8 ms·

Data like that sentence? Or all of the other sentences in this chat? I find 'data' hard to consider a bad idea in and of itself, i.e. if data == information, re

Data like that sentence? Or all of the other sentences in this chat? I find 'data' hard to consider a bad idea in and of itself, i.e. if data == information, records of things known/uttered at a point in time. Could you talk more about data being a bad idea?

alankay 10y ago
What is "data" without an interpreter (and when we send "data" somewhere, how can we send it so its meaning is preserved?)
- richhickey 10y ago
  Data without an interpreter is certainly subject to (multiple) interpretation :) For instance, the implications of your sentence weren't clear to me, in spite of it being in English (evidently, not indicated otherwise). Some metadata indicated to me that you said it (should I trust that?), and when. But these seem to be questions of quality of representation/conveyance/provenance (agreed, important) rather than critiques of data as an idea. Yes, there is a notion of sufficiency ('42' isn't data). Data is an old and fundamental idea. Machine interpretation of un- or under-structured data is fueling a ton of utility for society. None of the inputs to our sensory systems are accompanied by explanations of their meaning. Data - something given, seems the raw material of pretty much everything else interesting, and interpreters are secondary, and perhaps essentially, varied.
  - alankay 10y ago
    There are lots of "old and fundamental" ideas that are not good anymore, if they ever were. The point here is that you were able to find the interpreter of the sentence and ask a question, but the two were still separated. For important negotiations we don't send telegrams, we send ambassadors. This is what objects are all about, and it continues to be amazing to me that the real necessities and practical necessities are still not at all understood. Bundling an interpreter for messages doesn't prevent the message from being submitted for other possible interpretations, but there simply has to be a process that can extract signal from noise. This is particularly germane to your last paragraph. Please think especially hard about what you are taking for granted in your last sentence.
    - ontouchstart 10y ago
      I think object is a very powerful idea to wrap "local" context. But in a network (communication) environment, it is still challenging to handle "remote" context with object. That is why we have APIs and serialization/deserialization overhead. In the ideal homogeneous world of smalltalk, it is a less issue. But if you want a Windows machine to talk to a Unix, the remote context becomes an issue. In principle we can send a Windows VM along with the message from Windows and a Unix VM (docker?) with a message from Unix, if that is a solution.
      - ontouchstart 10y ago
        Alan, what is your view on Olive Executable Archive ?https://olivearchive.org/ https://olivearchive.org/
        alankay1 10y ago
        Their larger goals are important.
        ontouchstart 10y ago
        Do you think they are on the right path to their larger goals?
        alankay1 10y ago
        I think for so many important cases, this is almost the only way to do it. The problems were caused by short-sighted vendors and programmers getting locked into particular computers and OS software. For contrast, one could look at a much more compact way to do this that -- with more foresight -- was used at Parc, not just for the future, but to deal gracefully with the many kinds of computers we designed and built there. Elsewhere in this AMA I mentioned an example of this: a resurrected Smalltalk image from 1978 (off a disk pack that Xerox had thrown away) that was quite easy to bring back to life because it was already virtualized "for eternity"). This is another example of "trying to think about scaling" -- in this case temporally -- when building systems .... The idea was that you could make a universal computer in software that would be smaller than almost any media made in it, so ...
  - ontouchstart 10y ago
    Information in "entropy" sense is objective and meaningless. Meaning only exists within a context. If we think "data" represent information, "interpreters" bring us context and therefore meaning.
    - jsa-aerial 10y ago
      Thank you - I was beginning to wonder if anyone in this conversation understood this. It is really the key to meaningfully (!!) move forward in this stuff.
- sandal 10y ago
  The more meaning you pack into a message, the harder the message is to unpack. So there's this inherent tradeoff between "easy to process" and "expressive" -- and I imagine deciding which side you want to lean toward depends on the context. Check this out for a practical example: https://www.practicingruby.com/articles/information-anatomy https://www.practicingruby.com/articles/information-anatomy (not a Ruby article, but instead about essential structure of messages, loosely inspired by ideas in Gödel, Escher, Bach)
