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generator: pandoc
title: Proposal for a New Operating System Philosophy
viewport: 'width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=yes'
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2020-01-05T13:14:43Z
((this is a partially formed idea.))
an outline for a different operating system paradigm, similar to the CLOSOS
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white paper (http://metamodular.com/lispos.pdf)
must not be programmed in an imperative language paradigm
elaboration: C, C++, Java, Python, are not permitted. i believe
imperative languages are derived substandard and obsolete model of
computer science
perhaps this is too harsh, but i even look upon Pascal, Ada, and
descendants of ALGOL, or anything to which Djiskra is adjacent to be
founded on completely muddled and unparsimonious ideas
must not be targeted to run natively on x86/amd64 systems
elaboration: frankly, i do not care if this means no-one ever ends up
using this operating system, and it never achieves a great degree of
use. if you want to use this operating system, you cannot be using
hardware which is Intel, Microsoft, or IBM adjacent
the operating system must be developed simultaneously with the
creation of a modern LISP machine processor
elaboration: be this an ISA or otherwise, we must break hardware which
is designed to run imperative code, or is related to the old PDP-11
hardware paradigm. i personally do not care if the ISA is CISC or RISC.
the ecosystem cannot be designed around the C/x86 concept of
'computing performance'
elaboration: the concept of computing power has nothing to do with the
amount of instructions per second, or how long it takes to perform a
specific project or process. this project will not measure its success
against the criterion that it must compute as fast as possible.
the consequence of this deliberate rejection of calculation speed means
this operating system and hardware ecosystem will be orders of magnitude
more powerful than the C and x86 ecosystem, and no-one from that school
of philosophy will have even the slightest conception of how this is
possible
the CLOSOS conception of a REPL-based human-computer interface must be
adopted
elaboration: the operating system must not be designed around the
concept of a 'kernel'. the epoch of operating systems having kernels is
a dark age, whether they be monolithic or exo-kernels
the functional programming paradigm of, say, LISP, which allows one to
modify the operating system in real time, with instantaneous results,
with no rebooting, restarting, recompilation--in short, any kind of
system suspension--must be adopted
any politics, culture, and philosophy of computing which privileges
natural science and mathematics over the humanities is toxic
chauvinism and is to be condemned
corollary: any philosophy of sentience and consciousness which
privileges or eliminates rationalism, non-reductive forms of materialism
(epicurianism, lucretianism) and even idealism (like hegel, kant even
berkeley) in favour of democritean reductive or eliminativist
materialism such as physicalism, or mechanistic conceptions of
evolutionary biology, are toxic chauvinism and are to be excluded from
the project
the project will exclude itself from any relationship to capitalism
and imperialism
i'm not sure how to put this, but we will not end up like Linus
Torvalds, Moxie Marlinspike, etc - no-one on this project will ever work
for any firm of the military-ideological-industrial complex ever. no-one
will go work at Google, Twitter, Facebook, IBM, Xerox, any office of any
political state. none of the ideas we use will be implemented willingly
for capitalist industry
;; i am running out of characters, so i will be brief:
this project will be concerned with making itself aware of, and
explaining how its participants are sheltered and fed
there will be no distinction between people who produce code, and
people who document. people who do not comment their code exhaustively
(some call it 'literate' coding) will be required to explain why they
have not included a satisfactory amount of comments
the operating system will integrate the concepts of hypertext and
hypermedia into the intrinsic fabric of the system - perhaps this will
be a focus of the hardware of the LISP machine processing transistors
support for and compatibility with HTTP and TCP/IP will eventually be
phased out
there will be absolutely no support for client-side execution of code
in this operating system's telecommunication processing
the CLOSOS concept of 'single big address space' will be adopted
the CLOSOS recommendation that operating systems do not organise
themselves according to the concepts of 'processes' and 'threads' will
be adopted
this project must support the cheapest and most accessible hardware -
starting with the raspberry pi, the ESP32, and Arduino micro
controllers
this project must make the adoption of quantum computing hardware a
very important priority
(see eiichi goto's 'quantum flux parametrons')
happiness, levity, tenderness and intimacy are all constitutive social
qualities which must be adopted and prioritised in this community