Mirror worlds

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1. cratermoonApr 2023
   Mirror Worlds (the book) is a great read. I have it on my shelf next to his other book, Machine Beauty. I didn't know he was a victim of the Unabomber, that's unfortunate.
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2. protomythDec 2019
   Superdistribution was a pretty good book. I guess we went a really different direction after the Visual Basic component years. I keep coming back to Superdistribution, Visual Basic components (VBX/OCX), and the concepts from Mirror Worlds[1] (tuples spaces) and wonder if there is still some paths to look at down those roads.

   1) Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean

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3. evanweaverOct 2018
   “Mirror Worlds” by David Gelernter if you want a weird CS book that contains genuine insight.
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4. protomythJul 2018
   If you are interested in tuple spaces then I recommend reading David Gelernter’s “Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean” and any Jini documentation you can get.
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5. wallflowerApr 2009
   I've always been inspired by David Gelernter's Mirror Worlds and LifeStreams projects. You can see parts of his vision/ philosophy in Apple's Time Machine backup UI and even Twitter:

   http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html

   "Life is a series of events in time -- a timeline with a past, present and future. The events of your life and the memories in which they're recorded aren't parceled out into directories, or typed shoeboxes. An information beam incorporates documents of all types into one (focussable) beam. The question "where did I put that piece of information?" always has exactly one answer: it's in my beam.

   Life isn't static. New information arrives constantly; time flows. So my beam has to flow. Or, in other words: the elements that make it up flow. They move at the rate of time. In this respect the structure is more of a "stream" than a "beam."

   The stream has a past, present and future. The future flows into the present into the past. If I've posted an appointment or reminder in the "future" part of the stream, eventually it flows automatically into the present where I'll notice it and be reminded, and then into the past where it's part of the permanent, searchable, browsable archive.

   When I acquire a new piece of "real-life" (versus electronic) information -- a new memory of (let's say) talking to Melissa on a sunny afternoon outside the Red Parrot -- I don't have to give this memory a name, or stuff it in a directory. I can use anything in the memory as a retrieval key. (I might recall this event when I think about Melissa, or sunny afternoons outside the Red Parrot.) I shouldn't have to name electronic documents either, or put them in directories. And I ought to be able to use anything in them as a retrieval key.

   I can "tune in" my memories anywhere; I ought to be able to tune in my information beam anywhere too, using any net-connected computer or quasi-computer.

   Those are the goals of our lifestream (or "information beam") project. In our view of the future, users will no longer care about operating systems or computers; they'll care about their own streams, and other people's. I can tune in my stream wherever I am. I can shuffle other streams into mine -- to the extent I have permission to use other people's streams. My own personal stream, my electronic life story, can have other streams shuffled into it -- streams belonging to groups or organizations I'm part of. And eventually I'll have, for example, newspaper and magazine streams shuffled into my stream also. I follow my own life, and the lives of the organizations I'm part of, and the news, etc., by watching the stream flow."

   http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Interviews/g...

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6. pchristensenJul 2008
   Single Page link: http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/6354

   The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance - Henry Petroski (Knopf, 1989)

   Mirror Worlds; or, The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean - David Gelernter (Oxford University Press, 1991)

   A New Kind of Science - Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Media, 2002)

   Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - Douglas R. Hofstadter (Basic Books, 1979)

   Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age - Paul Graham (O'Reilly, 2004)

   The Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman (Basic Books, 1988; paperback reprint, 2002)

   The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder (Little, Brown, 1981)

   The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing - David Kahn (Macmillan, 1967; revised edition, Scribner, 1996)

   Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time - Dava Sobel (Walker, 1995)

   The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes (Simon & Schuster, 1986)

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