AI has no body New Year in The Netherlands has always had a problematic association for me because of an experience I had as a small child. My parents and I stayed at my grandmother’s for the occasion, and I was put to bed on New Year’s Eve being to young to be able to stay up. At midnight hell broke loose. The room in the apartment of my grandmother where I slept looked out over the sports grounds where the main fireworks event took place each year. It was the most terrifying thing...

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer. Written by Robert Epstein, a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California. He is the author of 15 books, and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. No matter how hard they try, brain scientists and cognitive psychologists will never find a copy of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the brain – or copies of words,...

PETER BELANGER/INTEL Intel’s Bold Plan to Reinvent Computer Memory (and Keep It a Secret) John von Neumann (during the Manhattan project, 1940-1945). Public domain, Link We all read John von Neumann’s groundbreaking paper “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” back when it was published in 1945, did we not (just joking)? You should. And read it well, because not many people did (I know of no-one). OK, I admit that some of the mathematics is above me as well, but one thing stuck with me: there...

The main problem of the technological focus of computers is precisely that: that it is seen as a technology. Because of that, technologically savvy people are attracted to it, and arising problems in all areas of life are discussed within a technological mindset. Our current society is very much coloured by technology. Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history, pointed out the dangers of this focus in several works of cultural criticism during the rise...

Conway’s Game of Life Prompted by an old discussion on Reddit (link expired), kicked off by the question: “Please explain OOP to me in the language of a five-year old”, I found myself musing on the reasons computing seems to stay stuck in the Middle Ages. It is not for lack of great minds or vision. In fact, I have the impression, the problem seems to be that nobody ever seems to read anything. Why is that? Is there some kind of unspoken consensus that, since we are in the area...

Introduction Realising a consistent approach in your implementation projects is quite a challenge. One of the tools I have applied successfully is to introduce some kind of reference architecture or a reference model, or even better: both, in a reference implementation. This document outlines a high-level application architecture that I have found to be very useful in building such a reference implementation. Goal I try to provide an umbrella presentation of application architecture principles. Target...

This article introduces a complete, navigable and clickable representation of the ArchiMate metamodel standard. The model is created using UML. This is not because I wanted to translate ArchiMate into UML, but because UML should be well-suited to define a language such as ArchiMate in. And after all, also the standard itself defines its metamodel using something that looks like UML. In fact I think the ArchiMate forum should decide to formally specify ArchiMate in UML and “own” the...

Introduction Most people I work with think of architecture governance as something imposed upon the populace from above. They see architects operating from a kind of control tower: architectural guidelines and rules, constantly fighting to uphold the norms they themselves concocted. I do not think that will work in the long run. For me, architecture governance works much better when it self-organises from the roots. For that, a simple model has been created that I would like to share with...

Introduction This article attempts to reconcile the ArchiMate modelling language with Business-Centred design principles, principles I strongly advocate. ArchiMate as a language (or, as some would say, a grammar, since a rigid definition of its semantics does not exist) is very “traditional” in the sense that: it is very IT-centric it explicitly invites the modeller to use a data-centric world view it does not exploit the power of distributed systems (for example as it should be doing with...

As in nature, as in society, as in business: it is a tough world out there. Only the strongest, fittest, best survive. You need to have talents, in terms of raw strength or in extrovertness or blind ambition. If not you will not make it in the world, be it the biological or the business world. This assumption, intimately linked with a kind of innate, imprinted mindset of neo-classical economics, prevails the attitude of most if not all business decision makers. A few days ago I was at a meeting...