[exprla-devel] Re: [XPL] - WorldOS - framework for distributed computing

[reid_spencer <ras...@re...>]

--- In xpl-dev@y..., cagle@o... wrote:
Jonathan,

I have had many of the same concerns that you share here concerning 
the fact that we are building a very potent, open data environment in 
which a significant amount of the processing takes place with code 
that was never directly written by human hands. When you get right 
down to it, XML has some extremely scary and worrisome implications 
in a number of different areas, because what we're doing is system 
level programming on a global scale. The B2B interactions make up a 
fairly small (and largely unintelligent) part of the whole -- they 
are in many ways least likely to see the neural implications of what 
we're designing.  I see XML as laying waste to vast sectors of our 
existing society without much to replace it -- accounting, 
management, government, manufacturing, programming (most programming 
is not in the gee whiz sector, though it seems that way -- it's in 
the aforementioned fields). I see an increasing number of inventions 
and discoveries coming from human/machine interaction -- by making 
everything open data the mechanisms for performing contextual 
analysis on the space improve immensely -- but this comes at a time 
when we are beginning to question the advancement of knowledge solely 
for the sake of knowledge (cf., Bill Joy).

The one thing that bothers me so much about XML and its impact on the 
web is that we are reaching a point where the ethical dimensions of 
what we are doing are beginning to become manifest. Privacy is 
already a casualty, cultural cohesiveness is moving in that 
direction. Perhaps we are indeed in the process of waking up Gaea, 
but is a meta-intelligence necessarily a good thing? Even on a less 
metaphysical layer, have we made the changes in our own society to 
accomodate this thing we are unleashing.  My seven year old daughter 
already knows how to type, read at a sixth grade level, do basic 
algebra and surf the net like a pro. Yet I don't think that our 
educational system taught her this; these were emergent behaviors as 
those synapses adopted to the environment around her. What will 
happen with all of these children who are not really being prepared 
for a world that is radically different from anything that you and I 
knew from our days as children?

Finally, consider that the combination of thousands of computers 
working with common data are more than equivalent to one massively 
parallel system, then think about the fact that an XML vocabulary 
already exists for describing the human genome. I'll leave you to 
draw your own conclusions about that disturbing confluence.

Okay, so enough with the doom and gloom. The question is how to make 
it happen (I've always wanted to bring about the end of the world, 
looks like I'll finally get my chance !<grin/>

WorldOS looks intriguing, though I'm beginning to detect a trend here 
that may be worth exploring.  Just as XML is beginning to encompass a 
fairly broad number of different technologies, I think it is a 
reasonable assessment to make that no XML programming language can in 
and of itself hope to be complete. Some work better as functional 
languages within a declarative paradigm within server instances, 
others are basically descriptions of object oriented structures 
within procedural paradigms that are mapped into XML. Rather than 
going around in circles trying to decide which approach should or 
should not be adopted, why not go the inclusive route -- set up the 
XPL site as a site for XML Programming Languages. This will give 
people a chance to look at different routes to solving similar 
problems; I suspect that initially there will be a smattering of 
recommendations that turn into a number of different proto-languages, 
which could then in turn be consolidated into best fit solutions.  

Comments?

-- Kurt Cagle
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jonathan Burns 
  To: xpl@e... 
  Sent: Friday, June 16, 2000 5:07 AM
  Subject: Re: [XPL] - WorldOS - framework for distributed computing


  Richard Anthony Hein wrote: 
      
      Everyone,There is something called WorldOS that is a framework 
for distributed computing that could be useful to XPL.  If you read 
some of my other posts you will know why I like the idea of using 
such a framework. It includes "a simple TCP server, an XML oriented 
application server, and tools for peer routing similar to Freenet or 
Gnutella.  The application server uses a new protocol distinguished 
by pluggable transports, XML message content, and asynchronous 
messaging."It's opensource, so that's good, and it's in the early 
stages of development, but does function.  So we could get our input 
in there once we have an architecture for XPL, that would make 
WorldOS even better for our purposes.  Anyways, take a look at 
http://www.worldos.org/worldos/index.php3 to get the details.Richard 
A. Hein
    
  So happens, I've just stumbled onto WorldOS myself. 
  This was just after I'd gained a clue what Gnutella is. 

  (Gnutella is a search engine for files. Load a query for some file 
  by name. The query fans out among all the Gnutella users your 
system 
  can find, and all that THEY can find, recursively. With luck, 
download 
  access to the file(s) you're after will eventually be passed back 
to you, 
  and show up in a window. Meanwhile, your system is picking up its 
end 
  of other users' searches.) 

  And Napster, which does the same kind of thing for MP3s music 
files. 

  And FreeNet, which gets you onto a web of, shall we say process or 
user 
  identities, allowing exchange of data on an IP-independent basis, 
more 
  or less untraceable by the usual TCP/IP methods. 

  Furthermore, this is after I have been reading and hearing for some 
time 
  about: 

  PunkNet, an architecture like FreeNet. 

  Linda, a network OS and language in which "tuples" circulate 
through 
  data stores on widely distributed machines, being gathered and 
processed 
  by some kind of content search. 

