[ba-ohs-talk] Bootstrap, GNU, and the introspector
Henry,
Very impressed by the flea-byte. I reminds me of a
blogger with a real well thought out structure. (01)
OHS and the bootstrap project
Also the bootstrap alliance has a great update on the
web page. Very well done. (02)
Henry, Richard, Yves and Everyone else, (03)
I am writing down all my ideas from my discussions in
the past couple of day so that you might get a handle
on what I have been thinking. This is an attempt to
finally put down in writing the philosophical backdrop
on the introspector project in such a way that they
are put into context, maybe a blip on your
intellectual radar screens. (04)
After hour long discussions about flows of concepts
and simplification and communcation of ideas with yves
today, I am ready to play connect the dots on a large
scale. Lots of analogies and descriptions. (05)
You are all very professional writers, ones who write
to words last to last. (06)
Most of what I write is stream of consciousness, and
my streams are not unlike a turbulent water that flows
through an underground river. (07)
Ok, Get out your SCUBA gear, because we are going for
a trip on the yellow submarine. This could be a long
journey, so pack a lunch and put on some sunglasses! (08)
I cannot help but to come back to my personal pet
projects, it must be a form of contextual handicap
that it is very difficult for each of us to grasp
each others thoughts. Therefore I try an visit an idea
of yours, and carry what I have gained from you back
into the realm that I understand. (09)
It might come out in a spring at the bottom of the
mountain, but it flows through the rocks like water in
a pipe. (010)
That is the closest that I can come to the
conceptualization of my own thoughts in my mind. At
some point they become opaque. This is the limit of
the introspection, the unconsiousness. (011)
That opaqueness it the border, the frontier, as I have
understood it from your description Henry. (012)
So we have many frontiers,
my internal model of my mind (the introspector)
my model of your communication (the meaning of
message)
the message itself (the symbols and the
representation)
Of course your model of the communication and model of
the mind. (013)
We are all coming from different frontiers, outposts
as you might call them. I have been mapping out the
cyberspace of the GNU data types. There are many
different programs, each to solve one problem or the
other. Each program is a meditation on one type of
phenomenon, each having many supporting aspects that
have measurements of different types of data. (014)
If we imagine the compile time representation of the
entire free software construct, and then how it is
being modified by a journaling file system with
replication between each other (savannah.gnu.org) and
each publishing modules (www.freshmeat.net) and the
modules interacting in new and complex ways, then we
come close to the view that there is no execution of
the programs. (015)
The time stops on a point, we look at all the data
statically, and this represents our universal
frontier,
the global introspection of all the minds of the
programmers and that representation that is programmed
into code. (016)
Now here we see a message that is meant for two
people,
other programmers who want to be able to understand
the context and the message of the code written and
the compiler implementor who wants to transform the
code into a form that the chip designer can optimize
into a form that the electrical engineer can optimize
into a
form that the chemist can optimize into
form that the physicist can optimize into something
that can be solved using mathematical symbols that can
be manipulated by a computer and ran by a computer. (017)
So we see that the boostrap closes circle for one
person, each communicating with others each releasing
new bits an bobs until an entire system is built. (018)
These are the frontiers of management, economics, and
other sciences. Each has thier own set of formulas,
each formula has programs that implement it, and if we
continue on this path, we trace the algorithm to the
babylonians that tried to create functions to
calculate area and volume, even record the stars. (019)
The clay tablets were the first hypertext, each
persons own tablets might contain references to other
peoples tablets using names or symbols as references. (020)
If we then continue on to include all of the data
types that is held by all of the applications in
memory, then we get the superset of all the the
introspection about all of the know things in the
frontier. (021)
Now if we include all the references to these types,
refs to names and fields, to functions and structs,
and link in all the documents that use these
identifiers even in snippets, then we get the
programmatic context of these data types. This
represents the verbal legend of the code. (022)
What stories are told to neophytes when ask what a
tree_node is in the gcc is not the type_decl
(declaration), but the context of the type
declaration, the story behind it, its purpose and its
usage. (023)
Then you can build an abstract picture of the type in
your head before you read the programming language
representation that gives you the binding to that
implementation. (024)
There is a great deal of code out there that can be
documented this way, every code processing system can
be taught by injection of an introspection patch (a
quine like gödel numbering system ) that will allow a
system to dump its internal representation into a
graph like data structure, ideal for the cross
referencing and the inclusion in a huge electronic
repository. (025)
Any given GNU licensed program can be infected with
such a virus, it is the GÖDEL theory with which he
proved that any given system can be made self
referential, thus causing an infinite feedback loop
and destroying its perfect structure. (026)
That is what causes so much stress to the GPL because
the users have to publish thier code and therefore can
be attacked in such a way. (027)
On the positive side, this newly extroverted internal
data becomes flea food on the back of the huge mammoth
that represents the completely expanded OHS. (028)
In the end, the end users vote for the ability to
escape from GNU, just to come back to it for
protection of thier investment into the GNU symbol
system.
The well published and stable interfaces into the
GNU/Linux system are a worth subject of study. Just a
look at the http://tldp.org shows you a huge
repository of well documented functions and user
documentation. (029)
The purple numbering of the code, the emails and the
cvs logs will provide an amazing learning experience
for anyone who wants to contribute to the free
software experience. (030)
This encoded into one language and interconnected
would be a great task for the OHS. (031)
One has to think of the collective unconsciousness and
the idea of archetypes when we consider such enormous
entities. (032)
The idea of the great sea, the great mother and the
nourishment are very achtypical symbols that I found
on your web page Henry, in fact quite remarkable. (033)
It is interesting that such subconsious symbols
surface to the top of the sea, floating towards the
sunlight. (034)
This reminds me of the story of the Yellow Submarine
in the ILLUMNATUS! trilogy of Robert Anton Wilson and
Robert Shea. They traveled through the great sea of
the Unterwelt... This is what the browser of the OHS
will be experiencing, an underwater swim in the vast
collection mind, both the intentional and the
unintentional. (035)
This represents the total and final frontier, the
human mind. (036)
mike (037)
=====
James Michael DuPont (038)
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