It’s mostly formed from Seth Schoen and Cory @doctorow ‘s idea of adversarial interoperability, Joanna @rootkovska’s Qubes, and @mntmn’s Interim and Reform projects
Sorry, that sounds conspiratorial and I didn’t mean it to. What I mean is that a successful tool or service builds on the browser, or Android/POSIX say, or inside Twitter or Facebook’s ecosystem. Those environments are rich and complex and provide coherent and comprehensible abstractions for doing almost everything that their creators and sponsors want to do (and would like you to do) in the world
In earlier years, we were lobbying and picking and working on the abstraction towers we hoped would lead to a better world, but now it feels like those directions have been buried by the buildings built above them: you can think of this as co-option, but another way may be a narrowing of options after a period of abstractions that tended to general innovation - a post-Cambrian winnowing? Sorry for all the metaphors I’m still trying to name and frame this
I don't know the name for this act, but adversarial interop will do for now. You wire yourself up to the existing abstraction framework, and pull it in a new direction. But you only do that to the degree that the abstraction fails to be able to stop you, and to the degree that you can comprehend what the abstraction presents
Virtual Machines are a good present-day example of this approach: it shows the possibilities, and the challenges. Essentially, VMs enguls almost all of the software stack of entire operating systems. Something like Qubes run them within its (fairly thin) hypervisory world, where it can wrap them in its own model.
VMs have to do a little bit of adversarial interop -- they don't just wrap around the code, they push past its boundaries a little too. They dig a bit deeper into the old abstraction. They'll emulate the machine, but they'll also work out details about individual applications, and bring that to the surface.
We avoid doing this a great deal, because, frankly, it's /really difficult/ and /extremely fragile/. Abstractions have interfaces, and those interfaces are stable.
Everything else is what the abstraction is *meant to be hiding*.
But we are at a moment where *have* to dig deeper -- and perhaps all this computational power can assist us.
We have an abstraction in which *what we want* -- data, patterns, power, is buried deep deep below us -- and we are trying to build tottering, tall, highly experimental alternatives of our own.
@mala Some general thoughts:
- Selling the notion that existing infotech stacks are excessively complicated isn't a hard sell. Don't linger on that long.
- Defining what specific _elements_ of that stack you're concerned with, somewhat more so. Are you tackling the whole shebang, or only parts?
- "Social computing" strikes me as a vague or poorly-known term, something of a shibboleth or blind reading, filled with meaning supplied by the reader, but not necessarily the same by all.
1/
@mala You might want to use a more concrete term, define what you mean, or link a standard definition.
- How your inspirations (Seth Schoen, Qubes, Interim/Reform) fit in here isn't clear. Spend more time on that (or find better examples?).
- Defining a goal, and sorting How to Get There From Here is a good practice. So I'm on board with that. Might specify the goal a bit more clearly.
Defining what you want to be able to do (or you want the computing environment to provide), for ...
2/
@dredmorbius Doc thank you for your advice, but I think you're confused about what I'm doing here. I'm not explaining, I'm speaking my thoughts out loud to see if anyone is already on the same wavelength.
@mala And I'm telling you that yes, there are people on this wavelength (or at least similar ones, based on uncertainty of message).
The ideas are worth developing. Developing and expressing them more clearly would help.
The stack _is_ too complex and will likely collapse (I'm getting to that in my main thread).
But yes: good ideas, shared concerns, and probably useful.
@mala ... whom, and on what type(s) of platforms (inputs, UI/UX/ performance specs, energy, bandwidth, latency, etc.)
Some years back I started thinking technology goes through a set of stages, from idea, to proof of concept, to early and mature development. At some point it hits a rococo phase -- highly embellished, highly complex.
Which creates a crisis.
There's usually either a total collapse or a what I call a "recapitulation".
With the first, the tech just dies -- too complex ...
3/
@mala ... and often overtaken (Christensenian sense) by more capable and cheaper alternatives.
The recapitulation is in the spirit of Saint-Exupery: "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
We get systems which are overly complex, and they are replaced with a return to the simple life. MSIE scrapped for Chrome, proprietary Unix for Linux. Several rounds of this with Netscape & Mozilla's browsers.
Simplify.
4/
@mala A year or so back I traced the origins of the phrase "complexity is the enemy".
I'd previously determined it was actually "complexity is the enemy *of reliability*", from an Economist article in early 1958. It was commenting on a report of British industrialisation (and safety as I recall), and general findings. (I've got the study ... somewhere.)
But the notion and its seniority seem highly significant. Complexity is ultimately a trap.
Either we break out of it or it breaks us.
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@mala There's an analogue to Chesterton's Fence here.
Rather than wondering what the _reason_ for the fence's construction being built, for ... phenomena or behavioural patterns which seem to recur or persist across centuries and millennia, it's more Chesterton's Landscape: why *does* the ground become shaped this way?
Because fighting those forces will likely prove difficult. Though perhaps not impossible.
@mala Extending this:
If you _directly oppose_ the forces in question ... you'll almost certainly fail.
If you work _with_ them to try to achieve a preferred goal or state ... your odds improve markedly.
Much social engineering seems to fall into the first trap.
I think it's environmental engineering which largely employs the "work with natural forces to designated goals" approach:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_engineering
@mala The dark side of VMs and containers is that they don't _reduce_ complexity but only _wrap it up in something_.
That complexity is still there, and you end up having to deal with it. Maybe somewhat more easily (it's all in one package), but ... say, having to update a whole mess of containers rather than OS packages.
You've also got system images and exploits of them to worry about.
@mala Containers create at least as many problems as they solve.
@mala There's often little apparent distinction between a conspiracy and an incentives-driven inevitable outcome.
Either way: you've got to change the reward basis that's generating that outcome.
@dredmorbius I VERY STRONGLY CONCUR
@mala Link on "adversarial interoperability"? I'm not finding anything promising.
> Link on "adversarial interoperability"?
don't know if you already found one, but for anyone who wanted it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
@Valenoern Thank you!
with also (in a way that I haven’t been able to entirely compose together) CHERI https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/ , and @cwebber ’s work on Mark-Miller-like capabilities.