Mercurial > hg > BCS
annotate CR_preface.txt @ 55:96abb5eaa0b8
pre-release to Jim, really
| author | Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk> |
|---|---|
| date | Fri, 22 Nov 2024 10:43:03 +0000 |
| parents | 1a6323d05b5c |
| children | 44101e652fa3 |
| rev | line source |
|---|---|
| 16 | 1 Born December 1949. |
| 2 | |
| 15 | 3 After starting a degree at Oberlin in 1967, dropped out without |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
4 completing 3rd year. Torn between religion and physics as an |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
5 undergraduate. |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
6 |
| 16 | 7 |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
8 Out to BC with Katy Tolles (Father Frederick Barnes Tolles, |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
9 Philadelphia Quaker / historian) in the fall of 1969, visited Argenta, |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
10 a Quaker settlement in Argenta BC, back to Cambridge and Philadelphia |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
11 to see respective families. |
| 16 | 12 |
| 13 Had to get out of the US (draft), so that winter took over the old job | |
| 14 of his brother Arnold in an NRC high-energy Physics lab, living with | |
| 15 Katy and Arnold in an old farmhouse in a posh neighbourhood in Ottawa. | |
| 16 Very snowy winter, record-breaking, 18 feet?, long driveway and a lot | |
| 17 of shovelling, piled up to the 2nd floor. Involve with Ottawa QUaker | |
| 18 Meeting, a youth group, and a Mennonite youth group. Stayed through | |
| 19 the several years. March 1971, employer partnering with the Univ. of | |
| 20 Chicago Physics dept and LRL in Berkeley, went there, installed a | |
| 21 PDP-9 / 15, in a 40-ft Fruehof trailer, moved from Ottawa to Fermi | |
| 22 Lab, where Brian's office was. Programmed in machine language (see | |
| 23 below). He could 'program like crazy' in the air-conditioned trailer, | |
| 24 high-volume music in head-phones, but couldn't write English. Lived | |
| 25 in a hotel in Hyde ? park. They owned an Austin Mini bought for $100 | |
| 26 in summer of 1970, working at a Quaker peace conference on Rhinestone | |
| 27 island in lake near Ottawa. | |
| 15 | 28 |
| 16 | 29 Katy went out to Berkeley that spring, where the experiment was to |
| 30 take place. Married in June of 1971 at Pendle Hill / Swarthmore, then | |
| 31 back to Berkeley. Lived in a back yard house at Telegraph and Shannon | |
| 32 (?). Legally a Canadian resident notionally in US on a business trip. | |
| 33 Experiment ran, wrapped and went back to Ottawa. He wanted to stay in | |
| 34 US, they ended up (autumn 1971? 1972?) living with his parents in | |
| 35 Cambridge, where WCS was by then head of the new Center for the Study | |
| 36 of World Religions at Harvard. | |
| 37 | |
| 17 | 38 [Applied to Graduate School at MIT in EECS, started taking some |
| 16 | 39 courses, but eventually MIT admin said be couldn't be admitted w/o a |
| 17 | 40 UG degree.] |
| 41 | |
| 42 Interested in being a social inquiry major, in order to study the | |
| 43 politics of high technology, how we get to transferring to EECS from | |
| 44 that goal is not clear. | |
| 45 | |
| 46 It was very quickly clear that the understanding of computing that the | |
| 47 social scientists were critiquing was not [Programming in machine | |
| 48 language] the computing that I know. So I need to get clear on what | |
| 49 computing really is, so that I can legitimately critique it. So I | |
| 50 thought I had to go into the heart of the beast, as it were. | |
| 51 | |
| 52 Terry Winograd provided the friendship and both social and 'official' | |
| 53 support-structure to allow Brian to start to express himself out loud, | |
| 54 as it were. | |
| 55 | |
| 56 Saying to Fodor, ref. Tom Swift and his procedural grandmother, that | |
| 57 "this is not how compilation worked", Fodor was blustery but | |
| 58 open-minded enough to say "this is your subject area, I'm sure you're | |
| 59 rightl tell me how it does work". He and Fodor were friends, but | |
| 60 later Fodor "curdled". | |
| 61 | |
| 62 Dog hanging on to a scented cloth -- sitting at the console of a 360 | |
| 63 and keying in instructinos and debugging by staring at the pattern of | |
| 64 lights that the console frooze in. | |
| 65 | |
| 66 Articulating an understanding of computing that would do justice to his | |
| 67 intuitive understanding of computing as he had experienced it is the | |
| 68 theme of all his intellectual work. | |
| 16 | 69 |
| 70 "Course on compilers, I had written a compiler, I'd written a tiny OS | |
| 71 for a PDP-9 running a physics experiment". Pat Winston sat me down | |
| 72 and took me through the requirements for a CSEE degree, and decided | |
