Meta Science Technology
In the Apollo program we had a strong need to apply nonlinear optimization theory
in a direct application of the scientific method—an inverse problem of computing rocket
performance by matching acceleration and tracking data (the output of the rocket) to
models which simulated that data. This was called “mathematical reconstruction” and
had been used to compute rocket performance to about 0.1 percent precision on ballistic
missile flights prior to Apollo. But applications of the scientific method (epistemic
correlation or state-estimation), like nonlinear optimization in general, heavily depended
upon a calculus-based infrastructure technique—the computation of the partial
derivatives of the output of the model with respect to its input unknowns. This was a
major impediment to the posing and programming of such applications.
This led to a mathematical breakthrough that was developed in the project I was
managing, by a TRW mathematician, Mack Alford. At roughly the same time a similar
breakthrough had emerged at GE by a mathematician, Bob Wengert, whose paper,
published in the ACM communications in 1964, was later recognized as the seminal
paper in what had become known as automatic differentiation (AD). But it was not until
1991 that general awareness of this infrastructure became widely known in mathematics,
and even then it seems that it was because of our efforts in developing and marketing a
commercial language, PROSE, and a side-product GRESS (for Oak Ridge National Lab)
that this infrastructure topic came into general awareness at all. The reason was that
PROSE and GRESS could do things that MACSYMA could not—they could differentiate
algorithms in execution. Some mathematicians recognized that this was a subtle, but
key, difference. But this was only the beginning. A further innovation by Mack Alford has
become the hallmark of the new paradigm, and today remains the edge that we still have,
because its importance has not yet been fully appreciated. This is a differential geometry
coordinate transformation (DGCT) algorithm that enables the nesting of differentiation
contexts, hence the subroutine-type nesting of structured inverse problems—the
hallmark of PROSE modeling. DGCT was not included in GRESS, which was very
influential in the emergence of AD, because it was distributed by the government.
In a sense, the whole mathematics establishment thought it completely understood
calculus, when it really didn’t. Most of the research (that had led to MACSYMA, and now
a spate of other tools, such as Mathematica), had focused on symbolic manipulation
(computer algebra) rather than calculus arithmetic, which is what AD is. They had
extrapolated the direction that pre-computer math was going when computers were
invented, and they continued in that direction without realizing that it was essentially a
dead end—fulfilling needs that had been largely obviated by computer-based simulation.
Unfortunately, the path that we took in the development and marketing of PROSE—
the mainframe/supercomputer time-sharing market, turned out to be a dead-end also. It
had all but disappeared by 1983, and we no longer had the infrastructure needed to reach
the end-user scientists and engineers who had the need for this very-high-level do-ityourself programming technology. I recognized in the late 1970s that this dead-end was
ahead, and I began a quest to create new infrastructure. This took me to the Aerospace
Corporation with the intent to build a new kind of computer to become the platform for
the PROSE paradigm, which we then called “synthetic calculus”, to distinguish it from
the “analytic calculus” paradigm of MACSYMA. As AD is an extended arithmetic, like
interval arithmetic, our natural inclination was to design a computer in which we could
program its arithmetic, i.e. via microprogramming, along with the design of ASIC chips
to interface to arithmetic co-processors. Thus the design was a “blank slate” approach or
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a “writable instruction-set” computer (WISC). It was a method of directly interpreting
(emulating) high-level languages rather than assembly-level languages—the intended
purpose of microprogramming in mainstream computers. Thus continued a
technological odyssey which is best summarized in a kind of storyboard.
A History Storyboard
The following provides a summary of the whole technology history, in the form of
the bulleted list below—a kind of storyboard for the technologies that are being
discussed.
NASA/Apollo CSM & LEM Propulsion Flight Analysis (1965-1972)
 Publications:
 Flight Analysis of the Apollo Propulsion Systems, Joe M. Thames Jr, NASA Program
Apollo Working Paper 1196, March 1966,
 Performance Analysis of the Ascent Propulsion Subsystem of the Apollo Spacecraft,
John C. Hooper, III, NASA Program Apollo Working Paper MSC-03408, 1972.
