informatics (18)

Music notation defines a choreographed sequence of musical actions to produce a desired physical result, the performance of the piece. The similarities with general process description are plenty but speculative. Instruments/staff lines correspond to roles. Notes correspond to sequential actions performed by each instrument, with its precise occurence and duration in the execution. Same for non-action, rest. The binary subdivision of time is a feature of musical notation and could prove very convenient for expressing more granular process timing. Music notation supports the concept of looping or iterating (via sectioning and those double dots) and of branching (D.C. al Coda). Music notation does not include interactivity with the performance-time output, process description does not provide for such interactivity either.

An economic toyworld: neighbouring cells exist on a plane. These cells need to consume resources to survive and grow. Resources exist on areas occupied by cells. Each cell competes for the resources it needs with its neighbours marked as "adversary", and shares the resources it needs with the neighbours marked as "ally". The decision that each cell makes to mark a neighbour as "adversary" or "ally" is not known a priori, and the decision-making process itself is unknown.

Taking clues from human thinking, I will go out on a limb and suggest that the next generation of information processing systems will manipulate structural information, not just factual data. For example, applications will constantly reorganize their own data model, as data accumulates, in order to efficiently store, query, and update the information. This will have to do with modifying the relationships between entities, and redefining what makes an entity. Automatically, and in real time.

The best model we have for an information processing system is the human machine itself. I am not saying human brain or human mind because human information processing is performed in the brain as well as in the body. A good illustration of how the two are related lies in the various states of behaviour (consciousness?) that we can be

• State of concentration: in which we can focus on one thread of thought. It seems that while we concentrate, our senses - pieces of hardware - actually filter out external stimuli to minimize the interruptions of the main thread of thinking.
• State of anger: in which the rational subsystem is overriden by what appears to be lower-level, reactive instincts. Also, the level of readiness for violent action increases, which must mean that most energy is being redirected to the motor organs of the body. Can lead to a state of fury when the rational subsystem is completely shutdown.