| 73 he'd satisfied them all. But he needed a Batchelor's thesis, so they | |
| 74 took a paper from a course he'd taken in the autumn, called "Comments | |
| 75 on Comments", and added some stuff, it got marked and accepted as his | |
| 76 thesis, so awarded the degree and could actually be enrolled as a | |
| 17 | 77 student under the supervision of Peter Szolovits. |
| 78 | |
| 79 [CSLI not particularly relevant] | |
| 16 | 80 |
| 17 | 81 [CPSR?] |
| 82 | |
| 19 | 83 ---------- |
| 84 MIT, 1974++ MSc thesis _Levels, Layers and Planes_, about | |
| 85 architectural properties of computer science | |
| 86 There are no particulars in physics [ref. deiexis discussion, where is | |
| 87 it] | |
| 54 | 88 What drove me out of social inquiry and back to department 6 was |
| 19 | 89 needing to be back in the practice. That skill was not somthing that |
| 90 people on the outside understood. | |
| 91 | |
| 92 Lens on a conical base, watchmakers, with oil and iron filings, that | |
| 93 allowed you to manifest the data on digital mag tape. No disks on the | |
| 94 PDP-9. That concrete engagement with the computer affected my sense | |
| 95 of digitality. | |
| 96 | |
| 97 I wanted there to be types, not tokens. Set theory has no constants | |
| 98 (e.g. pi, e, i), functions, derivatives, intergrals are types in a | |
| 99 way. Wanted a KR that didn't depend on token identity (no eq tests in | |
| 100 the interpreter). | |
| 101 | |
| 102 LLP was an attempt to get the things, "kernel facts", of a KRL to be | |
| 103 types, not tokens (cf *car* and *cdr* vs. differentiation and | |
| 104 integration), the ontology of the computational. | |
| 105 | |
| 106 [HST mentions intergral signs and script deltas] Brian says | |
| 107 "syncategoramaticity | |
| 108 | |
| 109 Promote the eq tests into type tests (in the interpreter). | |
| 110 | |
| 111 "You want to arrange the metaphysics so that _everything_ falls out" | |
| 112 G. Nunberg of BCS | |
| 113 | |
| 114 My imagination was arrested by essentially foundational questions | |
| 115 about ... this stuff. Not interested in applications, AI as such, | |
| 116 etc. | |
| 117 | |
| 118 Still wanted to know what computing was., remains true up to what's in | |
| 119 this book, CR. | |
| 20 | 120 |
| 121 Something else that makes me feel uncomfortable about CS from the | |
| 122 outset: Conversation with MM: for you MM science is a form of worship, | |
| 123 whereas science is a form of theology for me (BCS), so I look to CS | |
| 124 not just to manifest the glory of God, but also to explain it. | |
| 125 | |
| 126 Science should do justice to that. | |
| 127 | |
| 128 Being shy around Peter and Butler, something else made me skittish, | |
| 129 something I needed in order to be at peace: a warmth / humility. Why | |
| 130 I was at peace with [John] Haugeland. [HST: JH wasn't a | |
| 131 programmer. BCS: Yes, but he programmed [in] Postscript. BCS: We | |
| 132 disagreed about typography]. | |
| 133 | |
| 134 Had a sense with JH that even though he knew a lot more philosophy | |
| 135 than I did, that we were looking together at relative | |
| 136 clauses/propositional claims, not that he was scrutinising | |
| 137 me. [ref. Andee Rubin] | |
| 138 | |
| 139 In the book I claim that deferential semantics is the heart of | |
| 140 intentionality. "There is more in heaven and on earth than is drempt | |
| 141 of in your philosophy". CS is fundamentally an intentional subject | |
| 142 matter, and that its intentional character has been hidden, and that | |
| 143 its use of semantics has usurped it for mechanistic purposes. | |
| 144 | |
| 145 All semantical vocabulary has been redefined in mechanistic terms: | |
| 146 "the semantics of X" == "what will happen if X is processed" | |
| 147 | |
| 148 Thereby all humility and deference is lost. | |
| 149 | |
| 150 [What about Phi vs. Psi, 'full [?] procedural consequence'] | |
| 151 | |
| 152 If you are interested in _real_ semantics, ... what's a poor boy to | |
| 153 do? | |
| 154 | |
| 24 | 155 Semantical issues are non-the-less still in the drivers seat---we are |
| 156 happy when (+ 2 3) yields 5 because of are awareness of them. | |
| 157 | |
| 158 Tracing the fate of those issues, and the vocabulary, are stories that | |
| 159 need told. | |
| 160 | |
| 161 "Things have changed and now we do things differently." What's | |
| 162 changed and how is it different? | |
| 20 | 163 |
| 24 | 164 Answer - the SDK would [be wanted to] track reference relations, not |
| 165 just implementation relations. But that's so complicated that it | |
| 166 couldn't possibly work. Suppose you're defining a type [theta], a | |
| 167 vector type accessible via theta and rho or x and y. Setting x and | |
