On Change and SOA

There is a quote with which I begin most of my SOA presentations; especially those that are to a largely non-technical audience. I do not go into the deep philosophical ramification of this quote, but I hope that it leaves the seed of an idea my audiences heads that will help them better understand the value of SOA in the long run. It’s a not-so-famous quote from a very famous person. A quote consistently is forgotten in the shadow of popular, shall we say, “Machiavellian” interpretation of The Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

Charles Darwin

So, even Darwin himself has issue with the popular conception of “Darwinism” that only the strong survives. For anyone that has gone through a significant change, it’s certainly not easy. But what is the definition of change that Darwin is driving at? Is it more along the lines of a “catastrophic” change where the world changes in an instant and only those in the best position to adapt can survive? Or is the inability to catch-up and adapt to a multitude of small changes along the way over a life-time, or perhaps over several generations that makes the difference?

Change is a funny subject and certainly with respect to SOA. People have different ideas about the nature of change and how it applies to technology, their business and their overall world-view. However, since a major value proposition of SOA is “agility”, it’s important to define this to some degree. When we speak of agility we largely mean the ability to rearrange how distributed systems are integrated and how business processes are created and run. This is not the only definition but it’s the one, in my humble opinion, most relevant apropos SOA. This agility is important as it allow corporations and government entities to react quickly to market/competitive changes, new legislation or world events. And, of course, this agility is a major component is the Return-On-Investment (ROI) calculations of SOA.

From my experience, when the buyers of SOA think of change, they think of changing all the time. That is to say, change happens often, perhaps everyday, and it’s imperative to react accordingly or doom and gloom is the unfortunate result of sluggish action. Further the users of SOA think that when change occurs, it’s usually imperative to do something about it, if necessary, as soon as possible. The speed at which you are able to react to changes in your environment (and any context will do here: commercial, economic, competitive, military, legal, etc.) is just as important as how often change occurs. In fact, change might manifest itself as the realization that you’ve made a mistake in tactics or strategy and you need to fix it quickly. Obviously, if you can’t react to change faster than it happens, then you’ll be hopelessly left behind. For example, if the competitive landscape changes every 3 months, but you can only make substantive changes to how you do business in a 5 month window, then you’re in for a bumpy ride and perhaps ultimate doom. Therefore, I think that the fear factor of the rate of change dominates the thought process of decision makers when contemplating the subject. But we should remember that there are two aspects to change that we need to balance: A) how often change occurs and B) the speed at which we can react to the change. It’s my position that B is more important than A when thinking about SOA.

This SOA stuff is still not quite fully proven. And we’ve all seen silver bullets come and go and they have never quite lived up to their hype. Now were talking about ESB software and BPEL that will magically mitigate your enterprise integration woes and do it in minutes instead of months. As it turns out, what were talking about is far more than just the technology and network plumbing that connects our enterprise applications and business processes. We’re talking about the fundamental nature of business and complex distributed systems engineering. All of the SOA tools that are available on the market today simply do not do distributed systems engineering and design for you. Nor do they analyze the business implications of the way you’re integrating your components either internally or with outside business partners. The business problems you face with change happens, to me at least, seems to be the “long pole in the tent” with respect to agility. It used to be painfully true that IT department and all the consultants they could possibly hire could not effect a change to the IT infrastructure fast enough to satisfy the business owners. That is changing. Not changing quite as fast as the SOA vendors might lead you to believe, but it’s changing nonetheless. Soon months to minutes will be possible. Give it a couple more years before that kind of technology is really ready for primetime.

When you decide to make changes to react to some event or events in your world, it’s not how often those changes occur that is the issue. It’s how fast you can react to these changes when they do occur. That is what SOA agility is meant to convey. Very soon, it will be time to think about how your business decision making process will be able to keep up, not how fast your IT infrastructure can change.

I thought this was how The Matrix worked

I was browsing the internet today and came across something that I just had to comment on.

The link in question was referenced by Slashdot.

Reducing Lag Time in Online Games

Predictions from a neural network could reduce characters' jerky movements.

This just floored me.

