Computer Science

Turing Award Winner Peter Naur Disses…Everyone?

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The ACM’s A.M. Turing Award is the Computer Sicence equivalent of the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal in Mathematics. In 2005, the winner was Peter Naur “For fundamental contributions to programming language design and the definition of Algol 60, to compiler design, and to the art and practice of computer programming.” Naur’s essay “Programming as Theory Building” is one of my personal favourites (try using it as ammunition any time some client starts blathering on about how they’re going to build a “software factory” to build IT Systems just like they build cars—with programmers as completely interchangeable, disposable parts!)

But what’s weird is the Turing Lecture he gave, called “Computing Versus Human Thinking”. In it, he manages to trash Alan Turing, philosophy in general, all of psychology (especially cognitive psychology), and to accuse the ACM (among others) of censorship for declining to publish his papers on his theories of mental life. The lecture itself is a little hard to get a read on. He claims to have created a whole new model for human thinking, based almost entirely on the psychological works of William James (1890) and the neurological work of Charles Sherrington (1906). Everything studied or written since then he implies is hopelessly defective.

Hmmm…. Well, I suppose he could be right. Geniuses often see what others don’t. But I can’t help but be reminded of Stephen Wolfram’s “New Kind of Science”, in which he claimed that every scientist and mathematician who ever lived before him was completely blind and wrong and he alone of all humanity was brilliant enough to discover the truth of the universe. Ummm… ok. Possible, but not too plausible, doncha think?

Update: BTW, you can read the gory details of Naur’s Synapse-State Theory of Mental Life (pdf) and judge it for yourself.

Books, Tools

ThinkingRock and Managing Overload

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I used to think it was just me. That there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t get organized, couldn’t escape the constant feeling of being overwhelmed and, well, doomed by all the undone “stuff” lurking in the corners of my mind. It didn’t help that my mother was one of the most organized people on earth, but I apparently didn’t inherit even one of the relevant genes.

Anyway, now that I’m older and wiser I know it’s not just me. Most people suffer—to one extent or another—from “amorphous globs of stuff” cluttering up their head and not getting done. Thanks to the popularity of the blog 43Folders, I’ve discovered the joys of a book (and “system”) called Getting Things Done by David Allen. (“GTD” for short.)

Now, normally, I loathe this sort of “increase your productivity!” book. Seriously, they almost always just make me feel even more hopeless than I did before! Another system to learn, struggle with, and then fail at implementing. Shoot me now…

But this one feels different to me. I actually feel less stressed after reading only about 40 pages! My home office desk is completely clear. So’s my dining-room table and my kitchen counter-tops (where all the paper I have no idea what to do with just accumulates forever.)

I’m just a newbie and not about to get all preachy about it or anything. If you really want to find out about GTD, check out what all the folks over at 43Folders have to say for starters.

What I did really want to say was “Thank you!” to the wonderful people at ThinkingRock for their superb GTD software. It’s free, it works on any platform, and it’s saving my life.

Blogging

Anonymous Cowards

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I really dislike Anonymous comments on my blog. I haven’t figured out how to get WordPress to disallow them automagically, since I don’t really want to require an email address, either. Hmmm…. For now, comment moderation is turned on, and if you don’t give a name and an URL OR a name and an email, I’ll probably decline the comment unless it’s truly inspired. While porting over (painfully, by hand) the posts and comments from my Blogger site, I notice that “Anonymous” just seems like an excuse for people to be rude. I’m not down with that.

If you’re going to flame me out, go ahead, I can take it. But have the courage to identify yourself. After all, I had the courage to identify myself with what I wrote, so it’s only fair. Some of the “Anonymous” comments to earlier blog posts aren’t going to get ported over. If you were the writer, you’re welcome to re-submit the comment, but have some backbone and own it this time.

