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Sunday, December 15, 2002 |
Read this in the context of never-retired systems with layer upon layer of cruft and new interfaces a la the systems from Neuromancer... Embrace and extend, indeed.
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Reuse vs. Broad Applicability.. Jeff Schneider blogged his thoughts on Reusability Through Web Services. It reminded me of earlier thoughts from Jason Bloomberg at ZapThink that I reviewed in August.
Over the half-century history of software development, there’s been a constant push for reusable code. On the face of it, the merits of reusable code seem obvious. Software development is expensive, and if one’s investment can be re-used, one should receive a better return on that investment.
Re-use implies that source code will be copied and pasted into subsequent applications, or that class or code libraries will be shared by the software components within a system. But these are tightly coupled concepts and assume (at the very least) that subsequent applications will be developed using the same programming languages or operating environments.
In the loosely coupled world of web services, there’s less of a need to port or copy source code or libraries when creating new applications. Instead, the code can be left to execute where it is, and its functionality offered as a web service to other applications and web services. In such a world, it makes sense to design web services for broad applicability (i.e., to be as useful as possible to the broadest set of applications) rather than to be reusable in the traditional sense. The code need not be portable, but its interface must be universal. [Web Services Strategies]
11:32:37 PM 
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SOA Links.. Jeff Schneider has compiled a list of papers on service-oriented architectures. Lots of other good stuff on his SOE (The Service Oriented Enterprise) weblog. I need to go through Jeff's archives looking for goodies! [Web Services Strategies]
11:18:47 PM
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The Effect of Weblogging is Deep and Complex. Summary: Weblogging is altering the human computer interface. There is no simple way to conceive of the changes that are taking place. See the following from Abbe Normal here[http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?_AbbeNormal/001036182141.46.html] In his entry he responds to one single-minded interpretation of weblogging with
--here's the tangent the title [Microcontent] sends me to (the first part lifted from wiki weblog PIM): It's not just microcontent, because it can be large. It's not just peer to peer, because it's also about the individual's interface to the computer. It's not just personal publishing, because it's also about collaboration. It's not just the living web, because it doesn't have to be updated frequently. It helps to have the organizing focus that some of these terms can provide. In the end, i believe that there's no simple definition to what so many (ChandLer, TheHumaneEnvironment, SpaCes, ZigZag, UserLand, ZoPe, TinderBox, etc. please suggest more!) are after, because we are in the process of redefining the relationship between humans and computers. But it's different now, because there's no blank slate to work with -- many people already have a relationship with computers, so as the metaphor goes we're trying to maintain and upgrade the 747 while it's flying. And it still has to work for people new to computers -- since the majority of people on the planet have almost certainly never used one. Probably we'll all look back in ten years and laugh about how we used computers today. (rather than crying about it like we do now :-) [Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog]
11:12:39 PM
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Improved Weblogging: Seeds and Notes.
Summary: In this entry I argue that a different position in a process of research/inquiry (thought development?) probably requires a different treatment in the weblogging, klogging process. I discuss a simple model of the thinking process and how each piece of the model might be treated differently by the weblogger. Bottom line is that Radio can be used to support such differentiation. See below for details.
Model of Thinking/ Communicating Process: Let's distinguish four items, each from the other
a) the process of developing a set of thoughts from
b)communicating about that process from
c) "having" or "owning" the thought/set of thoughts (you now believe you understand it/them) from
d) communicating your the thought/set of thoughts to someone who, you feel, may not or does not have them.
In this model of the development of thinking I have differentiated what one can communicate to oneself about an a new issue/thought (e.g., a note or sketch which is meant to act as a tag or stimulus to enable recall of pieces of understanding that don't yet hold together) but not to others [it's not yet coherent ; it's practically averbal... words have interior meaning but haven't yet been socialized for understanding by others] and what one can communicate about an owned thought. The owned thought is readily socialized (i.e, socially communicable) or has actually been communicated in a social context before.
I have also differentiated the process of communicating the owned thoughts from communicating thoughts-in-development. In the former case I'm referring to the capacity to deliver the idea to a an audience of other people. I break the later in two: first, introspective communication which might be useful to oneself but which is unlikely to communicate with others [the notes and pictures I mentioned above] and , second, a specialized means of communication which draws others into ideas as you develop them.
Journals kept by authors, scientists, researchers, might take either form and serve an important function. The [OE]notes and pictures[base '] stage might occur first and the thought process explanation might be second -- articulate but still not primarily focused on the sharing of the ideas for a broad and diverse public. (For me, the communication and thinking processes are not distinct. As I work to socialize what I have come to understand I come to understand it more. Trying to view my idea as another might I find cracks between ideas that I had just believed were one; thus I am moved to provide the bridge between the two pieces. Examining the [OE]bridge[base '], itself , after construction, might have me discovering relations to ideas I already own and/or it might have me finding gaps that require further development in my understanding before I can fill them).
Developing and communicating a set of ideas in general: How about all of that in a weblog?
