Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends
How new technologies are modifying our way of life


vendredi 20 décembre 2002
 

Jaron Lanier is mostly known for being the guy behind the expression "virtual reality." For its special issue "Big [and Not So Big] Ideas For 2003," CIO Magazine talked with him about a new concept -- at least for me -- phenotropics.

"The thing I'm interested in now is a high-risk, speculative, fundamental new approach to computer science. I call it phenotropics," says the 42-year-old Lanier. By pheno, he means the physical appearance of something, and by tropics, he means interaction. Lanier's idea is to create a new way to tie two pieces of software together. He theorizes that two software objects should contact each other "like two objects in nature," instead of through specific modules or predetermined points of contact.
Lanier believes that phenotropics would allow for the development of bigger systems, perhaps a million times larger than the ones we can build today, because there would be no need to build connections between them.

Jaron Lanier also talks about software diversity to enhance security.

"If we draw rough metaphors to natural viruses, the way they survive is through diversity," he says. An antiviral agent that kills one virus will not kill another. By extension, an attack on one network would not be effective on another running a different species of software. But phenotropics would allow profoundly different systems to work together, thereby providing natural protection through diversity. "There is no security in monolithic networks," says Lanier.

For more details, please read the full article. And buy yourself a copy of CIO Magazine.

Source: Lafe Low, CIO Magazine, January 1, 2003 Issue


1:28:19 PM  Permalink  Comments []  Trackback []


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. © Copyright 2004 Roland Piquepaille.
Last update: 01/11/2004; 11:40:53.

December 2002
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31        
Nov   Jan



Search this blog for

Courtesy of PicoSearch


Personal Links



Other Links

Ars Technica
BoingBoing
Daily Rotation News
Geek.com
Gizmodo
Microdoc News
Nanodot
Slashdot
Smart Mobs
Techdirt
Technorati


People

Dave Barry
Paul Boutin
Dan Bricklin
Dan Gillmor
Mitch Kapor
Lawrence Lessig
Jenny Levine
Karlin Lillington
Jean-Luc Raymond
Ray Ozzie
John Robb
Jean-Yves Stervinou
Dolores Tam
Dylan Tweney
Jon Udell
Dave Winer
Amy Wohl


Drop me a note via Radio
Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.

E-mail me directly at
pique@noos.fr

Subscribe to this weblog
Subscribe to "Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends" in Radio UserLand.

XML Version of this page
Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Technorati Profile

Listed on BlogShares