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Innovation on the Edge?
MCassatt asks: "It's a truism in many fields that breakthroughs come from the edge: the scandalous Impressionists become pretty pictures for posters and umbrellas; the world of science fiction becomes the world of science.
The wonderful, the fantastic, and the mad of today are tomorrow's mainstream. Are there examples of this in computer science? Not extreme programming, but extreme programs?"
Gnutella
Bit Torrent
Freenet
Reiserfs
Linux Kernel
Open SSH
Encrypted Filesystems
GnuPG
At least in my opinion p2p and crypto are the edges in coding right now. Both can be hugely successful if you succeed in writing them properly. They can also be a huge failure if done improperly. Personally, I'm amazed that there aren't more p2p worms/remote exploits out there. Every now and then there are a few breaks in crypto from a weird angle, but in general they have been very successful as well.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
To this day this prolific timewaster has left a very impressive swath of damage to production. If that isn't extreme, then I don't know what is.
Lots of fun little things to place with at Google Labs.
http://www.lmcdms.com/
DMS is the US Government's international secure email implementation. At a glance it looks like a bunch of crappy obsolete code and operating systems trying to do email, but when you stop and think about what is DMS is doing, it is pretty damned impressive.
Much of theoretical computer science is all about some crazy professor looking at a problem that he thinks is cool, without worrying about its utility. Then in a few years, somebody finds a practical application.
Some guy thinks one day, "Life is just the replication of information. Computers can do that". We all love to hate them, but you could argue that conceptually, computer virii are as "alive" as organic virii. If that isn't an etreme idea, what is?
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
"...the scandalous Impressionists become pretty pictures for posters..."
I dunno... impressionist programing? It would only look like code from far away.
Besides, Microsoft already makes programs that look useful from far away but crappy close up.
"Computer space" is the object of study of computability theory. Turing Machines, Post Machines, the \lambda-Calculus, the Language of WHILE-programs, function (morphism) composition, etc. These are all theories about the nature of computer space. Since the Church-Turing thesis and complexity theory pretty much cover the fundamental physics of the space, instead we worry about different ways to visualise and apply the space. It's much closer to engineering than physics is style, but you must admit that there's some similarity.
I'd like to put forward this Turing machine, implemented using the rules of Conway's game of Life. It astounded me when I first saw it, and it astounds me still. Have a look at some of the components using the provided applet. If you've ever played with Life, you'll know how hard it is to create anything non-random at all.
Sweetcode often has interesting pieces of programming too.
I think running the Microsoft Word paperclip applet should be considered an extreme sport, at least. I think, on a serious note, that more and more people are going to start using apps that allow them to view data constructs in visual terms, like the network map thingamajig I saw for instant messaging the other day. It allows you to see circles, cliques, newbies, etc., and how they're distributed through the IM world. New ways of looking at data for those visual types.
Check out the Avalon project. If is a framework encompassing the ideas of Component Oriented Programming and Separation of Concerns.
Also, read about Aspect oriented Programming, which "modularize[s] crosscutting aspects of a system" by allowing a programmer to specify "aspects" of a class or component such as logging, security, remotability, and more.
Let's review, shall we?
VisiCalc ...and its successors spawned a trillion dollar industry, made Steve Jobs a billionaire, and almost singlehandedly eliminated the profession of "bookkeeper".
WordPerfect ...ditto for the profession of personal secretary. Only executives use them now.
Mosaic ...let's see. Trillion dollar industry, hundreds of business models, hundreds of thousands of businesses, millions of lives and careers changed... seems pretty extreme to me.
I could go on, but you get the idea...
Recent History:
How about an operating system written as a substitute for massive commercial systems, written initially by one guy, then by a bunch of people collaborating, without direct compensation, via email? (Linux)
How about a system to allow anyone with a computer and a pipe to publish structured hypertext and images for all the world to see? (Mosaic)
How about a system for independent individuals to type to each other in real time? (talk, IM)
How about a system for people without a static IP to share files? (P2P)
How about a system for people to contribute spare CPU cycles to a collective social work? (Distributed.net, SETI@Home, Folding@Home)
The Future:
What's on the edge now that will be huge tomorrow? If I knew that I'd be in angel capital. (speaking of equity, how about online stock trading systems?)
What's on the edge and either hasn't found a niche or isn't sufficiently advanced yet (and may never be)? 3DUIs, Freenet, Complex Adaptive Systems, Face Recognition; and those are less than a cube in the iceberg.
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When ever you use the "copy" program you are accomplishing the oldest and dearest dream mankind has ever had - you are both having your cake and eating it too.
The ability to infinitely replicate something, each copy being absolutely identical to the first, but also infinitely distributable to however many desire it, is earth shaking.
This is the major thing human kind must learn to deal with into the future. More then any other single event or "discovery" the lowly copy program (and it's brother "paste") will have greater effect on the way we view our world then any other thing.