-06-22T03:57:00.000-07:00

Just some note on information processing for personal use:

Algorithms are based on the idea that a set of operations can be combined in such a way that they can solve a certain problem. So, when we talk about algorithms, or initiation of processes, there are mainly two sets involved:

* the set of possible operations (= instructions, words in a language)
* the set of possible sequences of operations (= computer programs, or texts in a language)

We know from computer science, that there are two basic ways of having computers programs performing actions, the first is

* interpretation: the actions that a computer needs to perform are translated first into the actions of another language. That is, the abstract representation of a computer program is assembled step by step (= run-time)

* compiler: the actions that a computer needs to perfom are translated directly into the set of operations provided by the computer. That is, the abstraction representation of a computer program is assembled in one time (= compile-time)

So, interpretation and compilation are allowing for different designs. Interpretation allows more flexibilty in a design, because its functionality can be improved in an organic fashion, while compilation will allow higher performance design, because functionality can be optimized for certain tasks.

Limits of predictability

2007-06-12T04:09:00.000-07:00

Some while ago, I was listening to some music by Palestrina (Missa Assumpta est Maria). The Catholic Church had been using the skills of Palestrina to fight reformation from Northern Europe on a spiritual level. When I was listening to the polyphonic voices of the chorus, there was indeed an idea of leaving the ground for reaching closer to the heavens. A strange experience I must say. Also, it is indeed a strange experience to realize that this music was used once to "brainwash" people, to transmit the dogma's of an institution. Luckily, we are not so sensitive anymore to greek or latin phrases. Palestrina lived until around 1595, so, he died around the same time when Galileo was a young man. (By the way, it seems that the father of Galileo was a musician as well.) It is interesting to see that science could not be used as a spiritual weapon for doing politics. Rather, politics needed to fight science to suppress changing forces within the organization. And indeed, we are using the same approaches within the organizations as we know them today, to have some form of predictability, some sense of security, be our dogma's based on correct assumptions or not. I guess this is why human contracts work in corporate worlds or marriage. But if we look back at the music of Palestrina, or the fruits of the scientific method, what survived were not the boundaries that we need to feel safe at a certain moment in time, but the ideas that arise from the confrontation with the unknown, the new, and questions around change.

(Some small note at the end, I also think, computers are a great tool to have a dialogue with the new and unknown, because they allow us to quickly express, validate and communicate ideas. We can think about designs (and avoid mistakes from the past) that would not be possible otherwise. Try it out, thinking about "thinking about thinking", the sound simplification of processes is exactly what a study of computers allows us to do, but why computer models can be misleading on the other hand, when they hide too much of the wonderful complexity of the real world.)

Bjoerk on making music

2007-05-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have read an interesting interview with composer/artist Bjoerk:

Some extracts:

"I needed rythms that are a new country and adventure for myself. First, we have programmed tons of complicated beats. You needed 3 weeks to make them, but only 1 minute to listen to them. Then, we have thrown them all away, it was too ambitious. I needed more wood, more beats from real drums, tribal sounds."

"Making music is like doing research. It is like you need to solve a mysterious murder. As you do in the stories of Agatha Christie."

"There are so many parts in my music that will never change. ... Oh yes, people say: Your music changes with every album! ... but in my opinion, most elements in my albums stay the same. Some elements change, but some things will never change, and this is true for everyone. ... "

"Vespertine was the most difficult album I have worked on. Most songs consists of 120 layers and used up to 40 different beats, then there was a chorus, and orchestra, a harpe, ... You work on this for 3 years! I enjoyed the working process but afterwards everything seems very easy ... Then you don't care to throw some beats away afterwards. At least you have gained some experience while working on it. And you are happy, that you are a bit closer to the solution of your puzzle. It is cowardous to be satisfied with what you have. But sometimes, it is also courageous. The same is true for every adventure: Sometimes it is expression of braveness and sometimes of cowardice. You need to reflect on yourself whether your actions are expressions of escape or not. By listening to yourself in these situations, it is a very subtle spine to walk."

"Art has right for existence in itself. ... For artists, it is more important to be true to yourself, then the magic will follow, and others will appreciate what you do. If you just try to please other people, then noone will understand what you do probably. This is a paradox that I like."

