Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Numerous
computer researchers and practitioners believe we've come to a wood where two
roads diverge: One road calls for us to continue as we have writing
unreliable software using inappropriate languages, and debilitating
methodologies under the rickety mathematical and engineering metaphors we
developed in the 1960s or earlier, and the other begs us to find new
metaphors and ways of approaching software to make system building safe,
easier, and with respect for our humanity.
IBM's
Autonomic Computing, MIT's Amorphous Computing, the Feyerabend Project, the Biological Framings
Workshop-all these are looking beyond current theories in ways reminiscent of
Kuhn's paradigm shifts and Feyerabend's counterinduction.
In this talk, Gabriel looks at the problems and proposed directions for the
way less traveled: biology, physics, and complexity science, for example.
I shall be telling this with
a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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