| 168 rho contstrains. Compiler can ignore this, and just keep one or the | |
| 169 other, but the type system should 'know' the relationship of both, and | |
| 170 could therefore track a lot more about a program using vectors than it | |
| 171 does at the moment. | |
| 172 | |
| 173 [HST poses a story about astronomers and air traffic controllers?] | |
| 174 | |
| 175 Problem solving is not the motiviation, articulating what is the case | |
| 176 is, to say what's true. | |
| 177 | |
| 178 The effect of PSI is everything that happens, and the PHI relations | |
| 179 are what matters. All constraints, norms, requirements are expressed | |
| 180 in terms of PHI stuff. | |
| 181 | |
| 182 What does this book say that requirements engineering etc. haven't | |
| 183 already | |
| 184 | |
| 185 [HST what about program correctness, specification languages ? etc.] | |
| 186 | |
| 187 [Chapter 7?] | |
| 30 | 188 |
| 189 [HST should read the Press's thoughts about what needs to happen in | |
| 190 the preface] | |
| 191 | |
| 192 The gap between computer science and and programming practice is | |
| 193 well-known, embarrassing but rarely foregrounded. | |
| 194 | |
| 195 The vocabulary point is easy to state. | |
| 196 | |
| 197 Barwise foundered on different understandings of binding a variable. | |
| 198 | |
| 199 That the vocabulary issue is of huge importance needs "a clarion | |
| 200 statement". This is foundational work, so I can't define my terms. | |
| 201 | |
| 202 "I don't believe in definitions" | |
| 203 | |
| 204 "Look, this kind of paper that I write should be read more like novel | |
| 205 than like a manual. What things mean will gradually take shape" | |
| 206 | |
| 207 Engender confidence that what you're about to read will make sense by | |
| 208 the end/in due course/by-and-by. | |
| 209 | |
| 210 Vocabulary point is several points: | |
| 211 1) Points will be expressed using a vocabulary which is a term | |
| 212 of art for someone/drawn from someone's technical vocabulary, perhaps not you | |
| 213 2) Also, not necessarily the term of art you use for it; | |
| 214 Indeed it may be an ordinary word of English, so you may not | |
| 215 realise that a term of art has gone by. | |
| 216 3) There may not be terms in _any_ technical vocabulary that do what | |
| 217 I need here | |
| 218 | |
|
31
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
219 Taking on their meaning like a polaroid did, fill in gradually. |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
220 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
221 Consider 'effective': boundary (with non-..) is run roughshod over by |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
222 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
223 "Call this state 'zero'" naming with an abstract type a concrete token. |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
224 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
225 [Argh, not really right] |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
226 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
227 When classifying these things with labels that respect/front their |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
228 ontological character |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
229 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
230 If trying to teach this stuff, it would be useful to know that we had |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
231 14 weeks, and on day 1 you can say we'll get to that in week 3. |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
232 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
233 A book on the philosophy of computation, not by a philosopher, but by |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
234 a practioner who was driven tog spending their life trying to |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
235 understand what they practiced. |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
236 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
237 Come hither, one and all |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
238 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
239 That this is important needs to be said. And it's not about _me_, |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
240 that is, it's not important because I say it is. But that it's |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
241 important to you does mean that that claim deserves our attention. |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
242 |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
243 A delicagte dance -- why have I asked you [HST] to write this, not |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
244 someone else. Because you were there from the beginning. |
|