The Brain Sources of Joy

2007-04-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

A quote from Instruction Sheet in Lego Toys (quoted in J. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience):

"When children play, they exercise their senses, their intellect, their emotions, their imagination - keenly and energetically.... To play is to explore, to discover and to experiment. Playing helps children develop ideas and gain experience. It gives them wealth of knowledge and information about the world in which they live - and about themselves. So to play is to learn. Play is fun for children. But it's much more than that - it's good for them, and it's necessary.... Play gives children the opportunity to develop and use the many talents they were born with."

Descartes on teaching

2007-03-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

"My present design, then, is not to teach the method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavored to conduct my own. They who set themselves to give precepts must of course regard themselves as possessed of greater skill than those to whom they prescribe; and if they err in the slightest particular, they subject themselves to censure." (Discourse de la methode)

altruism

2007-03-25T13:03:00.000-07:00

I am reading one of those "self-help" books because I am interested on how to manage challenging projects. The book is called "7 habits of highly effective people", and up to now, the main message is to have high values and respect for life and other people's life. I guess translated to biological, evolutionary terms, this means of giving way to altruism, but not faked altruism to make "fast progress". Anyway, life is challenging for sure, even more so, if you try to involve with science.

Here a quote by Werner Heisenberg:

"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

(hmm..... designing a programming language that help us switch questions and models more easily, that is something I am thinking on lately.)

On imagination

2007-03-23T05:36:00.000-07:00

I have the suspicion that imagination works best, when leaving it alone, i.e. is fueled by laziness. There is a saying: "Laziness stimulates the engineering creativity." - I found this interesting with respect to the following quote by John Backus, one of the early designers of programming languages:

"Much of my work has come from being lazy. I didn't like writing programs, and so, when I was working on the IBM 701 (an early computer), writing programs for computing missile trajectories, I started work on a programming system to make it easier to write programs,"

By the way, I am wondering who is reading this blog. As the blogspot.com commenting did not work satisfactorily, you might want to contact me at mulder DOT patrick AT gmail DOT com

more on music

2007-03-22T03:03:00.000-07:00

personally, I am not a fan of heavy-guitar music (well, better, I stopped being a fan of heavy-metal 10 years ago, I stopped being a fan of most popular, electronic music around 3 years ago)

for the ones who need an excuse for heavy-metal music:

Stress

Narratives

2007-03-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

When listening to music, it is interesting to think on how different tones in a tonal scale can take different functions, as if certain tones exert more gravity than others. The different functions of the same tones in different contexts can also be seen in a theater for example, where the same actors (tones) can play different roles (gravity) depending on the theater piece (tonal scale).

People need good narratives to work or play.

simplicity and complexity

2007-03-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

I am just thinking that a system to represent multiple things at once (via equations, movements, sounds, light effects) would be great. the system should be as easily accessible like listening to music, and like good music, gradually increasing complexity.

hope to start programming on this sort of system soon.

Meta-mathematics

2007-03-12T05:43:00.001-07:00

I have been reading about the problems of deductive and formal reasoning and lately finished the book on Goedel's proof by Nagel and Newman.

It got clear to me, that for every formal system, there exists a meta-system that can be derived (or used) to help to understand the nature of the original formal system. Some point out, that for intelligence, you would need to have meta-intelligence to derive understanding of what intelligence is. Some conclude further, that the meta-intelligence is "god" and can not be understood by intelligence. Somehow this is circular reasoning, and will not give "better" memes. What can be derived from this sort of reasoning however is some reaction we humans show to inconsistent reasoning. Meta-control mechanisms (= emotions) will point out that some processes are wasting time. See also a quote Marvin made in the newsgroup comp.ai.philosophy:

"I think that I've said before, that philosophy is mostly bad psychology. The most common reaction that "normal" people have to such propositions is -- after a few moments of thought -- to LAUGH! This is because, I'm sure, that the detection of absurdities (which include both asserting inconsistent propositions and exhibiting tabooed views of certain body-parts) activates certain brain centers that are used to prevent the rest of the brain from continuing normal reasoning. In other words, the machinery that prevents you from "taking it seriously". There's some more about this in chapter 27 of The Society of Mind.

Classical monotonic consistent logic was one of the first good ideas that came with the era of modern technical thinking about thinking. It came in the infancy of what we now call cognitive science. Philosophers played an important role in developing it.

