> The root idea behind what I wrote years ago was that we often think that our > way to keep up is by going up to a higher abstraction. Instead, I thought it > might be possible to go sideways. Thus the computer builds us systems from > many smaller pieces that are interchangeable, rather than us searching for > better abstractions. We'd never be able to create 'all' of the pieces, but > each time we added stuff, we wouldn't have to re-examine what already exists. > I'm not so sure that it won't just run into horrific problems with things > like recursion and typing problems. But, I've always thought that it was an > alternative worth considering.
About going sideways ... I think this is exactly right. The work that comes to mind when trying to conceptualize how we can build computational systems in a sideways manner is Peter Gärdenfors. He has done a ton of research and thinking about logic, geometry, embeddedness in the world and higher cognitive functions (memory, emotion, ...). http://www.lucs.lu.se/peter.gardenfors/ http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198528517.do http://www.amazon.com/Conceptual-Spaces-Geometry-Peter-G%C3%A4rdenfors/dp/0262071991 http://www.springer.com/philosophy/book/978-1-4020-3398-8 _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