8d2fbd093ff3
later Sunday, end of 10 Avoca?
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
30
diff
changeset
|
245 |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
246 NB on p. 24 of CR 0.93: |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
247 |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
248 Inevitably, as noted in the Preface, it follows that all statements |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
249 made here are vulnerable to being differentially interpreted by |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
250 diverse audiences—even those to which the book is primarily |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
251 addressed. |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
252 |
| 18 | 253 ------------ |
| 254 Foundations of/Philosophy of Computation | |
| 255 | |
| 256 Lisp was 'broken', 2-Lisp was a flawed attempt to fix it, 3-Lisp takes | |
| 257 us in to new territory. | |
| 258 | |
| 259 Don't think you have to be a specialist to read this book. | |
| 260 | |
| 261 Effective vs non-Effective is actually new: at the book boundaries, | |
| 24 | 262 project onto the effective [? - it's not that everything is |
| 263 term-rewriting, it's more like ]. | |
| 17 | 264 |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
265 ------------------- |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
266 |
| 54 | 267 On first reading, before even finishing the introduction, I asked |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
268 Brian what "effective" meant, since it seemed very important, and |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
269 appeared to be being used in some technical sense, and it was not |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
270 immediately obvious to me how that related to my understanding(s) of |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
271 the word as used in ordinary language. |
| 17 | 272 |
| 18 | 273 |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
274 ------------ |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
275 |
| 47 | 276 Brian Cantwell Smith was born in Montreal, Canada, on 1 December 1949. |
| 277 Growing up first there and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he | |
| 278 remains a Canadian citizen. Multiple allegiances, sometimes | |
| 279 conflicting but mostly complementary, have characterized both his | |
| 280 personal and intellectual life ever since. | |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
281 |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
282 He started undergraduate study at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1967, |
|
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
283 where his interests included both physics and religion but left after |
| 54 | 284 only two years, travelling first to visit the Quaker community |
| 285 Argenta, British Columbia, and ending up in Ottawa where he started | |
| 286 work as a programmer at the Division of Physics laboratory of the | |
| 287 National Research Council of Canada, working on a project jointly | |
| 288 involving Fermilab in Chicago and the Lawrence Research Laboratory in | |
| 289 Berkeley. Working at all three sites on PDP 9 and PDP 15 | |
| 290 microcomputers, he "programmed like crazy" in machine language, | |
| 291 building systems for experimental control and data gathering. | |
| 292 | |
| 293 When the project ended Brian moved back to the family home in | |
| 294 Cambridge, and started taking classes at the Massachusetts Institute | |
| 295 of Technology (MIT), studying what was then known as Social Inquiry, | |
| 296 in particular the politics of high technology. But it quickly became | |
| 297 apparent that the understanding of computing that the social | |
| 47 | 298 scientists were critiquing was not the computing that he knew as a |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
299 programmer, what he later came to refer to as "computing in the wild". |
| 54 | 300 |
| 301 "What drove me out of Social Inquiry and back to [Computer Science] was | |
| 302 needing to be back in the practice. That skill was not somthing that | |
| 303 people on the outside understood." | |
| 304 | |
| 305 Brian had realised that in order to legitimately critique Computer | |
| 306 Science, he needed to get clear on what computing really is: "I had to | |
| 307 go into the heart of the beast, as it were". So he applied for the PhD | |
| 308 program in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and | |
| 309 began taking classes there. | |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
310 |
| 49 | 311 When the MIT administration discovered Brian didn't have an |
| 54 | 312 undergraduate degree, and so couldn't be registered for graduate |
