Apples actual response to the Flash issue

[Randall Lee Reetz]

Yes, thanks, there are a few of us stretching back to babbage (even voltair), and more recently and more succinctly by schrodinger in his seminal "what is life" essay.

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Kann <mikekann at yahoo.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 3:08 PM
To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Subject: Re: Apples actual response to the Flash issue

Randall,

Take it up with this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat

He's spent thirty-five years thinking about the same issues.



--- On Sun, 5/2/10, Randall Reetz <randall at randallreetz.com> wrote:

> From: Randall Reetz <randall at randallreetz.com>
> Subject: Re: Apples actual response to the Flash issue
> To: "How to use Revolution" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Date: Sunday, May 2, 2010, 4:39 PM
> OK, Ian, I promised I would respond
> and here goes.  Sorry I didn't before, I had assumed
> your questions were rhetorical.
> 
> When I say that software hasn't changed I mean to say that
> it hasn't jumped qualitative categories.  We are still
> living in a world where computing exists as pre-written and
> compiled software that is blindly executed by machines and
> stacked foundational code that has no idea what it is
> processing, can only process linearly, all semantics have
> been stripped, it doesn't learn from experience or react to
> context unless this too has been pre-codified and frozen in
> binary or byte code, etc. etc etc.  Hardware has been
> souped up.  So our little wrote tricks can be made more
> elaborate within the substantial confines mentioned. 
> These same in-paradigm restrictions apply to both the
> software users slog through and the software we use to write
> software.
> 
> As a result, these very plastic machines with mercurial
> potential are reduced to simple players that react to user
> interrupts.  They are sequencing systems, not unlike
> the lead type setting racks of Guttenburg-era printing
> presses.  Sure we have taught them some interesting
> seeming tricks – if you can represent something as digital
> media, be it sound, video, multi-dimentional graph space,
> markup – our sequencer doesn't know enough to care.
> 
> Current 


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