Malleable systems analogies

[flo]

I propose this new light thread to share analogies of malleable computing systems. I think we can learn a lot from how other systems in our life work and what we like and dislike from them. Here I will propose a template for analogies. Then I will propose my first analogy: cooking.

Template

• What the other system is
• What you like and dislike
• How is it malleable in regards to our 7 criteria
  1. Software must be as easy to change as it is to use it
  2. All layers, from the user interface through functionality to the data within, must support arbitrary recombination and reuse in new environments
  3. Tools should strive to be easy to begin working with but still have lots of open-ended potential
  4. People of all experience levels must be able to retain ownership and control
  5. Recombined workflows and experiences must be freely sharable with others
  6. Modifying a system should happen in the context of use, rather than through some separate development toolchain and skill set
  7. Computing should be a thoughtfully crafted, fun, and empowering experience
• What should malleable computing systems take away from this one

Cooking as a malleable system

I want computing to feel like cooking.

What I like about it

I like cooking. I like how it is built on top of chemical and physical reactions, but i don’t necessarily have to have a deep understanding of chemistry or physics to cook. It definitely helps to understand the chemistry, but it is not required. With cooking i feel like there is such a thing as a cooking reaction. A kind of abstraction over chemistry that one learns when learning to cook. Eggs get hard the more you cook them. I know that underneath there is a chemical reaction, yet all i need to cook eggs is an understanding of the cooking reaction.

How is it malleable

1. Once you learn the basics, it is possible to change a recipe on the fly as you are cooking it.
2. Cooking allows somewhat recombination of its different layers: you can replace eggs with flax, spices with other spices.
3. Tools and recipe are definitly easy to begin working with but can be mastered.
4. People of all experiences can cook, deciding on the spot what is made from scratch and what is made from prepared ingredients.
5. Recipes can be freely shared with others.
6. Modifiying what you cook does not depend on another skill set.
7. Cooking is a fun and empowering experience.

Takeaways

Recipes are loose algorithms, you can follow them or improvise with them. Ingredients are late-binded with what’s available in your pantry. Ingredients may play different roles. The style is modifiable with spices. Prepared food exists to delegate the creation when you don’t have time, money, skills or want.

I think we need recipes. Something easily shareable and that’s easy to change. A sequence of loose steps that one can modify while executing them. I also think that late-binding, as seen with ingredients, is a good idea. It seems here that ingredients as a medium, along with the nice abstraction that is cooking reactions (as opposed to chemical reactions) is what makes this possible. What could be the ingredients and reactions of computing?

(Sorry for my english, i hope it’s not too bad)

[eliot]

An analogy is a great way to spark a train of thought.

• Spark, an electrical discharge or a bit of fire, the dying ember of a centuries-old forest, or stolen from the gods and carried carefully to the tribe to multiply and share the heat;
• and Train, as in picturesque vintage trains crossing the landscape - the Great Siberian Route (Transsib), El Transcantábrico, Flåmsbana, Rhodope, Yunokami-Onsen, Centovalli Express - through the spring air of mountains and valleys.

Metaphor is the heart of poetry, song, story, and mythology - the ancient logic of dreams.

By Consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called .. mental discourse. When a person thinks on anything whatsoever, their next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently.

– Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, Part I Chapter III: Of the Consequence or Train of Imagination (1651)

Imagination motivates the train of thinking, the power of will moving the mind’s attention from one step to the next in a sequence of images. The intuition of Hobbes saw the direction of mechanical thought that in the future birthed the statistical wonder of language models coming to life like a Golem, haltingly speaking to us token by uncanny token.

A train with a few sleepy riders rolling through the lazy afternoon of Southern Bohemia. Or trains at the historic railway station in Kolkata, overflowing with a million passengers a day, hanging out the doors, windows, even climbing on the rooftops - meeting and leaving each other in sweat, tears and smiles. The Fairy Queen, officially the East Indian Railway No. 22, is a steam locomotive built in 1855. What a beauty!

When someone “loses” their train of thought, what’s lost is the coherence of logical relations keeping together the stream of ideas. This is called derailment in psychiatry.

The idiom “off the rails” became popular in the 1850’s as rail transport infrastructure developed, to describe a person or situation going out of control with unexpected or unpredictable behavior.

Derailment is any speech with a sequence of unrelated or barely related ideas; the topic often changes from one sentence to another. Authors refer to this as a “loss of goal”, a discourse that sets off on a particular idea but wanders off and never returns to it.

As long as you get to the goal eventually, one can choose to take a scenic route through the forest of words, perhaps make some familiar stops along the way, pick up and drop off passengers like electrons through neural pathways.

As Bateson asked in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, “What is the pattern that connects?”

In some studies on creativity, this way of knight’s move thinking—while describing a similarly loose association of ideas—is not a symptom of mental disorder, but a directed use of lateral thinking and non-linear thought pattern.

Thinking outside the box, or Kobayashi Maru for the trekkies, involves ideas that may not be reachable through traditional step-by-step logic.

The downside of trains, which is also their strength and value, is that they can only go where the railroad tracks are laid down, and usually only stop where stations have been built. Then it is natural to ask, who designs and engineers the system, who invests in the project and for what return, who builds the railway with their hands and who owns it.

The same question for malleable software: who owns the means of computation.

How is it malleable

• People can travel and make connections to reach their desired goal, based on availability of trains, stations, and schedule. A train journey is easy to change, before committing to the plan by buying tickets; after that it costs to make a change.
• People can create arbitrary combinations to build their own journey as they wish.
• Quick onboarding without a plan is possible. Walk into a train station, buy a ticket, get on a train.
• Trains and stations are usually accessible to people of all ages and abilities.
• People can share their itenerary as ideas for others to make similar trips.
• Modifying a system.. As I write this list, I see that the travel plan and journey of a train passenger is what is malleable in this system, not the train as technological artifact or the network of trains as infrastructure. Like software versus hardware.
• The train is empowering in a different way than automobiles. It can be fun, with freedom of choice.

Takeaways

What are the trains, stations and railways of your system? Who are your passengers, where do they go, and what do they do. What are the popular destinations and activities.

Support people in planning their trip, to prepare a mental model of expected steps to the goal. As they build a unique itinerary from a combination of available trains and stations - make it easy to create, change and share plans.

Have updated maps, reliable schedules and operation, maintenance of rails.

Make guidebooks and brochures for travel ideas (like a recipe or template) to get people started on their journey in confidence and comfort.