Today that young organism, cognitive science, is approach puberty or, perhaps, middle age. Philosophers, it seems to me, with the exception of Dennet, Sloman, and a very few others, are fixated in that infantile stage. "

Developping ideas

2007-03-08T06:55:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I finished reading the book "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins. It was very impressive to think about the complexity and similarities between species, and how we inherit shapes and functions from one generation to the next. Dawkins argues that similar to the alphabet of life, our human brains can transmit words and ideas coded in an alphabet of "memes", replicators on an abstract level in our brains that are competing for communication channels (the internet is an incredible rich meme-pool, so is the television, a newspaper and a patent office).

All in all, I am thinking that ideas share some abstract features with computer programs, that use the roles of functions and expressions for coding change. At least, good ideas often (always ?) address some useful changes. And indeed, I would agree with John Maeda, that to develop those meme programs inside one owns mind, it is needed to look at these processes and programs and try to ban the critics and imprimers from guiding you. (There is a saying from Marvin Minsky: "Never listen to your critics. Don't even ignore them.")

Returns and success

2007-03-05T05:29:00.000-08:00

During the lunch we had some discussion on the merits of socialism in education, i.e. that everyone should have the opportunity to learn whatever (s)he likes and as such can improve her/his personal understanding ("personal" is opposed to "socialism", but let's assume that the value of minds under development are equal)

The discussion turnt to the enormous endowments some universities have, and how they manage their financial assets to provide this sort of intellectual freedom for new ways of learning. I found an interesting article on the investment manager of Yale university, with an intersting advice on returns vs. making money1:

"What he demands of himself is exactly what he demands of the custodians of Yale’s capital: 'People who define success by generating great returns, not by making as much money as they possibly can,' he says. "

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/business/yourmoney/18swensen.html

26 letters

2007-02-25T05:50:00.000-08:00

This morning, I saw some interesting paintings of Jan Brueghel the older in the "Alte Pinakothek". I was drawn to a painting displaying a sermon including a large crowd of interested people. In the front, near the preacher, there were obviously some women, in the back there were some people with guns, maybe some soldiers or some hunters returning home. It was striking to me how peaceful the crowd of mixed people was standing there, listening to the words of the philosopher. That we see lectures like this also in our modern world might be related to our needs for hope, the hope for a better life, the hope to find better meaning of our existence, the hope to prevent disappointment, or the hope to solve conflicts between people. It is interesting to see how languages and words can unify or split groups of people so heavily. Words can be instruments for power or seduction, but equally, they can transport the most interesting secrets of the world we live in. All with 26 letters.

(another interesting picture concerning a Brueghel painting.... found somewhere on the internet by googling. besides the 26 letters of the alphabet for normal writing, it is interesting to think about the 4 letters of the DNA for writing the sources of life.)

Russell's Paradox

2007-02-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

"Nothing contains everything", applied:

A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself ?

* If the barber does not shave himself, he must abide by the rule and shave himself.
* If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself.

And, another one:

"One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, the Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This testimony is true."
Titus 1:12-14 (King James Version)

Automata

2007-02-18T23:32:00.000-08:00

In the sense of this post, "automaton" is an abstract concept. It is not used such, that an element which can be explained by the automata concept, equals this concept. There is often large resistance to the idea that the working of minds or living processes in general can be explained by deductive reasoning, as by mathematical deduction of patterns. Still, it is my impression, that the concept of automata or virtual machines is very useful to predict certain patterns in our minds, or to explain the behavior of complicated, mechanical interactions, or to improve our use for processes in our "imagination" or learning. Daniel Dennett mentions that automata make the basic building blocks of our souls - although the resulting system is very complicated which maybe does not allow to use the automata concept for the soul itself. (Dennett: "Si, abbiamo un anima, ma e fatto di tanto picolo robots", "Yes, we have a soul, but is made from lots of tiny robots.") Marvin Minsky expresses the automata as agents or "ways to think" or "emotions".

Innovation !

2007-02-16T04:47:00.000-08:00

Hello,

there is another quote by Alan Kay which I like:

"The best way of predicting the future is to invent it !"

It captures very clearly that aspect of creativity which we admire so much, breaking some mechanical routine which has been used in the past (= the way we do prediction), by replacing it with a new, interesting system (= the essence of an invention). It might help that someone does not know too much about a certain field to get this effect of discovery, on the other hand, experience teaches us, that it takes a careful, long, vertical approach of study to understand enough interactions and problems of a certain system. In his ACM Turing award, Alan Kays addresses this aspect when imitation of an existing solution is not possible:

"One of the most interesting characteristics of computing in the best universities of the 1960s was that the professors told the students that nothing much of importance was known, and it was the duty of all to try to invent a real computing science and software engineering."

