Polish vodka

At my meditation class today Spanish TV journo Enrico Perez said he’d covered the looting of the MSC Napoli down in Devon. And that many of the good folk helping themselves were Polish. Funny, ’cause when I was at the IBM talk on Thursday night the speaker flashed up a slide with a quote from Polish Nobel Peace prize winner Lech Walesa saying while the West had material wealth and freedom, it lacked faith and direction. Well, the times they are a changing for sure. Anyhow looking forward to my holiday in Poland next week, must remember to bring back some souvenirs.

The Promise, the Limits and the Beauty of Software, lecture by Grady Booch, IBM

A few random thoughts following this interesting talk. Firstly, noticed one of the few things he noticed was users producing their own aps, which I was suprised at. Secondly, his interest in not just software but software systems, and how these systems interacted and their emergent properties. So I though wow, there’s a whole world dependent on software (how he saw the next decade, and the one after as the Age of Machines so James Cameron again with his forthcoming CGI film is on the zeitgeist), this brings out a whole set of unpredictable emergent properties.

And god, I know the best brains in the business at the likes of MIT and Sante Fe are working on just these thoughts, but they are by their nature working within a certain mental framework. One which does not really allow full understanding of what emergent properties impact really means at a human level. Ah what the hell at least I’ve taken out my own form of insurance, through my studies on complexity/intuition/etc – but then I’ve ‘gone native’ with ‘no direction home’ and all the safer (counter-intuitively speaking) for it. Cheers Graddy.