Posts Tagged ‘contexts’

About Programming Conversations and Conversations About Programming

Friday, July 25th, 2008

A major part of our activities have to do with “Not-Knowing”. We are constantly talking with others about “What we don’t Know”. We are speculating and are hoping that others know. Humans are wondering creatures.

The situation becomes more complicated when we meet people who are convinced they know but really don’t know. We believe them because they look like “People who know”. They are to be trusted. When we understand what they are talking about we spread the news and in due time many other people “know”.

The moment of Truth is when we Apply the Knowledge. Suddenly Everything Fails and we have to start all over again.

We are constantly talking with others about “What goes Wrong”. “What goes Wrong” is the major business of the Media Industry. What Goes Wrong is called News.

Many things that go wrong are transformed into a Reality Soap. Strange enough IT is not covered by the Reality-Soap-business.

I believe there are two reasons. The IT-business is the Most Incomprehensible Business in the World and we are accustomed to the fact “That Every Thing goes Wrong when you apply IT”.

The sad thing in IT is that a majority of the people in the IT-business don’t know what they are talking about. When a majority of Insiders is talking non-Sense the majority of the Outsiders believe they are talking Sense and are spreading the (non-)Sense to Others.

IT does not know that We (Humans) exist. IT is doing exactly what the Programmers are telling IT to do. A majority of the People in the IT-Business don’t know what Programmers are doing.

They believe they are doing something with a (programmer)language (Java, .Net) and the Internet. Some of them know important Hype terms like Web-Services and SOA (currently Agile & Blockchain!). All of them have never Applied what they are Talking about. Let’s call them Advisors.

Strangely enough the Advisors don’t understand that a Programmer is Talking to a Very Stupid Person called a Computer. The Computer is only able to do what he is Told to Do. The only thing the Advisors have to do is to Translate Human Language to Computer Language. This is a very simple Process if you know what You are Talking about.

Human Languages and Computer Languages contain Verbs and Nouns. Verbs are Processes and Nouns are States. The whole process starts with Defining What We are Talking About (The Universe of Discourse).

Many Humans are incapable to define What they Mean. They use the same Nouns in different Contexts. Some People use a Very Simple Vocabulary. Every Thing is a Thing and every Act is Doing Things.

A major part of the Activities of Advisors have to do with “not-Doing Things”. They are constantly talking with others about “What They Want to Do”. They are speculating and are hoping that IT will Solve all their Problems.

The Advisors believe that the Programmers will Understand what they are Telling and the Programmers believe that Advisors are telling them what To Do. Both of them don’t see that StoryTelling and Doing are from different Worlds. Advisors come from Venus and Programmers come from Mars.

The Users of IT Live on Earth.

Strange.

I feel I am Repeating the Same Story All The Time.

Repeating the Same Story all the Time is what many people are doing but they don’t know they are repeating the same story because they use Different Words to tell the Same Story or the Same Words to tell a Different Story.

What is the problem?

The Computer needs Logic and a major part of our Conversations are not Logical at all. We are trying to find “the Logic Behind” the Conversation.

Many people are not trained to find the “Logic behind Conversations“. They believe the World is an Endless Circular Conversation.

I don’t think Believe is the Right Term. I mean they are not Aware of the Fact that they are Talking all the Time without being Aware that they are Talking. They are Programmed Conversation Machines or Machines that are producing Words that give others the Impression that they Mean something. Perhaps Words are not ment to mean something. They are just Sounds.

Many people are incapable to Apply Logical Reasoning. They don’t have the talent or are not trained in School to Apply Logic. Logic is not trained at School anymore. In “the old times” Logic was the main component of the Curriculum of the “Latin School”. At that time IT (Logic) was part of Rhetorics.

When you are Applying Logical Reasoning you are a Craftsman. When a Craftsman makes a Mistake he is really in Trouble. His Doings operate in Reality.

The Doings of an Advisor are Imaginary. When an Advisor makes a Mistake he asks another Advisor to Advice. In the End Many Advisors are Advising Many Advisors. This creates Confusion. Advisors Like Confusion. Confusion means Work and Work means Income. With “mean” I don’t mean that Work is “the same as” Confusion. I am using a Rhetoric Concept called Analogy. For some people Work becomes highly Confusing when IT (not it) is used.

When the Advisors have created a lot of Confusion the Programmers start to find the Logic behind the Confusion. When they believe they have found the Logic they create an Infrastructure to Support Networks of Confused Advisors.

This Infrastructure uses different Terms for the Same Concept to make sure that the Advisors are able To Apply What They are Talking About. This new Infrastructure supports Endless Circular Conversations and it Generates a High State of Confusion. The high state of Confusion generates lots of Work (and Income) for Advisors, Programmers AND Users.

The Advisors are Happy because they can go on with their Circular Dialogues, the Programmers are Happy because the Advisors are Happy and the Users are Happy because they have something To Do.

Perhaps Work “is a” “State” of “Being Confused“.

If we could Eliminate all the Advisors and let the Craftsman talk to the Craftsman we would Avoid a Lot of Problems.

If we would Stop Programming What is not Programmable we would Avoid even More Problems.

If we would Stop Innovating IT we could Finally start to Use IT.

If we could Program Ourselves we would not need a Computer at All.

Watch Out.

This is an Advice.

LINKS

About Rhetorics

How to Analyze a Discourse

About the relationship between Creativity and Confusion

How Software Packages generate Confusion

Why Scientists are Really Artists and Why Many of Them are Creating Terrible Artifacts

Why Logic is not Logical at all

How the Programmer stopped the Dialogue

About Loops in Programs

About Software Layers

Why all Organisms are Moving Memories

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Rodney Cotterill explains a lot about the structure of very simple bacteria. What he shows is that even bacteria have Emotions.