- olantonan 10y ago
  So the idea is to always send the interpreter, along with the data? They should always travel together? Interesting. But, practically, the interpreter would need to be written in such a way that it works on all target systems. The world isn't set up for that, although it should be. Hm, I now realize your point about HTML being idiotic. It should be a description, along with instructions for parsing and displaying it (?)
  - alankay1 10y ago
    TCP/IP is "written in such a way that it works on all target systems". This partially worked because it was early, partly because it is small and simple, partly because it doesn't try to define structures on the actual messages, but only minimal ones on the "envelopes". And partly because of the "/" which does not force a single theory. This -- and the Parc PUP "internet" which preceded it and influenced it -- are examples of trying to organize things so that modules can interact universally with minimal assumptions on both sides. The next step -- of organizing a minimal basis for inter-meanings -- not just internetworking -- was being thought about heavily in the 70s while the communications systems ideas were being worked on, but was quite to the side, and not mature enough to be made part of the apparatus when "Flag Day" happened in 1983. What is the minimal "stuff" that could be part of the "TCP/IP" apparatus that could allow "meanings" to be sent, not just bits -- and what assumptions need to be made on the receiving end to guarantee the safety of a transmitted meaning?
    - olantonan 10y ago
      Now it's to late to fix.
      - alankay 10y ago
        I don't think it's too late, but it would require fairly large changes in perspective in the general computing community about computing, about scaling, about visions and goals.
    - solidsnack9000 10y ago
mmiller 10y ago
Take a look here: https://tekkie.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/sicp-what-is-meant-by-data/ https://tekkie.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/sicp-what-is-meant-b...
- richhickey 10y ago
  Data, and the entirety of human understanding and knowledge derived from recording, measurement and analysis of data, predates computing, so I don't see the relevance of these recent, programming-centric notions in a discussion of its value.
  - asolove 10y ago
    Wouldn't Mr. Kay say that it is education that builds the continuity of the entirety of human understanding? Greek philosophy and astronomy survived in the Muslim world and not in the European, though both possessed plenty of texts, because only the former had an education system that could bootstrap a mind to think in a way capable of understanding and adding to the data. Ultimately, every piece of data is reliant on each generation of humans equipping enough of their children with the mindset capable to use it intelligently. The value of data is determined by the intelligence of those interpreting it, not those who recorded it. Of course, this dynamic is sometimes positive. The Babylonians kept excellent astronomical records though apparently making little theoretical advance in understanding them. Greeks with an excellent grasp of geometry put that data to much better use very quickly. But if they had had to wait to gather the data themselves, one can imagine them waiting a long time.
  - david927 10y ago
    What if "data" is a really great idea?
  - mempko 10y ago
    Computing has existed for thousands of years. We just have machines do some of it now.
  - mmiller 10y ago
    This kind of gets into philosophy, but a metaphor I came up with for thinking about this (another phrase for it is "thought experiment") is: If I speak something to a rock, what is it to the rock? Is it "signal," or "data"? Making the concept a little more interesting, what if I resonate the rock with a sound frequency? What is that to the rock? Is that "signal," or "data"? Up until the Rosetta Stone was found, Egyptian hieroglyphs were indecipherable. Could data be gathered from them, nevertheless? Sure. Researchers could determine what pigments were used, and/or what tools were used to create them, but they couldn't understand the messages. It wasn't "data" up to that point. It was "noise." I hope I am not giving the impression that I am a postmodernist who is out here saying, "Data is meaningless." That's not what I'm saying. I am saying meaning is not self-evident from signal. The concept of data requires the ability to interpret signal for meaning to be acquired.