| 313 study, Patrick Winston, the newly-appointed head of the Artificial | |
| 314 Intelligence Laboratory, gave Brian an informal oral exam in topics | |
| 315 from the MIT undergraduate computer science curriculum and awarded him | |
| 316 the credits necessary for a degree, clearing the way for his admission | |
| 317 to the graduate program. | |
|
46
fd066d630735
main done through start at MIT
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
31
diff
changeset
|
318 |
| 47 | 319 In 1977 Terry Winograd, who had left MIT to join the Computer Science |
| 49 | 320 Lab at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), invited Brian to |
| 48 | 321 spend the summer in the Understander Group there, where he joined in |
| 322 the development of KRL, a Knowledge Representation Language, which | |
| 47 | 323 came to embody some of the ideas that were developed in his Masters |
| 54 | 324 and PhD dissertations [refs]. |
| 48 | 325 |
| 49 | 326 These biographical details bring us to the brink of Brian's |
| 327 professional life, and to the time and place where we first met. The | |
| 328 point made above about multiple allegiances can be succinctly | |
| 329 summarized by a list of the positions he has occupied since the | |
| 330 completion of his PhD a few years later: | |
| 331 | |
| 54 | 332 * Member of the Scientific Staff, Xerox PARC |
| 49 | 333 * Director, Xerox PARC System Sciences Lab |
| 334 * Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University | |
| 335 * Founding member of Stanford University's Center for the Study of | |
| 336 Language and Information | |
| 337 * Founding member and first president, Computer Professionals for | |
| 338 Social Responsibility | |
| 54 | 339 * President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology |
| 340 * Professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Philosophy, | |
| 341 Indiana University | |
| 342 * Kimberly J. Jenkins University Distinguished Professor of | |
| 343 Philosophy and New Technologies, Duke University | |
| 344 * Dean of the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto | |
| 345 * Invited keynote speaker, _Défaire l'Occident_, Tarnac, France | |
| 49 | 346 * Professor of Information, Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and the |
| 347 History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of | |
| 348 Toronto | |
| 349 * Senior Fellow, Massey College, University of Toronto | |
| 350 * Reid Hoffman Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Human, | |
| 351 University of Toronto | |
| 352 | |
| 54 | 353 It was during Brian's years in Palo Alto at PARC, at first just for |
| 354 the summer and then full-time, that the foundations were laid of the | |
| 355 work that led to this book. | |
| 356 | |
| 357 "As an exercise in using KRL representational structures, Brian | |
| 358 Smith tried to describe the KRL data structures themselves in | |
| 359 KRL-0. A brief sketch was completed, and in doing it we were made | |
| 360 much more aware of the ways in which the language was inconsistent | |
| 361 and irregular. This initial sketch was the basis for much of the | |
| 362 development in KRL-1." [ref. Bobrow and Winograd 1978, "Experience | |
| 363 with KRL-O: One Cycle of a Knowledge Representation Language", in | |
| 364 _Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on | |
| 365 Artificial Intelligence_, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Burlington, | |
| 366 MA. Available online at | |
| 367 https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/77-1/Papers/032.pdf. | |
| 368 | |
| 369 <div class='Sketchy'> | |
| 370 | |
| 371 The aspect of the (never completed) KRL-1 meant that not only could | |
| 372 some parts of a system's data be _about_ other parts, but that | |
| 373 this would be more than just commentary. It would actually play a role | |
| 374 in the system's operation. For KRL-1, this was initially motivated by | |
| 375 a desire to address some aspects of ... such as negation and | |
| 376 [disjunction] as, if you will, knowledge about knowledge, rather than | |
| 377 as primitives built into the vocabulary of the representation language | |
| 378 itself. [elaborate this with reference to old-style Semantic Nets and | |
| 379 Bobrow and Norman ?] | |
| 49 | 380 |
| 54 | 381 Brian's development of this idea, which he termed 'reflection', is |
| 382 documented in the papers gathered in _Legacy_. But its title | |
| 383 notwithstanding, this book is _not_ a recapitulation of that work. | |
| 384 | |
| 385 There was an assumption at the heart of Brian's reflective | |
| 386 architectures, which was initially expected to occupy just one section | |
| 387 of one chapter of his PhD, as signalled in its preliminary outline | |
