2003-07-23 Conduit metaphor and ur-shapes Unable to articulate the unsuredness I feel around object orientating the conduit metaphor component-based templating web services That they all [and others] seem to be grasping towards something but not reaching it. I recognise this grasping. It happens when there are hardwired expectations - folk systems theory[1] - and we unconsciously push towards them. Or (more likely) it just happens that that's how the human+system behaves, it tends in that direction, because of expections (yes) and just because. [1] folk as in folk psychology, folk physics. The understanding that we as humans of the Holocene rather than human of the Truncated Now have of how the world works. TRY AGAIN! the rock stays with the tower, why? (Feyerabend, Against Method p73) it all comes down to the problems with the conduit metaphor == object orientation == computer based systems "and if the hypothetical patients on which the causal agents act are passive things incapable of spontaneity or self-activity -- incapable, in short, of adding something of their own to the causal bond -- then it follows that, in a sense, effects preexist in their causes". [this is wrong] (Delanda IS&VP p155) our folk systems theory recreates the world in all cyberspaces, gradually the rock stays with the tower because it inherits [this is wrong] (we rediscover relativity in software) [we implement it badly] our folk systems theory misleads us object orientation as a quest to introduce distance? (distance: "When two separate series of events are placed in communication, in such a way that a change in probabilities of one series affects the probability distribution of the other, we have an information channel". (Delanda IS&VP p76)) our metaphors are clockwork, Newtonian! objects assume effects preexist in their methods (causes)! stop pretending that nouns and verbs represent web services. verbs are a negotiation, not called on passive patients (nouns). stop pretending the conduit metaphor works. intelligence isn't contained. intelligence is: expectations + the implicature of expectations + extelligence + combinations recombinance recursion to infinity. biological components communicate by shape the capturing shape doesn't care what goes in it, so long as it fits. many things fit. but! it's impossible to pretend to be something without that coming across even slightly in the shape, it's impossible to mimic exactly a thing without being that thing. the shape for visual component of sex is also filled by pornography. but pornography also carries its own signature. so much specific expectations can be set up. ditto proteins. shapes are methods. it's impossible not to send information. specify the method more exactly by specifying the shape more exactly. remember there's expectations and implicature on both sides. the universe as conversation. the conversation medium being the physical shape of the universe itself. distance is part of the ur-shape, the one-shape, that has distance intrinsic to itself (so, it's not a room). a protein that fits into a hole but isn't close by doesn't ur-fit (ur-fit: a more precise meaning of 'fit' that is 'the right shape'+'in the right place'. saying 'it fits' if it isn't in the same place is like saying people-noses and dog-noses are the same: not true but useful). the further away it is (in distance) the less well ur-shaped it is. so we need distance in object orientation, not this foolish relativity. we need to get rid of the conduit metaphor, it's just the same.