  Seti@Home. 

  The Morris Internet Worm, and others of its kind. 

  To cap it off... 

  Check out Kurt Cagle's  slideshow  on VBXML. It's couched in 
general principles, 
  but if I have it right, Kurt's vision is of free-floating, call-'em-
by-name 
  XML documents, which encapsulate LOCATION and PROTOCOL, so as to 
present the 
  casual user with a web of data bound to data, leading wherever you 
want to go 
  via search-engine interfacing. No more searching for a site, going 
there, 
  accessing the FTP or whatever, and finally accessing the data you 
want by name. 
    

  This is looking like a paradigm. 
    

  Now I completely agree, Richard, that we should investigate 
WorldOS - and maybe 
  make common cause with it. See, WorldOS will evidently conduct any 
XML documents. 
  So if we maintain a layer within XPL development which is Pure XML -
 no processing 
  primitives, no COM hooks, no binding to external mechanisms - then 
WorldOS will 
  function as a transparent distributed mechanism for that layer. 
Technically, it's 
  a potent tool for us. 

  But sheesh. 

  Is anybody as unnerved as I am, about the implications of "data 
gas" webs like this, 
  especially when people like us are going round, endowing them with 
full processing 
  capability? 

  Call me conservative. I spend a lot of time fuming about how free 
markets have 
  diffused the consequences of actions beyond the point where anyone 
can be imputed 
  responsibility for them. Collectively, we've committed ourselves to 
a world society, 
  while disabling the corrective checks and balances that a society 
needs, against 
  the concentration of power. 

  The Web is the same, in fast-forward. It's this fast, not because 
of communication 
  speed, but because there's so little power involved in publishing 
and scanning 
  information, that it's relatively harmless. But already, the Web is 
facing a massive 
  contradiction: intellectual propery funds it, but its consequence 
is the devaluation 
  of intellectual property. 

  What happens when information is completely dissociated from 
authorship? 

  When programs are completely dissociated from authorship? 

  When worms can be released in perfect anonymity? 

  When you can't tell the good worms, like Seti@Home, from the bad 
worms, or from 
  worms like Napster which sidestep around intellectual propery? 

  When there is no such thing as a trusted source? 
    

  Well, that's the New Economy Political Agenda, anyway. 

  On a more technical plane, what bemuses me is, how do we find 
things in a data gas? 

  Answer: We refer to them by content rather than location - and we 
use personal 
  or site caches to nail down copies or shortcut addresses. At a 
guess, if or when 
  we go and implement an XPL data gas, we will be using XML tech to 
implement 
  the Universal Resource Access mechanism we need. XPath on steroids, 
man. 

  <spooky> 

  I've got this vision, of an ocean of little XML thingies - parse 
trees on the loose. 
  They leaf out in typed nodes. Spotlights sweep across the ocean - 
people and their 
  sundry bots, paying attention, and thereby supplying CPU power to 
the thingies. 

  Thingy awakens. It finds a phone. Good morning switchboard, I'm 
looking for stuff 
  with these types and content and timestamp and authentication 
(that's my leaves). 
  Oh, you got some - good. 

  Instantly, thingy is linked up with others of its kind, making a 
temporary Big Thingy. 
  And so on recursively. At some point, all the leaves are filled in, 
down to primitive 
  elements, and there's some XPL present, which activates its XSLTs, 
and the whole Big 
  Thingy goes to work - on borrowed CPU power, from a multitude of 
sources. 

  Presently, Big Thingy has bred a bunch of children, and put them on 
the phone to 
  the people and bots who originally requested whatever services. 
They get linked 
  up with GUI thingies, which deliver the service to the end user. 
End user satisfied, 
  spotlights blink off, thingies go back to sleep. But some 
middlesize thingies are 
  bigger now, or more current. They contain a little bit of 
information on the 
  late transaction, cached away, ready for the next time. 
    

  The whole thing has more than a passing resemblance to brain 
function. 

  Furthermore, it has a close structural resemblance to John Koza's 
Genetic Programming 
  paradigm. 

  Here again we have parse trees on the loose - Lisp expressions. 
Here again we 
  have the free-floating population. From the population, a quantity 
of elements 
  are selected, and activated. They are programs - feed them to a 
Lisp interpreter 
  (spotlight) and they run. This can be done in parallel. It can be 
done like Seti@Home. 
  It's a data gas. 

  The outputs of the programs are collected, and scored. Depending on 
its score, each 
  activated element is given breeding instructions - drop out, or 
replicate yourself, 
  or split apart, or split and recombine with some other element, on 
a type-compatible 
  basis. 

  A new spotlight comes on. In its warm glow, the elements follow 
their instructions. 
  The population is modified. Collectively, it now contains more 
elements which are 
  fitter, more likely to score high. And it contains many elements 
which were parts 
  of fit individuals, and statistically likely to have contributed to 
their success. 

  It's an evolving data gas. 

  </spooky> 
    

  Kltpzyxm! 
  Jonathan 

  His wit never failed him, and he laughed himself to death 
  over a book of the dying words of famous men. 

  - Thomas M. Disch, Camp Concentration. 
    
    
    
    
    


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