Python (the programming language)

I have been using python for about 4 years, since my sabbatical in Palo Alto. I started teaching it in a systems programming a year or two after learning it. While initially I was a bit concerned about both how stable and healthy the language would be, and how well it would be accepted. Well, python is clearly becoming a very prevalent and popular language.

The students in my class really like it. In 15 years of teaching, I
don't think I have seen a language embraced this enthusiastically before.

Why is it so good? I think the manner it enforces indentation helps. I think the fact it's a scripting language helps. Also, there are a few data structures and operators are well delivered and that have a huge impact. In particular, I think the support for
slicing and dictionary (hash) data structures are really important. Type conversion is done well.

Python does have flaws and limits:

  

Artificial Intelligence

I am writing some general thoughts (for CNN International) about my belief in the eventual development of genuinely intelligent machines. I have little doubt that this will happen, and I suspect it will happen within my lifetime. I do not believe that machine intelligence will suddenly emerge, but that it will incrementally develop just as biological intelligence struggled to evolve in fits and starts through the evolutionary tree. That said, there are resons to believe that there may be a distinct threshold above which intelligence can be clearly manifested. Even humans took a long time to capitalize on the biological wetware (our brains) once it evolved -- it appears there was a long period in which human behaviour was only incrementally distinginguishable from that of their biological predecessors, and the intelligence we identify with sprang up partly as a cultural phenomenon in the last several tens of thousands of years (see "The Dawn of Human Culture").

In fact. many of what were once the benchmarks for intelligence have been reached or surpassed by machine systems: arithmetic, the game of checkers, therom proving, checkers, planning, basic visual processing and speech understanding (not language understanding). So far, this just means that our original benchmarks were too simple, but it also suggests that computer systems are gradually encroaching on what it means to be intelligent.

How will the advent machine intelligence make us feel? Well, how do we feel about the fact that long division (which was once the sole province of the intellectual elite) can be better performed by disposable calculators? My own comments need to wait for another day. Alan Kay, however, has a nice comment on this:
"Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower." (I organized a visit by Alan here to McGill a few years ago. I think he has a policy of making pithy epigrammatic statements.)

  

Braver new world: super-DMCA legislation

The Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the USA is already a repressive body of legislation that stifles innovation concentrates wealth at the expense of personal freedoms. Now an even more oppressive piece of legislation is being proposed that will allow extreme penalties as well as actions without due process against people who make unauthorized copies. The penalties for making posting over $1000 if material online include 10 years in prision. This would become possible as part of a proposal to define a new crime related to copyright infringement. (Draft document here, PDF). Take a look, for comparison, at the penalty for stabbing somebody or punching a grocery clerk in the face. This sugests that there are forces in the USA that would like to shift the value system from protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to protecting vested interests, big companies and the rich. Don't let this happen!

In Canada, it's getting closer. See the more recent post on this site.

You should also note that in addition to the DMCA and this...

  

Freedom to Publish

In the novel 1984 George Orwell had a prescient vision of the risks posed by information technology to society. It was published by in 1950 when TV barely existed and the world supply of computers could be counted on the fingers of one hand. On one hand, the fact that Orwell could envision oppression via technology shows how visionary and brilliant he was, on the other hand, it shows how natural and obvious the oppressive instict is in human beings. Long before the computers, surveillance and data mining, people could see where things might lead. Considering this natural tendence to impose control, we must remain constantly on guard against the tendency to oppress and limit freedom, especially as it becomes easier with technology. What makes this intersting and challenging, however, is that in our desire to avoid oppression we must also be careful not to swing the other way towards nihilism, anachy and a loss of values -- a charge equally apt in today's world. Some "oppression" is a good and necessary force. Each one of us must constantly suppress various urges every moment, starting with the simple bilogical imperatives.

That middle ground between self expression and freedom on one hand, and quality, taste, value and coherence on the other is impossible to determine in a universal manner. To find that middle ground should be a constant struggle. I believe that if you believe you have really found it, then you gave given up thinking about it and now risk going too far one way or another. The culture we live in has developed values and judgement partly as a distillation of many years of reflection, and these are often glibly discarded without much reflection. On the other hand, the quite below is also quite apt.

"However, the most important resistance to 1984 is that of each citizen in his own life. The repudiation of conformism, of the rampant complacency, of the fear of offending, and of political correctness and a skeptical attitude toward the received truth of our times will go a long way in distancing us from 1984.

Ultimately, 1984 is a society that negates the ideals of freedom of thought, personal independence and conscience. These are precisely the values each of us must adopt. The repudiation of conformism, of the rampant complacency, of the fear of offending, and of political correctness and a skeptical attitude toward the received truth of our times will go a long way in distancing us from 1984.

Ultimately, 1984 is a society that negates the ideals of freedom of thought, personal independence and conscience. These are precisely the values each of us must adopt." -- Julius Grey