Here are my thoughts:

If you think about it, the computer-generated world made famous in the movie "The Matrix" is simply just a big multi-player online game (MMOG), if you will. The distributed computing problems of "latency jitter" have been around since one computer talked to another across a network. The Matrix would have suffered from the same problems. There are a couple of things that really jumped out at me when I saw the movie that made the possible story line, as I saw it, really interesting.

Ultra-super-fast reaction in The Matrix:   Aside from the jumping from building to building and flying business (which is cool, but not a particularly interesting technical problem) the ability to move and react in ultra-fast time frames got my attention. I have been building distributed systems and various types of simulators (and a computer game is really just a type of simulation) for a long time. That "latency jitter" is a big problem and its causes are more complex than just network distance and packet size. One way to get around it, of course, is to predict actions in the latency window so that action/reaction pairs have parity in "game time" ... as if action/reaction was in the real world. So, the story revolves around this "Neo" dude who magically has the ability to react faster in "game time" better than anyone else. "Hmmmmm," I say. Where does this lead?

Jacking into the Matrix from "broadcast depth":   This really got my juices flowing. "Broadcast depth?" They were connecting to "The Matrix" network through a wireless connection; using a radio. And trying to do it quietly. I know a little but about trying to stay undetected while using radios and the nature of wireless networks. Good wireless network connections are "loud" or "bright". Kinda like having a big, bright light bulb on in the middle of a dark room. You're gonna get noticed. High-bandwidth connections to The Matrix while you are trying to hide from the Sentinels would be a big trick. Either way, the ultra-fast reaction time of Neo gets shakier with their WiMax-Max-Max hovercraft connection. You're gonna have piles of dropped packets and other radio interference from those crazy-cool-looking-lightning-spewing "hover pods" on the Nebuchadnezzar. Trying to stay "radio quiet" would exacerbate the problem far more as the radio would not be able to broadcast with too much energy (loudness) and that broadcast energy is proportional to your effective bandwidth and smoothness of your connection.

The Oracle:   This chick can predict the future!!! So there is a "program/being" that is a Matrix bigwig (the "Mother of the Matrix" no less) that can predict the future!!! Now we're getting somewhere. Neo's gotta go see this "future predicting" entity because he is "The One." And Neo can do all this crazy-fast-dodging-bullets and wicked-awesome-zippy kung-fu action!!! Maybe, just maybe, Neo has some ultra-special prediction algorithm that let's him act/react faster than anything else ... even Agents. Or, maybe The Matrix itself has allowed Neo to use it's special "Neuro-Reckoning" module (which would likely be more interesting).

There are Real-world robots and Matrix "programs"?:   This one slightly confuses me. So in the Matrix there are "Machine-world programs" that seems to live in it. For example: The Agents, The Merovingian, the very hot Persephone, all henchmen and S&M club-goers, The Architect, The Oracle and let's not forget that "family" of programs that were escaping on the train (not sure I quite fully understand that). Even these Matrix programs have the same engineering problems that "jacked-in" humans would have regarding "latency jitter." And having played online "continuous simulation games" for at least 20 years now, even over dial-up connections, I'm sure you'd all agree that if you were experiencing "latency jitter"walking around in your everyday life, you'd want to do something about it if you could. Perhaps adding a little "Neuro-Reckoning" would work here to smooth things out. So there are also these "real-world" physical robots as well. Maybe they have problems processing real-world event in a consistent manner as well.

Human brains are ... neural networks:   Coincidence, you say? I think not! Things might be coming together now. That whole "we use humans as batteries" story always sounded like a load of crap to me. Now, imagine that the "machines" really needed to use humans as surrogate "Neuro-Reckoning" processors, much the same way as we have graphics and physics co-processors today. There are, in fact, neural network processor boards available for computers (http://www.accurate-automation.com/Products/NNP/nnp.html) and have been for years. It seems we have never really had a great grasp on how the mind really works (read "How the Mind Works" by Steve Pinker). There are some thoughts going around that describe the brain as a continual "future predictor". See the TED talk by Jeff Hawkins (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/125). If that is the case, then much of the brain's machinery is built to do "Neuro-Reckoning" of various forms. from the split-second type needed to walk and talk and work in the physical world as well as the longer term "action/consequence" things we think about which is largely the domain of classic AI (if I get good grades in college, I'll get a good job, make good money and attract hot women). Perhaps THIS is why the machines needed the people. Perhaps the machines needed the "Neuro-Reckoning" processors that are human brains.