...

"Just as "civilization" is not a place or state, but a process of people who are trying to be more civilized, real computing is the process of people trying to make a better notion of computing. The most progress will be made by young people who have been encouraged to criticize old conceptions and invent new ones with an elevated notion of what constitutes a high threshold for a good idea. "

Lambda calculus

2007-02-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

Imagine, expression is based solely on algorithmic processes in our brain. How would we use this insight to reduce the complexity the modern information society provides, or how could we make learning difficult subjects such as physics or expression itself more effective ?

I am currently looking at lambda calculus, which is based on one transformation rule only: Substitution of variables. It is interesting to think on functions as basic components in expressions, and substitution of parts as one of the most simplest approaches to transform expression.

In lambda calculus, there are three possible forms to specify ideas:

(1) expressions := can be names, functions, applications
(2) functions := lambda name. expression
(3) application := expression expression

The idea of recurrence, expressions in terms of itself, simplifies tremendously the expression of repeating structures, or structures with so many details that make it impossible to keep track of everything. It also reminds me on the idea that mathematics is an artform, the art of expression, an artistic endeavour in itself.

Breughel

2007-01-03T01:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I have seen a BBC documentary about the Flemish painter Breughel (the older, 1525 – 1569). Some part of the documentary explained the idea of the painting "De Volkstelling" (counting of the population), and described all the different activities of the people in the painting and the playing children. The speaker of the documentary commented that this painting addresses a crucial human question: What is the meaning of it all? It was said that the achievement by Breughel regarding story telling, Breughel ranks maybe higher than Da Vinci, Rafael or Michelangelo.

France

2006-12-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

So, there is always this magic gap between sensation and words that we use to describe certain experiences. I am thinking on wine right now, and the many regions in France where wine is produced. A quote from Daniel Dennett on speech: "Fully fledged and executed communicative intentions - Meanings - could emerge from quasi-evolutionary process of speech act design that involves collaboration, partly serial, partly in parallel, of various subsystems none of which is capable on its own of performing - or ordering - a speech act."

The semantics of wine might be related to the semantics processes that assign words to taste.

Symbols and their meanings

2006-10-25T02:13:00.001-07:00

I am reading a book with very nice poetry on design and technology by John Maeda. The book addresses the pleasure which simplicity can provide in a complex world. Or, it addresses the important question on how to look at complexity and appreciate correct reduction of it.

One of the chapters in the book is called "more emotions, than less". It is stated that humans are disposed to communication with emotional content, and that we naturally try to express emotions. Maybe this is related to our strong instincts for attachments to people. Often, agreeing (or disagreeing) with ideas seems to be more important than the ideas themselves. (I think one can observe this phenomenon in schools for example. Agreeing with a teacher is often more helpful for ones career than trying to pursuit the understanding of ones own ideas. If this hypothesis is true, teachers have some important responsibility: Make their students learn to understand and build their own theories, and not to take theories because of reasons of attachment.)

John Maeda explains the use of the emotional symbols :-), ;-), :-p .And indeed, I once read the statement of a mathematician that he would like to use symbols in programming languages, greek letters to specify surfaces or volumes maybe. Because mathematicians, they transport a lot of information by the use of symbols. How forms in space can be changed to understand a process for example. Anyway, to understand symbols, there must be some form of compilation or interpretation that takes place. In computer science, interpretation is based on attributing symbols to categories, and return a value that corresponds with this state.

The stars and elements

2006-10-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

Today, I obtained one of the most important books in human history so far. It's Euclids collections of observations about very simple elements: points and lines. My first observation is that only the introduction to this book is readable as a classical story. The introduction tells about the warm climate of the mediterranean, asks the reader to imagine flourishing agriculture and trading routes between small cities in the Nile delta 2400 years ago. Then, it tells about a city where the people gathered to discuss such things as navigation and architecture, the precursors of knowledge based industries maybe.