 Meta Calculus (MC) Software Language:
 MC1 – Model Compiler, J. Thames, architect and implementer – First AD Language
 Software API’s:
 Apollo Propulsion Analysis Program (APAP)
 Oracle-Mafia State Estimation System
 Summary of State-of-the-Art Advancement
 Development of 1st Generation Meta Calculus Language - Non-Interpretive Virtual
Machine (Alford AD technique)
 Used for Flight Reconstruction (State Estimation) of all Apollo Engine Duty Cycles
TRW CUE (Computer Utility for Engineers) Project (1967-1970)
 Publications:
 SLANG: A Problem-Solving Language for Continuous Model Simulation and
Optimization, Joe M. Thames Jr., Proc: ACM 24th National Conf. Pp 23-41.
 The Q Approach to Problem Solving, J.D. McCully, Proc, Fall Joint Computer
Conference, 196, Pp 691-699.
 A SLANG Simulation of an Initially Strong Shock Wave Downstream of an Infinite
Area Change, D. Adamson and C. Winant, Proc, Conf. On Applications of
Continuous-System Simulation Languages (June 1969), pp. 231-240.
 MC Software Languages:
 MC2 – MODTRAN – Fortran Syntax Interpretive AD Virtual Machine (Wengert AD
technique)
 MC3 – SLANG – ML/I Macro Preprocessor to MODTRAN – User Oriented Language
 MC4 – SLANG/CUE – Addition of Relocatable Subroutines (link editor)
 Software API’s:
 ROP – Restricted Optimization Program (Nested Newton DGCT optimization)
 Oracle-Mafia State Estimation System (Kalman & Alford State Estimation)
 Summary of State-of-the-Art Advancement
 Evolution of 4th Generation Meta Calculus Language (Interpretive Virtual Machine)
 AD Propagation through numerical integration via ML/I integration macros
 Differential-Geometry Coordinate Transformations(DGCT) for Problem Nesting
 Test Marketing to TRW Engineering Groups
PROSE Inc. Startup (J. Thames, M. Robinson, P. Easley, founders)
(1972-1982)
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 Publications:
 PROSE – A Very High Level General Purpose Language, J. Thames and M. Robinson
Mathematical Software II Conference, Purdue Univ., 1974
 Prose is Poetry, Bill Musgrave, Computer Decisions, December 1974, pp 44,45
 Computing in Calculus, J. Thames, Research/Development, May 1975, Vol 26, No.
5, Pp 24-30.
 PROSE – A General Purpose Higher Level Language, Calculus Applications Guide,
Contol Data Corp. Cybernet Services, Pub No. 84000170 Rev. B (Jan 1977)
 PROSE – A General Purpose Higher Level Language – Calculus Reference Manual,
Contol Data Corp. Cybernet Servisce, Pug No. 84003200 Rev. B (Jan. 1977).
 PROSE User Group, F. Pfeiffer, various articles in IEEE Spectum, Datamation,
Electronics, 1978, 79
 Automatic Differentiation in PROSE, F. Pfeiffer, SIGNUM Newsletter, Nov. 22, 1987
 MC Software Languages (Commercial Products):
 MC5 – PROSE (Batch version – Interpretive VM – Wengert) (CDC Cyber 70 Scope
3.4 OS, IBM 370 VMS, Unival 1108)
 MC6 – TSPROSE (Interactive version - CDC Cyber 70 NOS)
 Superstructure API’s and Derived (Meta Science) Products
 MS1 – EPOC (Economic Planning via Optimal Control) – J. McDonough and D. Park
 MS2 – ALPS (Advanced Linear Programming System) – M. Robinson
 MS3 – POGOS (Power Generation Optimization System) – J. Thames
 MS4 – TRAD (Transportation Allocation Distribution System) – R. Stark
 MS5 – GRESS (Gradient Enhanced Software System) – M. Robinson
 National Network Marketing Vendors and Site Installations
 Control Data Cybernet – Cyber 70 Time Sharing & Remote Batch
 Control Data Lease Installations:
Rockwell International
Mobil Research
Tektronix
Schlumberger
Aerospace Corp.