I will answer my question by telling you what I am starting to do. On top of my general categories (Ecology, Edsped, Evaluation, Philosophy, and Weblogging) I[base ']ve added Notes and Seeds. The first five categories are meant to provide what I see to be socialized or accessible presentations of ideas I[base ']ve worked on.These entries are not done in any final sense. Entries in these categories have been constructed for broader reading because I felt ready to do so . By that means I invite other readings, criticisms and suggestions.
The last two categories, Notes and Seeds, are thoughts in earlier stages of development. The notes category is managed by radio and is accessible by me but is not published online. My belief is that first, the notes entries are by-and-large useless for social communication, even amongst people already schooled in my five categories of development. Thus I don[base ']t publish them. I intend to work on the notes entries to get them ready for publication. But, they aren[base ']t there yet.
Entries in the Seeds are articulate enough to be accessible to interested fellow knowledge-makers. They are published. The idea is that arguments and thoughts are communicated well enough to be criticized, extended, praised or dissected. Such responses can only be helpful as I try to understand a little bit more of material in my five categories. I will work on a number of ways to communicate the special status of those entries. [base "]Get the word out[per thou] and I might have the help of those interested in the development of ideas (It[base ']s not a one-sided exchange, for I would offer the same in return; also working on my ideas may help another km[base ']er find some bricks with which to build her/his own thoughts).
Some related links:
to my own past entries working the same territory(http://radio.weblogs.com/0106698/outlines/topics/topicsk.html#knowledge-making),
linking to related work of others - Matt Mower (http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/topics/topicsB.html#blogging), Seb Paquet (http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/) and the group-forming group (http://www.aquameta.com/gf). [Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog]
11:11:03 PM
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Learning is a Recursive, Self-Reflexive System Process (Individual Level).
Summary: I'd like to tie together weblogging with my my own world view (individual ontology), relate my becoming to the developing ontology of some system of which I'm a part. This is a tall order... but I needed to signal this aspiration of mine in order to remind me that I'm headed there and to signal potential supporters, collaborators, and skeptics alike that I'm trying to get there. I've been reviewing and reading my treasury of developmental psychology and systems thinkers. Also developing a deeper understanding of Dewey's approach to logic (thanks Lyn). I've put several useful references at the bottom of this entry. Interestingly systems thinkers, developmental psychologists and Dewey concur (though using somewhat different vocabulary) that learning occurs because of disequilibrium. Piaget, for example, mentions assimilation and accommodation as constant tidal process which influence individual becoming. One process tends to map one's expectations onto the environment until the environment no longer does 'the right thing'...even if corrected (via what some call 'negative feedback'). This mapping onto the environment is called assimilation. The disequilibrium phase.. when a series of corrections fail to get the environment to behave fail to do so .. is followed at some point by a form of capitulation... the learning system then opens up to the environment and tries out new sets of expectations and accompanying actions. These tryouts occur successively until the environmental response once again meets [a different, more sophisticated, generally] expectation. This trying out of successive expectation/action combinations is called accommodation. However, you cant experience what appears to be the same situation in the same way after your expectation-action relationship has changed. (Whether your change took place next at a particular rock on a familiar creek or in your assigned chair at the kitchen table. It may look the same in a digital picture, but in terms of your worldview it's different.).One sees differently what to do, what to look for; and, on the whole (barring system degeneration, illness etc) the new way of thinking is more sophisticated and more comprehensive. Successive assimilation / accommodations cycles take the individual towards ever more sophisticated more comprehensive ways of thinking. The price that is paid for this evolution is that there is no rest. The new code is only satisfying, effective, for a while. Then new variations in environmental responses, unanticipated, unplanned, once again throw the learner off and s/he must once again move from assimilation to accommodation and back again. Staying there for a while and then repeating the cycle again with a yet more sophisticated incarnation of situational code the product. It's a constant , recurring, process, in the general sense, but its products vary. The new product becomes the basis for the new assimilative behavior only to be evolved once again at the next disiquilibrium. It's a recursive, self-reflexive process. And that is what I trust even my least weblogging efforts will represent as I use them to share , document and direct my own efforts to apply this technology to my own efforts to understand. If I were to use Matt Mower's live topics to pull those of my weblogs that related to any given topic (knowledge-making, for example) I would see, I hope, a progressive enhancement of sophistication and of comprehensiveness over time. An organized synthesis of my most recent entries on the topic would be my personal knowledge-making-related ontology. The process (ie inquiry ala Dewey just below) would be complete when the most recent compilation was 'a unified whole', self-consistent.
As Dewey (as quoted by Burke,1994, p22) said:
Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole,
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Next level up would be to construct, by analogy and by application of some systems thinking, a parallel process for a group inquiry and group ontology. Tom Burke, 1994,Dewey's New Logic: A Reply to Russell, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. J.H. Flavell,1968, The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget, Toronto: Van Nostrand. (System, Structure, and Experience : Toward a Scientific Theory of Mind (Current Topics of Contemporary Thought, Vol 1), by Ervin Laszlo. Hardcover (June 1969)) [Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog]
11:10:42 PM
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© Copyright 2003 Erick Herring.
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