The first practical use of observing the stars was navigation on the sea, but the moving patterns and the wonder of small light points in an endless sky, certainly lead to more speculative questions about the hidden laws that make them and us move. Well, for Euclid, it might have lead to write a book about mathematics. Geometry is one of the origins of mathematics, and might teach us some good deal about problem solving. Euclid did not really mention what kinds of problems he wanted to solve. All he shows is how to prove that a proposal is true or false. He must have had quite some fun in discussing about design of reasoning with poets, sailors, artists, priests, kids ? I think the Alexandria of 300 B.C. might have been a place like this.

Uffizi, tuscany and wine

2006-09-24T05:34:00.000-07:00

Wow.

My last two weeks have been an amazing experience, not because I was swimming in days of joy and happiness, but because I could improve my insights of Jimi Hendrix quote "I don't mind". Of course I do, but once in a while it is important to realize, that we shouldn't.

It all started with a 6 hours jet-lag, a stop-over in Amsterdam, and an elevator which gains exclusive access to members only. Actually, the only important occurence was the elevator not accepting VISA cards, but only badges. The designers of the elevators did not take into account the decreasing mental abilities of old people, i.e. that they might have trouble of discerning between credit cards and access badges. So, the lift, didn't move, and the old user was frustrated. Now, the clever mind asks, how to design a better elevator ? First of all, the elevator certainly did not have any idea what kind of beings send a request for a transport service. It could have been mushroom cladded aliens. Anyway, the only way to fully authenticate oneself would be by reading your personal DNA structure. (I find this a great idea by the way.)

So, it took me some days to realize that there is an important connection between our DNA structure, and our personal ambitions, our feelings for pleasure and suffering, and our capabilities to communicate about this by using music, paintings, fashion, food, cars, black magic vodoo dolls, compasses, elevators etc. It is because we all take somehow part in effects of human minds, that we always try out new words and ideas, new forms of expressions. In some sense, we are programmed to do so, because our ancestors, and ancestors ancestors would have survived more easily by cultivating a sense for expression. Maybe what we express, are our most complicated and hidden structures from a design process that has been lasting since billions of years, and shows our most complex inner workings of our personal DNA structure ?

Anyway, you end up after escaping Napoli (which had good coffee, singing people, but the thread of being used by non-educated casa nostra people), and the bay of Naples (which is beautifull, but quite crowded with tourists), so - you end up walking in Tuscany in Val d'Orcia (where I had a great lunch, with Montepulciano read wine, taglietelle, escaloppe). The interesting thing is that I ended up walking alone there, realizing, that actually, the whole fact, that I can reflect about walking alone has been nothing else than a coincidence. But a very, very complicated one. Even more fascinating that I can tell you about this. A practical side-effect of this insight was that I was able to skip 2.5h waiting in a queue before the Uffizi galleries in Firenze. The only thing you have to do is to place yourself before Italian people, and hoping to meet english people with good common-sense...

Art and Culture

2006-08-14T06:06:00.001-07:00

from a newsgroup:

> I've cross posted this. In my experience a good artist can adopt several different styles of painting. If they use a certain style or explore a different technique will this mean that they are ' psychologically disturbed' ?

I think this question only make sense, if you give better concepts for "artist" and "the methods or style of the artists". Now, the question looks like you are assuming a Cartesian theater where "the artist" controls some part of his mind that then give a certain style to his work. The dualist view is misleading in questions related to the mind. Once you adopt a multiple-agent-viewpoint of the mind, you could argue that a good artist must be very sensitive to certain experiences, and
in turn, must be able to amplify these certain mental states (that are caused by the experiences directly in combinations with impressions from his long-term memories). Of course, we not always like to have certain mental states amplified, and in turn, our culture provides ways of thinking to avoid confrontation with them. On the other hand, good art often originates from the confrontation with average ways of
thinking. That is where your paradox comes from: On the one hand, it can be dangerous to leave safe cultural waters, on the other hand, it can be safe, no to stay in average cultural waters.