 United Computing Systems – Cyber 70/170 Time Sharing & Remote Batch
 Information System Design – Univac 1108 Remote Batch
 Boeing Computer Services – Univac 1108 Remote Batch
Univac Lease – Hanford Nuclear Facility, Richland WA
 Sun Oil Information Services – IBM 370/Amdahl
IBM/Amdahl Leases:
Rand Corporation
Memorex
Aerospace Corporation
 GRESS Development: Oak Ridge National Labs
 Summary of State-of-the-Art Advancement
 Evolution of 6th Generation Meta Calculus Languages (Interpretive VM)
 Stabilization of Meta Calculus Paradigm
 End-User Very Rapid Prototyping (VRP) of Scientific Method Level (SML) problems
 Proof of Mentor Sales Method for VRP Application Spawning (Economic Leverage
Breakthrough)
Aerospace Research Computer (ARC)/Shuttle Flight Planning Project
(1981-1986)
 Publications:
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 The Aerospace Research Computer, A Reconfigurable High-Level Language Machine,
A. Speckhard and R. Fleming, Proc: High-Level Language Computer Architecture
Workshop, Univ.of Maryland, Fort Lauderdale, Fla 1982
 The Aerospace Research Computer: A Status Report, A. Speckhard, T. Wood, J.
Thames, Proc: High-Level Computer Architecture Workshop, Univ.of Maryland, Los
Angeles, CA 1984
 The Evolution of Synthetic Calculus—A Mathematical Technology for Advanced
Architecture, J. Thames, Proc: High-Level Language Computer Architecture
Workshop, Univ.of Maryland, Fort Lauderdale, Fla 1982
 The Structure of Synthetic Calculus—A Programming Paradigm of Mathematical
Design, B. Krinsky and J. Thames, Proc: High-Level Computer Architecture
Workshop, Univ.of Maryland, Los Angeles, CA 1984
 An Evolving Expert System of Shuttle Experiments Flight Planning, J. Thames, W.
Chunn, Presented at Vandenberg AFB Symposium
 Metacybernetics: Design Evolution of Metacomputer Host Architecture, J. Thames,
Aerospace Corporation, 1983.
 Motivation for ARC “Blank-Slate” Design (Writable Instruction Set Computer)
 Vehicle for Microcoded AD arithmetic
 Vehicle for Software-to-Hardware physiology evolution (Metacybernetics Concept)
 Prototype architecture for new 32-bit WISC (IMS) chip
International Meta Systems, Inc. Startup (G. Smith, A. Speckhard, J.
Thames, founders) (1986-88)
 Company Formed to develop Calculus Machine
 Board included R.D. DeLauer, Former DOD Undersecretary for DDR&E & TRW
Systems President
 Development of IMS 3230 Chip Set as PC-AT Scientific Co-Processor Board
 Initial implemented language was Fortran—Not Fortran Calculus (FC)
 Fabrication problems at LSI Logic – Chip ran at half design speed
 Microcoded Fortran Interpreter VM only 10 times faster than 386 Compiled Fortran
 Not deemed fast enough to justify expense of Fortran engine – FC Abandoned
 Company strategy changed to Office Automation (Smalltalk-80 language).
 Thames left IMS to develop Fortran Calculus on 386, Cray, Vax
 Obtained Dupont contract to develop FC
Digital Calculus Corporation (DCC) Startup (J.Thames, A.Stoddart,
founders, M. Robinson, B. Krinsky, principals) (1989-1999)
 Publications
 FORTRAN CALCULUS: A New Implementation of Synthetic Calculus, J.Thames, Digital
Calculus Corporation, December 1989.
 Synthetic Calculus—A Paradigm of Mathematical Program Synthesis, J. Thames, in
Automatic Differentiation of Algorithms: Theory, Implementation, and Application, A.
Griewank, and G. Corliss, Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1991.
 MC Software Languages (Commercial Products):
 MC7 – FORTRAN CALCULUS (FC) – Developed for Dupont as means of converting
PROSE programs to Intel 386, Cray, and Vax computers (1989-90). This was a
prototype which was not suitable for broad marketing because it was a limited hybrid
between PROSE’s dynamic array approach (needed for Dupont applications) and
FORTRAN’s static array approach, and did not support complex variables as PROSE
had.
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 MC8 Language Semantics and API/VM – A bifurcated (forked) semantics containing
straight FORTRAN 77 for non-calculus mode and overloaded AD arithmetic for
calculus mode. This was a non-interpretive VM that also supported complex variables.
 MC8A – SyCal (now MetaCalc) – Dynamic Array MC language for end-user veryrapid prototyping (VRP). Complete design specifications were produced and a
prototype compiler was coded and tested.
