4. In Praise of Diversity – Ideas 2003: Jaron Lanier On Software Design – CIO Magazine Jan 1,2003
“The thing I’m interested in now is a high-risk, speculative, fundamental new approach to computer science. I call it phenotropics,” says the 42-year-old Lanier. By pheno, he means the physical appearance of something, and by tropics, he means interaction. Lanier’s idea is to create a new way to tie two pieces of software together. He theorizes that two software objects should contact each other “like two objects in nature,” instead of through specific modules or predetermined points of contact. With this type of protocol, there would be no previous agreement or expectation regarding the character of the exchange. Each software object would be responsible for “learning” how to interact with the other.