About the use of memories

2006-08-10T01:35:00.000-07:00

Minsky recently posted some thoughts from his book Society of Mind about our impression of continuous change in time. I also gave a reply :)

min...@media.mit.edu schrieb:

"The power of consciousness comes not from ceaseless change of state, but from having enough stability to discern significant changes in your surroundings. To "notice" change requires the ability to resist it, in order to sense what persists through time, but one can do this only by being able to examine and compare descriptions from the recent past. We notice change in spite of change, and not because of it. "

I agree that this is an interesting model to explain what our memories do: When our short-term memories can accurately predict a situation, we start to understand the world, form concepts and cause-effect relationships. It is also when our predictions are easy to make, that we start to get bored by a situation and that our higher-level reflective agents try to change their goals. Of course memories and learning are closely related. And what I find interesting, is, that when we are able to play we hardly notice that time passes ! For example, when I am programming, and am learning about a new abstraction of a problem, I hardly know what parts of the
design will work in the first place. Only much later I get an impression on which mistakes were necessary that solved my problem. My point is, before I try to resist change, I gratefully try to experience change. So, there are times when we read from our memories (resisting change), but equally there are times when we write to our memories (trying to make mistakes).

structure and interpretation of computer programs

2006-08-03T05:03:00.000-07:00

What is the meaning of a structure ? Why are certain structures more useful than others ? How do we build structures and abstractions ? From the book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" :

"... It's in words that the magic is -- Abracadabra, Open Sesame, and the rest -- but the magic words in one story aren't magical in the next. The real magic is to understand which words work, and when, and for what; the trick is to learn the trick.
... And those words are made from the letters of our alphabet: a couple-dozen squiggles we can draw with the pen. This is the key! And the treasure, too, if we can only get our hands on it! It's as if -- as if the key to the treasure is the treasure!

John Barth, Chimera"

Learning about design....

2006-07-26T02:04:00.000-07:00

Back to modern times: Alan Kay, one of the pioneers in object-oriented programming, the "notebook" concept, and pioneer in graphical user interfaces (which is basically OO software up to now), seems to have said:

"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."

Just reflects that learning can be an exhausting adventure...

17th century Japan

2006-07-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

I am reading the book "Narrow Road to a Far Province". It is about the adventures of a Japanese wandering-poet who describes many nice impressions of landscapes with mountains, water and the similarities of humans with other beings.

The book begins with:

"The passing days and months are eternal travellers in time. The years that come and go are travellers too. Life itself is a journey; and as for those who spend their days upon the waters in ships and those who grow old leading horses, their very home is the open road.

There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores."

Concert before lunch

2006-07-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I went to experience a concert in the Staatstheater am Gaertnerplatz. The music was very interesting. It started with a clarinette-cello-piano Trio of Zemlinsky in D-moll. I was very much fascinated by the voice of the clarinette, but also the cello and piano had very interesting stories to tell. Then, there came a piece by Anton Webern for piano and cello. Strange sounds, clear and accurate, long pauses between the tones, no classical emotional story, very abstract. Now that I am reading about functional programming and polymorphism, I realize that this new viewpoint gives another tool to look at the universe and data structures. I also bought some books about finance and economics. The first principle of finance - the time value of money - I find very important: "A dollar tomorrow is worth less than a dollar today", still we should take care with our invests to respect our values to protect freedom and peace.

Patterns !

2006-06-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

Hi,

when we walk around in the universe, I am sometimes fascinated by how many things we "know", we seem to recognize. Seeing things in a sort of flow can be an absolute fascinating experience ! For example, when you would see the large Gothic style cathedral in Cologne, how many structures can be seen that provide a function of making the whole building robust ? A lot. The people who had built this cathedral must have absolutely been amazed of what clever building can do. On the other hand, there must have been a huge learning effort before one culture is able to start building these sort of structures.

Music is still one of my most favorite structures to study, next to software, and computer architectures. It is also about communication. I am reading a book by Negroponte about "Being digital", the introduction of multimedia in our lifes. The book is already a bit older, but still an interesting reading.

Here some side-way thinking: I had listened to some piano/saxophone jazz by
Coltrane and Ellington on the bike on the way home. I had the CD from the quartier latin in Paris from a second hand jazz shop, where some old people were having a party while selling music. Music is fascinating in how in interacts with our memories.

Programming and cognitive sciences...

2006-06-13T07:30:00.000-07:00

The more I learn about programming (= reading about LISP temporarily), the more I come to realize that many insights in design and engineering will probably arise from the field of cognitive sciences. Design and engineering are divided into analyses and synthesis of concepts, and for both area's, we know about training methods (reading books, building prototypes, having discussions). Programming is so useful because it allows us to visualize, to transform and to transmit structures of information, such that we can deal with fluid concepts one day, adding a new dimension to understanding and learning.