Blogging

Goodbye Blogger

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I just couldn’t stand the bugginess and lack of features and support anymore, so I took the plunge and moved to WordPress. I have not transferred all of the posts from the old site yet, since there’s no automatic way to do that (that’ll teach me to be tempted by “move to the new sytem!” prompts again.) I’ll migrate them a few at a time over the next couple of weeks (there’s 5+ years worth!), but in the meantime links to old posts will work because I’m hosting all of this myself. If you can’t find some particular article you’re looking for, try Googling it. The returned link(s) should work indefinitely.

SOA

The Long Tail of Web Services

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Google is a “global technology leader”, the tech company to watch in the 21st century; and Amazon is an online retailer—so 1999. Right?

A casual perusal of the blogosphere and IT news sites would seem to suggest such a consensus. Amazon gets occassional kudos for its web services initiatives like the Simple Queue Service (SQS), the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Alexa Web Services, and it’s Simple Storage Service (S3)—though many wonder why they’re spending so much money on something apparently not core to their business (something like $2 billion so far, according to a CNET News article).

But when people think of strategic technology leadership and innovation, they generally think Google, not Amazon. There’s no shortage of hype about Google becoming “the web platform that powers much of what people do online”, the “Microsoft-killer” with its very own OS (this one is particularly absurd), and “the locked-in platform on which web applications and services are all built.” These are only a few selected examples of which there are countless others on any given day.

Now there’s no denying that Google has a lot of smart employees and a lot of cool technology. However, little of that truly innovative technology does anyone but Google any good. For example: the Google File System is by all accounts way cool, but noone outside Google is ever likely to benefit from it. And their expertise in such hardcore tech neither directly generates any revenue, nor builds any profitable relationships with users, advertisers, or partners. An MIT Technology Review article, What’s Next For Google quotes a couple of employees claiming: “Google’s leaders believe that the company’s expertise in infrastructure—knowing how to build and operate those 250,000 servers—constitutes a competitive advantage more important than APIs or standards.” Uh oh…

Amazon, on the other hand, has apparently made a commitment to turn their technical know-how and serious real-world experience into a profit centre. Since it costs so much money to develop the kind of high-performance, highly-distributed, fine-grained Service Oriented Architecture for their own operations, it makes sense to monetize it. As this ACM Queue interview with Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels (who also maintains the personal blog All Things Distributed) makes clear, these people know as much as anyone about how to make composite web services actually work on a massive scale. And they realize that this is a strategic asset with real growth potential. As Vogels says: “I think our biggest success has been that Amazon has become a platform that other businesses can benefit from.” And: “We see Amazon.com as part of the larger Internet ecosystem, and we want to stimulate innovation wherever possible.”

Contrast this view with the recent kerfluffle over Google’s abandonment of its SOAP-based search API. The issue here has nothing to do with the technical supremacy of AJAX over SOAP, and everything to do with the fact that—despite its self-description as a “global technology leader”—Google makes 99% of its revenues from advertising (did you know they own a radio advertising subsidiary?) With such a business model, only eyeballs matter. Machines and software processes cannot view ads, cannot be influenced by branding messages, and do not make purchasing decisions. For Google to become the sort of web services platform so many people seem to expect, they’d have to radically change their business model. As it is, there’s absolutely no advantage to Google doing anything other than forcing more and more human eyeballs to view more and more ads. Having worked in advertising for several years (I’m in recovery now, thanks!), I know as well as most that doing so requires making decisions that are directly counter to the interests, needs and wishes of your customers and users (no matter how much account directors may protest that consumers actually want what’s being shoved down their throats.)

So, to end this long-ish rant, don’t look to Google to provide any real technology leadership anytime soon (cutesy AJAX email interfaces really aren’t going to change the world—sorry.) Instead, consider what you might call “The Long Tail of Web Services”: “Ultimately, Amazon wants to build up a massive partner network of tens of thousands of third-party outfits, ranging from corporations to developers and even hobbyists. ‘I’ve always thought that high-volume, low-margin businesses are more defensible,’ Bezos said.”

Coming soon: a tutorial on running a network of JXTA super-peers on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud.

Update: there’s a new, related post, here.