 MC8B – SC Fortran (now MetaFor) – FORTRAN 77 dialect MC language intended
for optimization re-engineering of existing FORTRAN programs (ORE mining).
Complete design specifications were produced.
 Advances and Status
 MC8 VM and library completely re-designed and coded, but not tested. It is to
become a common API for all MC8 languages, including MC8C—MetaC, MC8D—
MetaBas, MC8E—MetaPy, and MC8F—MetaPerl (M. Robinson upgraded from MC7
VM and Library)
 Prototype MC8A Compiler in FORTRAN 77 completed and partially tested (derived
from MC7 compiler–not Yacc/C based)
 The MC8 compilers and VM were designed to permit users to add new solvers to the
system library. Neither PROSE nor FC had permitted this, all solvers had to be built-in.
 All of the work on MC8 took place in 1993/94 while we were anticipating venture
funding from offshore sources that was not consummated. The targeted platform was
Windows NT. This work was essentially shelved in 1995, as I subsequently dedicated
myself to contract programming, while attempting to raise venture capital.
 Additional Advance in Business Model and Marketing Planning
 Reflection on PROSE marketing led to notion of services-oriented franchising as new
departure in Internet-based global marketing, essentially anticipating the
collaborative community business model that has now become the norm for new
ventures due to the open-source attrition of software product marketing.
 Produced two very elaborate spreadsheet forecasting tools for business planning and
several evolving business models and business plans.
Contract Programming (DCC) (1995-2001)
 Los Angeles Area Contracting (1995-1997)
 Programming in VB/Perl/JavaScript
 Web development at an ISP (Epoch Internet) – Perl/CGI/JavaScipt/Access/Oracle
 Several business projects using VB and Access
 Bay Area (1997-2001)
 Barclays Global Investors (BGI) – Backroom Index Trader Support using Prime
computers in FORTRAN and Perl/C on HP Unix platforms. (1.5 year contract).
 Three contracts with HP involving global data conversion (Perl), website development
(Perl/JavaScript), and data warehousing (Perl/Oracle).
 Honing of web-oriented programming skills and Recognition of key needs
 Need for webcode generator for next-generation IDE was big idea
 New infrastructure technology for programming and software management
 Major synergy with the planned ORE mining approach to MC8B marketing
MetacyberNet Startup (J. Thames, S.W. Duckett, S.Duckett, founders
- March 2001- December 2002)
 Reprise of metacybernetics idea of meta-compiler-oriented evolution of metacomputers, like the ARC-oriented Metacybernetcs paper.
 Web had become a meta-computer host platform (Apache) in much the same way
that meta-computers had been envisioned with the ARC as the meta-computer host.
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 In this case the meta-computer would be a web-code document that used hypertext to
emulate the functional flow of the code and tool-tip pop-ups to annotate it.
 Annotation could be added to the web-code in the form of permanent footnotes that
would invoke tool-tips and pop-up windows, and temporary collaborative notes that
send self-referencing email to team-mates. (see www.metacyber.net).
 MetacyberNet went into fetal mode in 2003.
 Funding support interrupted for a time.
 I left the company but remain on board of directors, and support continued
development by part-time staff.
 Advances and Status
 Renewal of compiler-compiler experience that I had employed extensively at TRW
and the Aerospace Corporation with recursive-descent (top-down) parser generators.
This time I used Yacc/Bison/C and augmented it with embedded perl, giving me
extensive experience with bottom-up parsers which most current grammars employ.
 Development of the web-code technology which can be employed to document the
new suite of languages, MetaFor, MetaCalc, MetaBas, MetaC, MetaPy, and
MetaPerl.
 This will be a most important technology to support rapid growth of these languages,
because the compiler will be able to generate a web-document of each compiled
program as a by-product of compilation, with tool-tips and pop-ups explaining each
language construction, solver usage, etc., and links to web-pages for online help and
reference manual, in addition to the collab-notes feature that will enable global
mentoring and consulting.
 Newer developments ongoing at MetacyberNet includes integration of CVS
configuration management methods which involve “lockstepping”—a means of
passively enforcing the annotation of code updates each time a source module is
checked-in—a software management tool for managers. This is the missing ingredient
to future web-based IDEs.
An Infrastructure Boost
The Internet and the OSS movement have turned the tide in our favor at long last.