To agree with this we have to agree on a definition of the Emotions. Agreeing about “What an Emotion is” is one of the most complex discussions in Psychology. The discussion is so complex that there is really no discussion possible.

The simplest way to solve this discussion is to start with the meaning of the word Emotion. Emotion simply means “Movement“.

So an Emotion could be described as “Something that moves us” or “Something that shows to other People that we are Moved“.

We are moved by an Event, Something that Happens. Something that “Makes a Difference“.

An Event is a Change in our Environment or Context. This Context could be our Internal Environment (our Body, Pain) or our External Environment.

When you are a bacterium you are moving in an environment that contains Food. You need Food to produce Energy. The environment is not homogeneous. The concentration of food is different in the Space the bacterium is exploring. It even contains deadly food, Poison.

A bacterium like Escherichia coli  procures information by probing its surroundings, through the propulsion provided by its flagellum. In effect, this creature integrates incoming chemical signals during a few-second period of its travels, and adjusts its direction of advance accordingly. The integration is achieved through temporary chemical modifications to molecules located in the bounding membrane, which transfer nutrients to the cytoplasm, and also through changes to certain other molecules in the interior of the cell. Such integration is essentially a short-term memory mechanism”.

The bacterium is probing his environment. When he finds “food” he acquires “energy” and his mover, the flagellum, reacts. The process of intake and movement is a cycle.

The Cycle takes time (a few seconds, a delay, a Rhythm) and acts as “a short term memory“.  Memory is not stored in the body of the bacterium. The Memory of the bacterium is his Cycle.

When the bacterium finds Food he circles around. He is attracted to the Center. When he finds Poison, he moves away. When he moves away his flagellum rotates anticlockwise.  When he is attracted his flagellum moves with the clock. The bacterium shows spiraling behaviour.

The Bacterium LOVES Food and he HATES Poison. In between he is EXITED (Chaotic). He starts to Probe, to Explore, his Environment to find Food (Love) again.

The Emotional State of the Bacterium is a 100% correlated to the State of the Bacterium itself.

The Bacterium Is His Emotions.

When the Bacterium could be AWARE of all his INTERNAL states he would need many words to explain his emotions to us.

When we could show the bacteria that his states are “just” related to a few EXTERNAL states that are related to “the amount of Food in his environment” he could reduce THE AMOUNT OF WORDS to DESCRIBE his emotions to a few.

Cotterill shows that in time many new features (mostly Sensors) are added to the Organisms that followed the Bacterium in the process of Evolution but the basic structure of the bacterium stays in place.

I cite:

The ultimate evolutionary product was the brain itself, though there is not universal agreement as to why this structure actually developed. One obvious view is that it served to gather the sensory organs and their interneurons into a single unit, an alternative idea being that its precursor emerged at a primitive stage, as a device for coordinating the two sides of the body“.

The peripheral reflexes can act independently of the brain, but they can also be coordinated and sequenced by it. The main point to be grasped here is that the brain’s primary purpose lies in the need for inhibiting peripheral reflexes, when particularly sophisticated sequences of muscular movements have to be executed“.

The Brain is not Thinking. It is inhibiting Thinking.

We think independent of the Brain.

The Brain is INHIBITING our thinking when we want to override the Action Patterns that are stored in our Bodily Cycle.

We want to override our Experience when something happens and the Event is not related to our Goals.

Goals are related to Expectations and Expectations are something we, Mammals, are able to “calculate“.

We, the Mammals,  are able to create an Image of the Future. By the process of Abstraction we are able to generate “schema” or “actions patterns” that are imaginary.

When our Goals are violated we are just like the primivitive organisms able to permit the current movement, switch to  another, or stop altogether.

Just like them we have a choice but our choices are not only applicable to the real world.  We are able to switch between the real world and other worlds. The underlying system is comparable it just works on another level.

We, the organisms, are Moving Memories that ARE our Emotions. We are all looking for Love (Energy) and when we are without Love we start to Probe to find it again.

LINKS

Why an Event is not a Collision

About Deleuze and Events

About Deleuze and Ecology

About The Illusion of Collaboration

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

I want to focus on the “Programmer in You”. With the “Programmer in You” I mean the capability of the human being to structure, to program his life and his environment.

Usually we call this ability Thinking. I hope you agree that a human being has more capabilities like Feeling, Imagining, Sensing and Consciousness. We imagine we can program them into a machine.

I want to play in a very small domain. We call this domain a context, an environment or an ecology. To make it very simple we imagine only two human beings.

To evolve the context they have the possibility to cooperate, to dominate the other or the work alone. This is also happening in large contexts.

Companies have a choice to compete, to cooperate or to work alone. Personally I don’t think the last possibility is realistic in the current situation. To make things more simple we assume that cooperation is the best way to act.

The question I want to raise is “Is it possible to cooperate by using the ability “Thinking”? The answer is simply no. We need the other faculties also.

We have to sense the environment, be creative when something happens we don’t expect and we have to evaluate possible actions. Emotions evaluate and expectations are related to thinking about the future.

When we only have the faculty of a Programmer the only thing we can do is to program (think about) senses, emotions and action. This is a very important insight.

When we are programming we are programming everything but what we program is not what exists in reality. Programmed senses are not comparable to our real senses. They are a subset, a model of reality and a computer is a beautifull tool to implement a model and nothing more.

So if we program Collaboration we are creating something very special. We are creating a thought (the effect of thinking). We are creating the Illusion of Collaboration.

This does not mean that the Illusion of Collaboration is blocking Collaboration. To collaborate in real life we have to use our other faculties also.