Fun

Blog-Tag

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My friend and colleague Mark Petrovic pulled me into this blog-tag game, apparently started by Jeff Pulver. It’s a sort of parlour game where you tell five things most people don’t know about you and then tag more people to do the same. So here goes: five things most people don’t know about me:

  • I used to be a professional Shiatsu therapist. I also studied Traditional Chinese Medicine seriously before realizing I didn’t have what it took to be a doctor.
  • I have a Bachelor of Mathematics degree, but I can’t calculate the tip on a restaurant bill.
  • I’m a Zen Buddhist (well, more like a “lapsed” Zen Buddhist, these days).
  • I love Space Opera. Some of my favourite authors are Iain M. Banks, Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds, Neal Asher, and of course: Isaac Asimov. I even love cheesy TV space operas: Star Trek (all of them), Stargate (both of them), Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica (the new one–I just couldn’t take Lorne Greene seriously in anything.)
  • My pet topic is the history and philosophy of science, about which I’d really, really like to write a book one day.

Ok, now I need to “tag” some more people. Hmm… how about Leigh Himel, Mathew Ingram, Jason Theodor, and Jason Ramsay-Brown

Canada, Politics

Anyone but Ignatieff!

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Well, with the Liberal leadership vote less than 24 hours away, no one seems to know—or really care—who’s going to win… as long as it isn’t Michael Ignatieff! Tim, over at Peace, order, and good government, eh? has a pull-no-punches post on exactly why “I hate Michael Ignatieff”. Then there’s always Rick Mercer’s take: “Condescending and arrogant… he’s the whole package!” Unfortunately with convention politics being what they are, even the fact that anyone who’s lived in this country for any part of the last 30 years can’t stand the man doesn’t necessarily mean he won’t win! Ooooh…the suspense!

Update: CBC convention blogger Robert Sheppard sums it up well:

In the end it came down to the battle of the academics. The one who stayed home and slugged it out in the trenches of the Liberal party, defending federalism at its most unpopular in his home province, won.
The one who went abroad and earned himself an enviable reputation in the eyes of the world lost.
It was almost as simple as that except that Stephane Dion also triumphed by beating one of the most sophisticated political machines the Liberal party could offer. And, somehow, he seemed to do it in a way that brought everyone together.

oponia, Women in Technology

Women Taking Risks

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Apparently my oponia co-founder Leigh Himel and I have been added to a list of female “Risk Takers” by marketing blog HorsePigCow. I’m not sure whether our company qualifies as Web 2.0, strictly speaking, but I’m sure many people will see it that way. It certainly builds on those trends. Anyway, it’s nice to see so many women getting involved in tech entrepreneurship these days (that list is surprisingly long and getting longer by the day!) Thanks to Tamera for the recommend…

Toys

Tesla Hits the Road

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Now this is a car a girl could fall in love with: The Tesla Roadster—100% electric.

Image of Tesla Roadster

I don’t expect you’ll be able to get one in this country any time soon, but… you never know. It’s something infintely nicer to strive for than a tacky Rolex.

Philosophy

“Language is made not to be believed…”

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…but to be obeyed.” Whenever I find myself at a loss for words, one of my favourite French philosophers turns up with just the right ones. Allow me to share a couple of my favourite quotes. First, Deleuze & Guattari continue:

We see this in police or government announcements, which often have little plausbibiliy or truthfulness, but say very clearly what should be observed and retained. The indifference to any kind of credibility exhibited by these announcements often verges on provocation. This is proof that the issue lies elsewehere. [A Thousand Plateaus]

And then there’s Michel Foucault on what he described as “the grotesque” or “the Ubu-esque”:

the fact that, by virtue of their status, a discourse or an individual can have effects of power that their intrinsic qualities should disqualify them from having. […] Political power, at least in some societies, and anyway in our society, can give itself, and has actually given itself, the possibility of conveying its effects and, even more, of finding their source, in a place that is manifestly, explicitly, and readily discredited as odious, despicable, or ridiculous.[“Abnormal”]

Wow. Would Foucault make a great guest on the Daily Show right now, or what?

[Ok, so he’s long-winded and dead, but still…]

Posts and pointers on software, art, math, noise, and other obsessions…