The lack of supporting infrastructure was the reason our technology was not able to
survive and grow in the ups and downs of the computer industry of the past. Now,
everything we need is available for free.
Early last year, Dillon Scofield, Jim McDonough and I collaborated on a proposal to
the NSF (see proposal and bibliography) to tackle a quantum-dynamics model involving
differential-geometry manifolds, which Dillon and others had formulated. We had
planned to develop parallel versions of meta-calculus for this task. We had identified two
different parallel versions, MC9 that would not require distribution of partial-derivative
arrays between processors, and MC10 that would. The development of MC9 was
straightforward, but MC10 was formidable. I had studied the various processor
distribution strategies, MPI (message passing interface) and PVM (parallel virtual
machine), and I figured we might be able to build MC10 in the four years of research
allocated to the project.
Just recently, when by happenstance I was looking up Fortran Yacc/Bison
grammars on the web, I happened to find another open-source project from Russia,
which can become the new meta-science compiler infrastructure, and can serve to
integrate sequential and parallel processing into the same infrastructure. Not only did I
find a full Fortran Grammar, but full-blown Fortran-DVM and C-DVM compilers, using
standard GNU Bison, that parse Fortran or C with distribution commands (in comment
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fields), but in addition they generate Fortran 77 and ANSI C respectively with highly
standardized code generators together with MPI or PVM API calls for parallel
processing. This is just what the doctor ordered. As a result, I no longer have to create
new code-generators (compiler-back-ends) but can easily modify these to complete the
MetaFor and MetaC compilers. Not only did this solve my immediate problem of
completing the MC8 compilers, but it provided the infrastructure for MC9 and perhaps
MC10, essentially for free.
Rekindling the Aborted 1979 PROSE Upswing
In 1979 when our time-sharing infrastructure began disappearing—our technology
was on an upswing. A PROSE user group had been formed with about 50 founding
members from all over the country, and this was being reported as a milestone by several
of the trade magazines, IEEE spectrum, DATAMATION, and Electronics. I had just sold
a paid-up Univac 1108 PROSE binary license to the Hanford Nuclear Facility for
$53,000, and we were negotiating a deal to build GRESS for Oak Ridge. The problem
was that our time-sharing vendors were going out of business, so our marketing
infrastructure was vanishing.
Now, after all these years, we have the infrastructure needed to rekindle that growth
that we were seeing then. Conditions are now perfect for the right business model to
start a renaissance of the demand-pull that originally made IBM a monopoly. To
understand this opportunity, you have to understand the economic history of what really
happened in this industry in the last 40 years—why, for example, was the OSS movement
able to steal the growth momentum from the industry powerhouses like IBM and
Microsoft.
I have written a book that explains what really happened. I wrote it as a manifesto,
explaining why the economics of the industry has always been out of equilibrium, and
why the sources of need that can generate demand-pull economic growth have been
bypassed. This book is entitled Meta Science—Reviving Growth via End-User
Programming of Science. It has always been my intent to publish this book along with
re-introduction of the software on the Internet, as its aim is to assist in recruiting
partners to build a global alliance community. I have planned to sell the book in
recruiting symposia which would also market partner franchise packages including
leases of software bundled with network subnet node computers (workstations and
servers).
Business Model Considerations
For many years I have been evolving a business model for a PROSE comeback, all
the while intending to co-opt the other creators that PROSE and GRESS triggered and
nourished while we were kept out of the market by the lack of infrastructure—those, for
example, that participated in the 1991 SIAM conference. There is a lot of technology out
there that can be re-integrated into our API—not the least of which is GRESS itself,
which has been extensively evolved by Oak Ridge and its contractors. GRESS was a
crippled fork from PROSE, which we were forced into delivering in source form by
circumstances in 1979. Much of what I have been trying to achieve with various closedsource business models was a reverse-fork. I realized that if we followed a productcentered business model, and were anywhere near as successful as we potentially could
be, we might be subject to a fierce competitive war with Microsoft, which could simply
buy up all of the AD forks, and wedge its way into the new scientific growth market that
we would pioneer.
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In order to counter this strategy in advance, I studied the marketing problem very
carefully, because I knew that marketing, not technology would be the battleground.