| 388 Table of Contents. But its resolution proved to be much more | |
| 389 problematic than expected, to the extent that its resolution has taken | |
| 390 a lifetime of work to be brought clearly into focus. | |
|
50
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
391 |
| 54 | 392 Looking back it seems that this difficulty acted rather like the grit |
| 393 in the oyster, eventually stimulating Brian's wholesale | |
| 394 reconsideration of the nature of computation, and Computer Science as | |
| 395 currently practiced, which _is_ what this book is about. | |
| 396 | |
| 397 You'll have to read the book to find out what that assumption was, and | |
| 398 the details of the critique of Computer Science that it led Brian to. | |
| 399 | |
| 400 It may seem rather presumptuous of me to suggest that this one person | |
| 401 has accurately diagnosed a problem that a whole field of enquiry has | |
| 402 missed, to the point where they've ended up altogether stuck, unable | |
| 403 to see what they've missed. The point of the list offered above of | |
| 404 Brian's achievements and the manifest breadth of his background it | |
| 405 testifies to will I hope give sufficient grounds for suggesting that | |
| 406 it is at least possible that this indeed just might be worth checking | |
| 407 out. | |
| 408 | |
| 409 </div> | |
|
50
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
410 |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
411 This is not an easy book to read, but it's a very important book, so |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
412 it's worth the effort. As Brian himself has said, it's written rather |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
413 like a detective story, in which the same underlying set of facts is |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
414 explored repeatedly, getting closer each time to a complete and |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
415 self-consistent picture. When I first read it, I said to Brian more |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
416 than once "But you keeping using [some term], and it's clear you mean |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
417 it in some important, technical, sense, but you haven't _defined_ |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
418 it". And he said, "be patient". |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
419 |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
420 If you care about computer science, either as a practioner, or a |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
421 theorist, or a concerned citizen, this book matters for you. It's |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
422 conclusions matter, even if parts of it are not meant for you. So |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
423 even if you find it hard, as a computer programmer, to see why you |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
424 should care if the theorists have got it wrong, be patient. If you're |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
425 a theorist, and you find Brian's critique at best irrelevant, and at |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
426 worst aggresive, obnoxius and founded in misunderstanding, be patient. |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
427 If you're a citizen, and the technical details are off-putting, be |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
428 patient. |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
429 |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
430 If you _are_ patient, and stay the course, When you get to the end you |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
431 will realise that you actually do understand the terminology now, and |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
432 that even though the work that remains is hugely challenging, and |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
433 perhaps only imperfectly grasped by Brian himself, much less the rest |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
434 of us, getting it done matters for all of us. As practioners and |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
435 theorists, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to make Brian's |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
436 vision a reality. As citizens, we need to cheer from the sidelines, |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
437 and keep asking questions. We owe him that much. |
|
bb0179426e3f
finale, but middle needs to be filled in
Henry Thompson <ht@markup.co.uk>
parents:
49
diff
changeset
|
438 [Haugeland?] |
| 55 | 439 |
| 440 Henry S. Thompson, Toronto and Edinburgh, November 2024. |