So, as I understand your overall design
you’re talking about a unifying application framework with some fancy (or
simplistic depending on your POV) recursion to take care of chaining things
together. Forgive me for sounding cynical, but how
is that different from .NET (and its IL)? I suppose the positivist translation
would be “what problems does this system address?” --M@ From:
lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org [mailto:lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of Andrii Zvorygin It all depends on how you design the interface. I agree that classical computing wouldn't work with a lojban interface in an intuitive way. Because classical computing is very haphazzard, we have monolithic applications (though many of them are modularizing). Our computers aren't really wholes, they are just a bunch of standalone applications, thrown together. with lots of duplicate code. Sure linux is improving we have libraries, but the problem is we have libraries for every single programming language that more or less do the same things.
9/24/06, M@
<matthew.dunlap@gmail.com>
wrote: First,
a disclaimer; while I have put a significant amount of time into thinking about
this kind of thing I'm certainly not an expert. I'm still going for my
BS. Computers
are both digital and binary (note: I distinguish digital from binary, some
people disagree, but that's another argument altogether (and yes I'm aware that
binary implies digital, that phrase is foreshadowing)), which makes them an
interesting self metaphor. The difference between MI and AI is as
fundamental as the difference between 1 and 0. Thus, the two potential
uses of a syntactically unambiguous language (SUL for brevity) in a computer
have no grey area between them. The
short term use (dream) is to teach computers to utilize the language's
unambiguous nature to provide an interface that can be read and written to in a
spoken language. Obviously in a classical (ie linear processor based)
computer syntax ambiguity is a severe no-no because the correct (intended)
parsing is a non-digital process. Initially it's very tempting to say,
oh, here's a language that sidesteps that problem by eliminating syntax
ambiguity, we should use it to provide a more natural interface! And yes,
that goal can be reached in a year or two with devoted work. The
problem I have with this goal is that it's a solution to a problem that has
been solved for decades. There are many SULs that are already written and
in use as computer interfaces across the world. My personal favorite is
bash. To compare bash to lojban I would say that bash is easier to learn
(it is much smaller after all) and every bit as versatile as a
cross-programming-language interaction framework as lojban could possibly be in
a classical computing environment. Both languages are equally not my
first, and I would say I'm truely fluent in neither, but comfortable with
both. Of course, it is possible that in the near future there will be
core (to borrow a term from the ASL community) jbopre, but even they will find
the system is as unintuitive as any other digital language processing system
(even with AI assistance) because of the restrictions requiring digital
formatting. Another way to say it, is no matter how hard you try
classical computers will never be able to figure anything, they rely on
unambiguous meanings to get things done, lojban doesn't necessarily provide
that, bash does. The
real beauty of lojban isn't the fact that it's a SUL. The real beauty of
it is a consequence of being a SUL, and that is, it can be used to convey
things in absurdly creative (ie anything but digital) ways. As with any
real beauty there is always a converse beast, which in this case is the fact
that it's silly to be more creative than the person (or computer) you're
talking to. Anyone who has dealt with the people that work at a DMV knows
exactly what I'm talking about. Lets
look at a very simple example that directly relates to an everyday computer
activity in a lojban based classical computer system. ko
minde mi> la zgikeB.mp3 fukpi la zgikeA.mp3 je'e The
computer had no problem using with the command because it was in the finite
list of things it is programmed to do, but if I throw even the simplest
creative twist into the command it breaks out of the list of functions and the
computer has difficulty. ko
minde mi> la zgikeC.mp3 fukpi la cdrom0 le mp3 la ripperprogram .a'onai
je'enai ko
minde mi> ko facki go'i .a'onai
je'enai ko
minde mi> .o'onaisai This
example was designed to illustrate two specific problems with a linguistically
interfaced classical computers. Yes, the first command could have been
simplified to "la zgikeC.mp3 ripperprogram la cdrom0 le mp3" and it
probably would have worked, but what if there was some desired functionality
that fukpi provided (a cvs push or something)? That aspect of the
operation would then have to be done in a separate command. To interpret
the command correctly the fukpi programming would have to figure out how to use
whatever x4 argument you could send it, but the nature of the language makes
that impossible without understanding the meaning of the words in the x4 place,
simple recursion won't do it. The
second thing I'm pointing out here is that 90% of the people I sit at a modern
command prompt don't understand the limitations of the system, so they
intuitively assume that it speaks whatever language the OS prompts are
in. Then they try to talk to the computer through the keyboard and are
frustrated when it doesn't work. It's freaking hilarious sometimes (
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=77851792&blogID=130868121&Mytoken=26C6508D-0CAC-43BB-BDA1B437DCB0AA7811819937
is a candid transcript of one such occasion), but it's remarkably
non-productive. Of
course, the other dream is to actually teach a MI how to speak and understand
lojban. Assuming such an auto-associative system could be made hardware
wise, there would be absolutely nothing preventing it from being a perfectly
natural feeling interface in spoken or typed lojban. You could ask it
absurd questions and it could give you obviously considered answers. The
problem I find with this is that once you've built MI there's no reason
whatsoever you couldn't teach it English as well. The
problem with human languages is that they are based on understanding. The
problem with computer languages is that they're based on digital principles
(which don't really apply in an analog world). That's
what I think anyway, if you disagree I'd love to hear why. --M@
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