What I worked on was a way to create and capture a mass movement. This was before
the OSS movement proved it could be done, thus confirming the strategy. I was looking
for a way to outflank Microsoft—a product-intensive enterprise in which service was an
afterthought—with a service-intensive business model against which MS would have no
credibility. But I was not intending to take the Kamikaze route of OSS.
I thought, and I am still considering it, that a non-free but negligible-price
“membership-source” approach might be the way to go. The application-spawning
leverage of PROSE mentoring was the key to building revenue-generating demand that
could give indirect support to developers, inducing them to favor a revenue-generating
restricted-source approach over totally open-source. This could be further incentivized
by run-tool differential pricing, discussed below, that would reward excellence in tool
(solver) development. We had been very effective at making sales for PROSE—even with
its onerous surcharge pricing imposed by the time-sharing vendors—because of PROSE
mentoring—a synergistic process of shared-skill partnering with clients. There is
enormous time-leverage and scale economy in this sales approach, and it is a natural
part-time occupation for software engineers, giving them exposure to application
science.
What I envisioned was a global alliance (matrix) of small, diversified consulting
firms like VARs that each contained a balanced blend of primary and secondary
creativity—e.g. physicists and programmers. Some of them would be consulting agency
franchises (technically staffed program-office-like headhunters) who would market and
manage online work for the others. The consultants’ skills could be multiplexed over
several client projects simultaneously, since R&D clients engaged in rapid prototyping
usually need only intermittent support at the working level. The multiplexing tactic of
matrix consulting differentially applies special talent to special problems, in the military
attack style. This requires systems engineering project managers, like platoon leaders,
who know how to apply talent—they are not simply administrators.
Some of the work would be long-duration software maintenance and development,
and some would be rapid-prototyping mentoring. Since most of the work would be
online, consultants could live anywhere, with flexible hours and part-time work. Each
consulting firm would adjust its skill blend of employees or subcontractors to match the
type of demand being experienced.
Because of the leverage of our software technology, the sales/consulting leverage of
mentoring, plus the agencies to find and manage outsourcing work in the systemsengineering matrix style, we in essence have a business-method-opportunity and
training package that we could sell to franchisees. We could focus on families of
professionals (Physicist-husband, wife-programmer, kids-hackers, etc.) who wanted to
start their own home-based businesses. In effect, we would be selling leveragedsoftware-based method consulting and software (modeling, application development,
design, maintenance, optimization re-engineering, etc) outsourcing to the corporate and
government world.
With the rise of VPN’s on the net, I considered extending the franchise package to
include turnkey subnet computers and software (all platforms—Linux, Windows,
Macintosh) where—just like McDonald’s or Burger-King—the alliance does all
maintenance, sys-admin, etc for its members, just like large corporate LANs—all for a
monthly franchise package lease fee—everything bundled. That way we could generalize
the Redhat-Linux choreography model to bundle everything, distributing source-code as
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required by GPL, or binary-only proprietary code. But the users would mostly just ignore
the GPL source because few of them would be interested in playing around with low-level
code. A major reason is that the general level of software skills they would be involved
with would be meta calculus and higher meta science. The maintenance and sys-admin
work would just be other types of franchises within and contracted by the alliance. Thus
only the maintenance oriented folks would see the source—those least likely to want to
modify it. All software upgrades would be automatically performed by these
maintenance/sys-admin franchises for the consultant franchises, and the consultants
would select their own maintainers among those in the alliance.
If we are able to build this alliance at the same time we re-introduce and promote
the meta science agenda (ORE mining, meta engineering, etc. - Chapter 6), I don’t
believe we need to go totally open source, but rather could implement the restricted
“membership-source” plan mentioned above, where source access was only allowed to
alliance members, albeit there could be thousands of them so you could get the bazaar
benefit of many eyeballs. Even if source leaked out, it would not likely be a permanent
nor a broad leak, and whoever the external beneficiary was would be handicapped by not
having subsequent access to upgrades.
One of the incentives for becoming alliance developers would be run-tool differential
pricing, in which charges would be levied for the link-editing of a particular tool, and the
tool revenue would be shared with its developer. Since solvers are interchangeable in the
three meta-calculus solver classes, and the user selects them by experimentation, users
are well aware of their value. Since rapid prototyping is the dominant process in R&D,
this pricing method would be regarded as fair by users and a way to encourage
competition in tool improvement. The same pricing method would be extended to
include meta-engineering components, which being models rather than numerical
solvers, could command higher premiums. This would provide a market for modeling
skills.
