Unconventional architecture

Abstract

Just as one-way streets sometimes make it inconvenient to get from here to there, the primitiveness of computer operations and the procrustean inflexibility of systems and devices can make it difficult to get from having an information-processing problem to having a computer's solution to it. Conventional architecture is a one-way street which makes it easy to solve a very limited class of problems and difficult to solve the rest. Conventional architecture reflects itself into programming languages and into the way in which we use computers. If we attack current deficiencies by changing architecture, then we can expect monumental changes to be required in software and methods of use as well. It has been suggested that computers which are simply much faster and much cheaper will relieve the difficulties. Speed and economy do nothing to relieve the primitiveness and inflexibility of computers. They merely make the cost of such agony smaller and available to more people.