Message from Paul Prueitt: 12/13/2003 6:57 PM
Dick
We understand the history you are providing ..
http://www.bcngroup.org/python3/eleven.htm
We appreciation the contribution you have made to this history.
Our thought is that Plato was an early form of the question / answer paradigm that we see also in the Mark X series of knowledge bases that you have developed over several decades.
I know of another significant technology based on the Acappella patent 2003 ( www.acappellasoftware.com ) that has some similarities to my understanding of what Mark 3 might be like in real flesh and blood. And there are others that use the question of the user to motivate the behavior of the knowledge base.
But there is an additional thought that we, the BCNGroup Founders, are talking about.
Python is a simple language that is easy to learn, and yet once learned allows the student to see into how computer programs work.
What our group is looking for is the development of a language that is a re-invention of Python into a new language that is specific to the task of teaching about the knowledge technologies.
A significant community is dedicated to the principles of Open Source,
and most Python code is Open Source. But we are all aware of the economic
failure of Open Source - at least up to now.
Brad Cox has what might be the solution, a practical means to reinforce
the notion of ownership at the software component level so that an economic
reward can be incremented back to the developer of good code.
The BCNGroup Founders have made Brad’s work the economic foundation to the Knowledge Sharing Core concept.
Brad Cox developed Objective C and was one of the first, and has always been the most coherent, of the authors of the Object Oriented methods. He is struggling with Zope and Python like languages
in the development
of a virtual school software system.
He also has have developed and ready to go the micro-transaction banking system described at:
http://www.virtualschool.edu/ile/
So the completion of a mathematics and computer science education proposal to the NSF might serve a number of issues.
Expecting something for the NSF is , well ... I will be positive and not say what was on my mind. But our goal is to convince a group of US Senators that a National Project to Establish the curriculum for a science of knowledge systems.
http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/KSF/nationalProject.htm