Summary of February, 2003
February, 2003 saw the following major themes: network science, complexity science, and TV program formats.
In the beginning of the month, I read Tony Buzan’s Use Your Head and Erlend Loe’s Naïve Super. The former suggested that when speed reading a book, you should first decide how much time you are going to spend on it. The latter was the first novel I speed read, something I hesitated to do, but which turned out to work just fine.
Linked continued to influence me, and I thought about visualizing the internal structure of software as networks. I played with a tool called Small Worlds (which was bought by IBM in July and will be incorporated into the Rational suite of products).
Although I’m convinced of the usefulness of using a tool such as Small Worlds (or whatever it will be called by IBM), I didn’t arrive at a satisfying conclusion, so I might pick up this thread in the future:
- Software networks (of February 7)
- Excitatory dependencies (of February 8)
Then I thought again about literary genres and software architecture, something I thought about in July, 2002. Baldur Bjarnason responded. Genre theory is an interesting subject and definitely something I want to read more about.
Then I began reading M. Mitchell Waldrop’s great book on complexity theory, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos:
- Diminishing and increasing returns (of February 18)
- Citicorp and Santa Fe Institute (of February 18)
- Complexity (of February 22)
- Complexity vs. Linked (of February 24)
In January, 2003, I thought about the process of making TV series, which probably led to thinking about TV formats, such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, and specifically what form of documentation is created for the licensees of a format. I talked to a development manager at one of Sweden’s TV companies, but I would still want to know more about this:
- TV formats (of February 21)
- TV formats #2 (of February 26)
Then I thought about the obsession of rules and formality in software development, something that still puzzles me. It clearly has to do with the software crisis and how people react to pressure.
Besides this, I mostly blogged links and short quotes to all kinds of things.