At this point in the discussion, it is well to point out that what we are really talking
about here is not just an alliance of small businesses, but a whole new world economic
system. There is no reason why it could not encompass the world just the way MS did
with Windows, within 5 years. In effect the current OSS movement would become its
underlying infrastructure, and current OSS members would migrate into “membershipsource” work in the upper software strata. Even further, the new alliance would become
the funding agency for the OSS movement, which as Tim O’Brien has pointed out, would
become the “Intel inside” of the alliance movement. Much of this income would come
from publishing. A major topic of the book is the concept of staple software recycling that
was the economic engine started up by IBM in the third generation that has sustained
the growth of software engineering for the last 40 years. Imagine the book recycling that
meta science will engender. All of the engineering texts of the last 50 years will be
candidates for recycling in the new genre of meta science.
To start off, all of the OSS language development projects could fork a meta-science
language product development, all feeding a common API implemented in Fortran and
C. This is just compiler work after all. In this way we could introduce MetaFor (Fortran),
MetaBas (Basic), MetaC, MetaC++, MetaPerl, MetaPy (Python), MetaJava, MetaPas
(Pascal), MetaMod (Modula), etcetera within a year of each other. Notice that I haven’t
mentioned MetaCalc in the above. I envision it as the new omni-language unification of
all of them—the ultimate end-user scientific language that would unify meta-calculus
and SQL into a single language. It would probably generate code in MetaC++ and
MetaPerl.
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The Importance of Metacybernetics
Metacybernetics is a concept that I formulated at the Aerospace Corp. in 1983,
which later became the theoretical basis for the MetacyberNet technology implemented
in 2001 and 2002. This technology is important to meta science because it is the way
that meta science can displace the bifurcation between science documentation and
software documentation with unified hypertext of both media. As meta science is an enduser programming medium, this unification is much more likely to take hold if all of the
meta science compilers implement the MetacyberNet technology. I will propose that
MetacyberNet become one of the first alliance partners. Since MetacyberNet is presently
a closed-source company, which has submitted ten patent disclosures for its technology,
it behooves us to work out a “membership-source” license structure that will pave the
way for closed-source companies to become part of the alliance.
Further Considerations
Notice that I have not mentioned politics here. Clearly this alliance would be a
political system, and factions would evolve as surely as political parties evolved out of the
original vision of the Founding Fathers. In my vision, this is an egalitarian world system.
We have all been steeped in the lessons of monopoly power, and surely this would come
to be a monopoly. It might even be the basis for a new world government model, as more
and more of the computer-based world economy is recruited into the alliance.
An offshoot of the publishing business could be a forum for debate about how this
system could evolve politically. It would naturally join the ongoing TD
(transorganizational development) debates on the web (TD Gameboard), for example.
An initial precedent to examine is the Apache Software Foundation.
Clearly this is a mega enterprise, and I certainly don’t have all the answers. My
initial concern is to collect a core team and begin the work. The OSS movement has
paved much of the way, and has been dealing with many of the political issues, such as
forking. But as I point out in the book, the OSS is steeped in secondary creativity. We
need to infuse the movement with primary creativity scientists and systems engineers, as
well as important thinkers such as Manual Castells, Frijoff Capra, Thomas Friedman,
and Douglas Kellner, to name a few.
Related Technology
For a independent summary of this technology and technologies related to it that the
business model would be designed to co-opt, see Automatic Differentiation of
Algorithms—Theory, Implementation, and Application, Edited by Andreas Griewank
and George F. Corliss. It has one of my papers in it and two papers on GRESS (note that
no credit is given to PROSE, Inc. or Mike Robinson—the original developer). This book
has the most comprehensive bibliography on the subject of AD, circa 1991, although
much further work followed.
This conference and publication was the watershed that popularized AD in the
world. Yet after more than a decade since, no commercial competitor offering the meta
science features of PROSE has emerged. I believe this is partly because the practitioners
of this technology are specialists involved in numerical analysis who apply this
technology in existing languages. It seems nobody realizes the opportunity for demandpull at higher programming levels, and the importance of DGCT in enabling these higher
levels. There seem not to be many entrepreneurs around who think in these high-level
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terms anymore. This is why I think the book is needed—to wake up the industry as to
what is possible.
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