Re: java: vending machine software (long)

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

TA:
>The most interesting thing I've heard along these lines was described
>in a talk by Matthew Fuchs.   He suggested the idea of using something
>like SGML (of which HTML is a subset) to communicate between smart
>agents.
>
..
>Further, the system can be built out of layers of objects that give
>meanings to various keywords.  Consider a bunch of keywords and
>associated Java applets that understand dates and times (they know about
>timezones and daylight savings and weekends and so forth).  Another
>level of objects knows how to manage schedules, and still another
>layer knows about travel arrangements.  The system used by a particular
>airline uses all these objects to provide an interface for communicating
>with customers (or their automated agents).
>
>Java seems ideal suited to be the active lubricant in such a system.

yes, I didn't get into some of what you are talking about in my essay,
but that's something very significant that is going on right under
our noses this minute: the formatting of vast kinds of data into
SGML systems.  I have a book called "writing SGML DTDS". it seems
pretty boring-- it talks about how to create tags and all that, and
doesn't give a "big picture scenario" of what this technology can
lead to-- which is unfortunate, because the end result of it it
all is extremely significant.

the framework I like to use to describe this technology is to portray
it as the steps that are necessary to create the "paperless office".
this was a holy grail that computers were supposed to deliver many
years ago, and many have noted the irony that the exact opposite seems to have 
happened in that computers are generating mountains of paper.

it is clear that to achieve the paperless office, many, many standards
have to be devised an adhered to for the formatting of information in
documents.  SGML is intended to be a high-level total overview 
architecture that can encompass all document definitions created by anyone,
and allows embedding of different formats within formats, so that a 
massive hierarchy of interchangeable formats can be constructed.

EDI or electronic data interchange format for billing that many companies
are using (I don't know anything about it I assure you) is an example
of the kind of standardization that is gradually taking place.

whether Java is the "ideal language" to handle all this I think remains
to be seen. I expect amny new languages and concepts to be developed
that focus on the creation/manipulation of document standards. an
object-oriented paradigm will be important in this endeavor, though,
I agree. your idea of relating "documents" and "objects" I definitely
expect to see as a strong emerging paradigm. 

a document will be thought
of as an "object" whose local data are the blanks in the form, and the
document can perform some operations on that data using its "methods".
also the hierarchy you described is very nicely imposed on documents:
a very general "bill" class might have only a "payer/payee/amount/desc"
fields, and all kinds of comkpanies would create their unique 
subclasses that describe their own internal company forms. general
methods would be overridden, etc.

what this is all moving toward, imho, is a kind of  "information assembly
line". imagine every task in the world today that involves nothing
but shuffling information from one form to another, in a way that 
requires "logic" but not human intelligence (i.e. could be programmed
if the data were available in digital form and inputs/outputs were hooked
up properly). I predict that wherever this is the case, there is going
to be a gradual motion toward automization of these processes. 

also note that the concept of an "object" tends to become far less
local and more universal. there may be "objects" "out there" in cyberspace
that you can manipulate and subclass as if they were sitting on your
own computer. but because they are so universal, other companies or
individuals anywhere on the planet may be using the same objects. at
various levels in the hierarchies of data, it is all interchangeable
and related.

this all suggests an amazing new collaboration between 
companies to create standards where everyone benefits. in today's
system, companies tend to behave as if they are isolated entities who
all survive at the expense of the other. I believe this concept will
largely dissipate as companies see themselves as fitting into special
places in a characteristic "niche" of the ecosystem of business. they
will see themselves as components in a massive computing system that
interface to each other via cyberspace. cyberspace becomes then a
kind of nervous system for an entire nation (which it already is,
just not as overtly).

it is quite surprising that given how far we are into the Information Age
how much information and data has resisted the gradual trend toward
automization. many, many companies are interested in "reengineering"
for this reason: they want to take full advantage of technology, but
realize how incredibly difficult this is to do when you have 
decades of "status quo" type procedures calcified into the system that
tend to be hostile & resistant towards automization.
the job of turning documents into data is actually quite herculean--
we have a tendency to see it as trivial but the amount of labor involved
in "conversion" can be enormous. the payoffs are very significant once
you have converted your atoms to bits, though.

the corporations of the future I imagine will have incredible fluidity
without the cost in lack of security. in other words, they will
be able to dynamically "re" configure themselves to suit the instant
because they will have highly organized and malleable 
"central nervous systems" that govern the information flow within them.
these systems will be built out of massive hierachies of document
format standards and enormous, seamless flows of data.

someday, I think every form that is in existence will have an
electronic description similar to SGML syntax, and every aspect of
data shuffling in companies and between them that can be automated,
will be.  its going to be quite awhile before this achieved however.

thanks for your reactions to the writing, which have caused a whole new
avalanche of neurons to fire.. <g>