The "human battery" thing seems way too hokey for me and it doesn't make sense WRT the movie dialog either. In the exchange between Neo and The Architect:

Neo: You won't let it happen, you can't. You need human beings to survive.

Architect: There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept.

The whole dialog can be found here.

So, if all the humans die, the machines go on, just with really jittery interaction with their world. Painful and frustrating, but survivable indeed. Obviously they had this problem before and they understand it. Why else would they enslave the humans to be co-processors.

Therefore the real function of humans is as "Neuro-Reckoning" processors. So, the next question is: why destroy Zion and let Neo live and repopulate Zion all over again? At the risk of reading way too much into the dialog of a movie, let's look at the dialog one more time. Just before the "level of survival" comment, The Architect says:

Architect: But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it. And we have become exceedingly efficient at it. The function of the One is now to return to the source allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry reinserting the prime program after which you will be required to select from the matrix 23 individuals, 16 female 7 male, to rebuild Zion.

What the heck does "temporary dissemination of the code you carry" mean? I wondered that. The only possible explanation of "code you carry" I can think of, because Neo is really a live human, is DNA. The "dissemination of the code" likely means making babies and spreading his genetic code. Why this? I think it might mean that the machines recycle the human population and seed it with the genetic code of the individual who as the best innate "Neuro-Reckoning Processor" based on predictive speed and accuracy. Neo was chosen because of an accident of his genetics. An accident of how his brain worked. His DNA contains the "prime program". Returning to "the source", I believe, means going to a special place in the physical world where he will deposit a portion of his DNA (or maybe a part of his brain) which will then be processed and injected into the next generation of human co-processors.

The machine world knew about him, nurtured him and then allowed Morpheus to come and get him as a precursor to destroy and repopulate the humans in a massive breeding effort ("this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it").  This was to create, through a pure genetic algorithm, the best "Neuro-Reckoning" processor they could get to make their "online" experience as smooth as possible.

Holy shit. That's much cooler than whatever other story line The Wachowskis were trying follow (I totally did not get the ending of Matrix Revolutions ... maybe I'm just dumb). Maybe the end of the third movie was an indication that the "machine" entities thought it might be better to live in harmony with their "creator" race or begin to blend with then than continue to subjugate humans. Maybe. Sounds like a couple new Matrix movies are in order here. I'll have my people call the Wachowski's people and we'll do lunch.

Ok ... so why don't the machines just build neural network based "Neuro-Reckoning" co-processors and dispose of those pesky humans? Good question. Perhaps there is something special about how human brains work that the machines could not figure out. Perhaps they tried and failed.

The Architect: The first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect; it was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure.

The "dead reckoning" algorithms and their variants just didn't work or the neural networks they tried made the latency jitter worse instead of better. There are some theories that there is something special in how our neurons are made that allow for something called Quantum Computing which would allow for hyper-speed computations that would be quite useful for things like "fast complex predictive algorithms." But that's just a hypothesis. (See http://www.iscid.org/arewespiritualmachines-chat.php)


If we figure this stuff out, then it will have a massive effect on how armed conflict would occur. If we can help fix the latency problem, then we could have real-world battles run in "remote-control." The autonomous Unmanned Aerial/Ground Vehicle (UAV/UGV) are not that smart. I'd rather have people run them. The F-35 was the last manned fighter to be designed and built. But how do you fly a remote-controlled jet at Mach 3 pulling 14Gs with a 1 second latency? Not well, actually. Not something you want to do with real-would consequences. Frankly, I would prefer a war of robots run by remote control rather "intelligent autonomous" robots. I would like more control over things with big guns. I'm just like that.

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've posted. I had to take a hiatus from public postings while some possible career changes were underway. That's just about to end, and it looks like I'm clear to go back to posting my thought on various themes, the main being Federal SOA.

It's good to be back in action.