On Fri, 24 Sep 2004, Oscar Rambla wrote:

> Sorry for this off topic matter, but its friday, the list was rather quiet and
> I thought maybe someone likes to divagate on this.

i don't know how the others feel about off-topic issues here, but want to
act least react a little, as this touches a(n hopefully strengthening)
long-term interest of mine. seems that Graham just send a nice piece on
the human and practical programming side - so i'll put this that relates
more to the so-called natural:

> For example, some human internal organs, mental capabilities and
> abilities are assymmetrically localized.

indeed.

> In his theory affirms that simple organisms are more symmetric than complex
> organisms. Complex organisms maintains symmetry in what is necessary for
> movement, attraction or other conditionants while tend to become
> more assymmetric in other aspects to improve its effectiveness.

did he talk about specialization?

> Do you agree with this theory?
> Do you think is applyable to Quixote applications?

in general, i find the whole notions of characteristics of systems, and
the tendency to try to transfer lessons / observations from totally
different areas to others .. well, interesting / problematic. when was
trying to do some basic research (on designing web services), looked into
the literature on biologically motivated designs in information systems,
but am not yet sure what to think of it. one line of work i found
particularily interesting there is Luis Rocha's,
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/lr_form.html

one way is to look from the typical/classical object-oriented viewpoint.
there the thing that has been troubling me are the origins of the notions
of inheritance / specialization, with the obvious terminological
connections to biology. does somebody know where that comes from? talking
with some humanists, they've pointed out that it does not necessarily come
from biology, but is just the common way to classify thing in general
(more related to philosophy).  last spring, i finally got to read some of
the original Simula articles from the '60s, and while that was interesting
for other reasons it didn't really give too much insight on this.

have you read the software design patterns literature? dunno if symmetry
has been addressed there, nor what it really means for web / software
systems, but in general there seems to be some basic rules for structuring
... like the unix-principle that Graham mentioned. those might be
interesting to compare with the understanding of biological, and otoh,
human/social systems .. better knowledge of the similarities and
differences wouldn't hurt.

ok i guess i'm ready for the weekend too :)

> -Oscar Rambla

~Toni