From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Thu Jul 18 2002 - 11:30:28 MDT
Here I'm thinking about temporal pollution as the consequence of
insufficient design. I've seen this for decades in my programming
career. To make the illustration less abstract I'll consider only a
single large and overly complex database design used by an occassional
client.
The database, though built using an rdbms product, was designed by an OO
programmer. However, no encompassing OO model was built from which
applications could be designed. It was left as an exercise for each
programmer to make the OO model from the appropriate portions of the
database. If the database had been designed around a relational model,
then this would not be too difficult. A programmer would just map the
relational design to an OO design. The lack of an encompassing OO model
essentially means that each programmer has to reverse-engineer the
relational model from the design and re-shape it to a new OO model for
his or her application. In addition, the database has since been
modified by a succession of database administrators (not designers).
It's 'succession' since eventually the DBA's become insane and have to
resign.
This database is then a 'temporal polluter'. It continually spits out
turd bits into the future. Visualize this as a long winding path strewn
with poop. From this I see much application development work as sweeping
away shit. Some programmers make the design effort to actually cart away
some of the shit, while others just try and sweep it under the rug. From
a management perspective, the important thing is that the immediate path
ahead be shit-free, or at least look shit-free, and that the path is
sufficiently unfocused to hide the shit further ahead when clients come
to call.
It then occurs to me that the whole world is on a similar path.
Trillions of past decisions made w/o consideration of the future past
the next financial quarter continually spew shit into the future.
When we talk about advanced civilizations expanding thru the universe at
significant percentages of the speed of light, we think of the speed of
light thru the vacuum of space. Perhaps we should consider the speed of
light thru shit instead. (I would assume this is much slower). Maybe
this explains the Fermi paradox.
I think the singularity will have to deal with this shit, somehow. If
the singularity ignores the shit, it will hit a wall of built-up shit
and be stopped. If the singularity takes the time to cart away all the
shit, it will be slowed considerably. If the singularity is like Liquid
Plumber and dissolves the shit, we need to keep in mind that some of
this shit is people.
Apologies for the excremental metaphors, I'm in a shitty mood as I've
been carting away shit all morning...
-Mike
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