alankay 10y ago

What is "data" without an interpreter (and when we send "data" somewhere, how can we send it so its meaning is preserved?)

richhickey 10y ago
Data without an interpreter is certainly subject to (multiple) interpretation :) For instance, the implications of your sentence weren't clear to me, in spite of it being in English (evidently, not indicated otherwise). Some metadata indicated to me that you said it (should I trust that?), and when. But these seem to be questions of quality of representation/conveyance/provenance (agreed, important) rather than critiques of data as an idea. Yes, there is a notion of sufficiency ('42' isn't data). Data is an old and fundamental idea. Machine interpretation of un- or under-structured data is fueling a ton of utility for society. None of the inputs to our sensory systems are accompanied by explanations of their meaning. Data - something given, seems the raw material of pretty much everything else interesting, and interpreters are secondary, and perhaps essentially, varied.
- alankay 10y ago
  There are lots of "old and fundamental" ideas that are not good anymore, if they ever were. The point here is that you were able to find the interpreter of the sentence and ask a question, but the two were still separated. For important negotiations we don't send telegrams, we send ambassadors. This is what objects are all about, and it continues to be amazing to me that the real necessities and practical necessities are still not at all understood. Bundling an interpreter for messages doesn't prevent the message from being submitted for other possible interpretations, but there simply has to be a process that can extract signal from noise. This is particularly germane to your last paragraph. Please think especially hard about what you are taking for granted in your last sentence.
  - ontouchstart 10y ago
    I think object is a very powerful idea to wrap "local" context. But in a network (communication) environment, it is still challenging to handle "remote" context with object. That is why we have APIs and serialization/deserialization overhead. In the ideal homogeneous world of smalltalk, it is a less issue. But if you want a Windows machine to talk to a Unix, the remote context becomes an issue. In principle we can send a Windows VM along with the message from Windows and a Unix VM (docker?) with a message from Unix, if that is a solution.
    - ontouchstart 10y ago
      Alan, what is your view on Olive Executable Archive ?https://olivearchive.org/ https://olivearchive.org/
      - alankay1 10y ago
        Their larger goals are important.
        ontouchstart 10y ago
        Do you think they are on the right path to their larger goals?
        alankay1 10y ago
        I think for so many important cases, this is almost the only way to do it. The problems were caused by short-sighted vendors and programmers getting locked into particular computers and OS software. For contrast, one could look at a much more compact way to do this that -- with more foresight -- was used at Parc, not just for the future, but to deal gracefully with the many kinds of computers we designed and built there. Elsewhere in this AMA I mentioned an example of this: a resurrected Smalltalk image from 1978 (off a disk pack that Xerox had thrown away) that was quite easy to bring back to life because it was already virtualized "for eternity"). This is another example of "trying to think about scaling" -- in this case temporally -- when building systems .... The idea was that you could make a universal computer in software that would be smaller than almost any media made in it, so ...
- ontouchstart 10y ago
  Information in "entropy" sense is objective and meaningless. Meaning only exists within a context. If we think "data" represent information, "interpreters" bring us context and therefore meaning.
  - jsa-aerial 10y ago
    Thank you - I was beginning to wonder if anyone in this conversation understood this. It is really the key to meaningfully (!!) move forward in this stuff.
sandal 10y ago
The more meaning you pack into a message, the harder the message is to unpack. So there's this inherent tradeoff between "easy to process" and "expressive" -- and I imagine deciding which side you want to lean toward depends on the context. Check this out for a practical example: https://www.practicingruby.com/articles/information-anatomy https://www.practicingruby.com/articles/information-anatomy (not a Ruby article, but instead about essential structure of messages, loosely inspired by ideas in Gödel, Escher, Bach)
olantonan 10y ago
So the idea is to always send the interpreter, along with the data? They should always travel together? Interesting. But, practically, the interpreter would need to be written in such a way that it works on all target systems. The world isn't set up for that, although it should be. Hm, I now realize your point about HTML being idiotic. It should be a description, along with instructions for parsing and displaying it (?)
- alankay1 10y ago
  TCP/IP is "written in such a way that it works on all target systems". This partially worked because it was early, partly because it is small and simple, partly because it doesn't try to define structures on the actual messages, but only minimal ones on the "envelopes". And partly because of the "/" which does not force a single theory. This -- and the Parc PUP "internet" which preceded it and influenced it -- are examples of trying to organize things so that modules can interact universally with minimal assumptions on both sides. The next step -- of organizing a minimal basis for inter-meanings -- not just internetworking -- was being thought about heavily in the 70s while the communications systems ideas were being worked on, but was quite to the side, and not mature enough to be made part of the apparatus when "Flag Day" happened in 1983. What is the minimal "stuff" that could be part of the "TCP/IP" apparatus that could allow "meanings" to be sent, not just bits -- and what assumptions need to be made on the receiving end to guarantee the safety of a transmitted meaning?
  - olantonan 10y ago
    Now it's to late to fix.
    - alankay 10y ago
      I don't think it's too late, but it would require fairly large changes in perspective in the general computing community about computing, about scaling, about visions and goals.
  - solidsnack9000 10y ago

mmiller 10y ago

Take a look here: https://tekkie.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/sicp-what-is-meant-by-data/ https://tekkie.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/sicp-what-is-meant-b...

richhickey 10y ago
Data, and the entirety of human understanding and knowledge derived from recording, measurement and analysis of data, predates computing, so I don't see the relevance of these recent, programming-centric notions in a discussion of its value.
- asolove 10y ago
  Wouldn't Mr. Kay say that it is education that builds the continuity of the entirety of human understanding? Greek philosophy and astronomy survived in the Muslim world and not in the European, though both possessed plenty of texts, because only the former had an education system that could bootstrap a mind to think in a way capable of understanding and adding to the data. Ultimately, every piece of data is reliant on each generation of humans equipping enough of their children with the mindset capable to use it intelligently. The value of data is determined by the intelligence of those interpreting it, not those who recorded it. Of course, this dynamic is sometimes positive. The Babylonians kept excellent astronomical records though apparently making little theoretical advance in understanding them. Greeks with an excellent grasp of geometry put that data to much better use very quickly. But if they had had to wait to gather the data themselves, one can imagine them waiting a long time.
- david927 10y ago
  What if "data" is a really great idea?
- mempko 10y ago
  Computing has existed for thousands of years. We just have machines do some of it now.
- mmiller 10y ago
  This kind of gets into philosophy, but a metaphor I came up with for thinking about this (another phrase for it is "thought experiment") is: If I speak something to a rock, what is it to the rock? Is it "signal," or "data"? Making the concept a little more interesting, what if I resonate the rock with a sound frequency? What is that to the rock? Is that "signal," or "data"? Up until the Rosetta Stone was found, Egyptian hieroglyphs were indecipherable. Could data be gathered from them, nevertheless? Sure. Researchers could determine what pigments were used, and/or what tools were used to create them, but they couldn't understand the messages. It wasn't "data" up to that point. It was "noise." I hope I am not giving the impression that I am a postmodernist who is out here saying, "Data is meaningless." That's not what I'm saying. I am saying meaning is not self-evident from signal. The concept of data requires the ability to interpret signal for meaning to be acquired.