> That's a great question. Above all our Croquet related efforts, the
> message about how we're different might be most important.

> Until we can demonstrated it more fully, perhaps using analogies is best
> for explaining such differences. Note, many of the possibilities I described
> are facilitate by the architecture of Croquet, not necessarily already
> implemented in it's current version (like the exchanging of program behavior
> through sharing source code). Also, I've not tried Wonderland, so some of my
> comparisons and assumptions might be inaccurate and I welcome anyone to
> correct me.

> Smalltalk is like the modeling clay of computer languages. You can easily
> make a change anytime and anywhere and at several places at the same time.
> But, it's easy for anyone to bump it and mar it. Other languages are like
> sculpting a stone sculpture. You can make only the changes that a
> chisel/tool can make and only one place at a time. The changes are slow and
> mistakes are hard to fix. But, it's also hard for anyone just touching it to
> mar it. The 3D part is like dressing the sculpture. It's easy to change
> clothes and accessories but the clothes have to fit the stone sculpture. If
> you want to try different sized clothes, it's easier to change the whole
> sculpture with the clay sculpture. You can chop up the stone sculpture into
> modules, but now you have a lot of separate piece to keep track of and make
> sure the person dressing the sculpture can keep track of the pieces as they
> change the clothes too. If you pile on too many clothes, the weight of the
> clothes may overload and bend the clay sculpture against our will, while the
> stone sculpture can hold a tremendous amount of clothes (as long as they are
> all the proper size for each layer). Note, we can bake the clay sculpture to
> be very close to being as strong as the stone one, but we lose the
> flexibility after that for the dressers, but we can make many of them rather
> quickly and bake them at different sizes.

> It is easier to hand a blob of clay to a friend and have them start
> modeling right away, wherever they're at. One can hand their friend a stone
> and then a chisel but you'll have to train them, fix their mistakes, move to
> a safer area away from others, and they risk cutting themselves. If one has
> a 1,000 friends, it's a bit easier to hand out a 1,000 pieces of clay than
> 1,000 stones, chisels, training time, etc. It is easier to attach everyone's
> separate clay sculpture together into one sculpture, but it might not look
> like what everyone had in mind and may require extra adjustments. It is
> quicker to assemble everyone's separate stone sculptures together into a
> united sculpture if it is planed in exact detail from the beginning and
> everyone sticks to the plan, which rarely happens and the subsequent
> adjustments are harder to make in the stone.

> Take Sun's Wonderland for an example now. Java may support many open
> source projects and its specification may be open to view. But, it has been
> very hard to ask Sun to change the Java language to meet modern needs. Java
> requires lots of extra tools to keep track of its pieces. Even if you can
> change the Wonderland code and change the Java language, who is willing to
> change all the servers to meet your specific change request? The culture and
> structure is to write a few times, read mostly, and get it right the first
> time because IT administrators and or local hosted server users don't like
> to change server software and take down access to the service while they are
> doing so. It affects too many people.

> Smalltalk lets you create and share the content but the behavior, the
> code, can be shared as easily as the content. Croquet will be like a
> "live-running-software-wiki" where you can change eachother's world behavior
> while you're in world as easily as you can share a text document or edit a
> wiki, with a security structure in place like a wiki's pages or file
> uploads. Few, if any, server changes would need to be done by server admins.

> Second Life and Wonderland have gradually added new media formats,
> in-world audio, in-world video, etc. But these media are like strangers in
> the 3D model world, requiring version changes and a new download of the
> client and server software as they are added. There is no "non-linear video
> editing" in the 3D worlds for example. Can you edit the sound and store it
> by manipulating 3D objects? Text editing in SL's shared experienced 3D space
> is almost impossible. Usually text must be converted to graphics or only
> edited in the 2D heads-up display (HUD). Can you write a 2D drawing program
> that exists in the shared 3D world of SL? 2D graphics is not a native media
> format in these 3D worlds.

> Because everything is composed of "living objects" in Smalltalk, these
> artificial barriers are almost eliminated. One will be able to edit text or
> animat 2D graphics in a 3D world as easily as one does in a 2D world. Text,
> sound, and 3D objects can be attached to each other, while the system is
> running, in novel and, as yet, unimagined ways. New media yet to be invented
> will be just as easily handled w/o having to rewrite the entire UI to
> accommodate it with a "wait for the next version to be released to the open
> source community". Once someone accomplishes the import of the new media in
> one Croquet session, they should be able to immediately share the code for
> it with any other Croquet node that needs to import/manipulate that media.

> This vision does require that everyone be willing to edit code as easily
> as they edit their blog or Facebook site. But that can also be delegated by
> a "trusted friend network". The PC computer became much more popular when
> almost anyone could create a program with Visual Basic and share it with
> anyone else. Before then, the commercial software was just not that
> interesting. With the advent of the PC and Visual Basic, every niche
> community could make their personal computer a tool for their specialty. Not
> so with the midrange or mainframe computer. Many novel ideas could be
> explored, broadly shared, and either thrown away or kept with a PC, but not
> a server.

> Compare creating a website with a website editing software vs. a wiki.
> They both publish information in text and pictures to a web server, but one
> is more dynamic, interactive, easier to fix small mistakes frequently,
> easier to share the load of creating a single page among others. The other
> may allow one to be more accurate and precise control over the content, but
> adds several stages to go through to accomplish it. You have local storage
> of your copy and few people see that copy. You edit it privately then post a
> mostly finished product to the server if you have enough authority. Fixes
> require you to copy the page back down if someone else edited it and repeat.

> When you say you want to use an "open source stack" the word stack implies
> all the levels one must install and maintain and which many may not be able
> to extend all the levels even if they are open source. Take the LAMP stack
> for an example. Would your team want to edit the Linux code? the Apache
> code? the MySQL code? the syntax of the PHP or PERL language? You can only
> really edit the configuration files and even those have different rules for
> every level in the stack. In Smalltalk, the stack is just one single layer,
> all editable while it is running... data storage format and technique, web
> server, OS type functions can easily be edited and even the syntax of
> Smalltalk can be molded into mini "domain specific languages" if needed
> because of the built-in compiler/interpreter.

> 3D environments facilitate a major trend. How we communicate and learn is
> rapidly changing and accelerating the rate of change as well.
> Croquet is a platform which can more quickly adjust to those changes than
> any other in my opinion.

> Lets take an example from a list of current changes to learning, compiled
> by Steve Hargadon:
> http://www.stevehargadon.com/2008/03/web-20-is-future-of-education.html

> I've put a comment a the end of each line describing how Croquet
> facilitates each trend.

> * * From consuming to producing* - Even the casual person visiting the 3D
> world can edit the world's code to produce something new.
> * * From authority to transparency* - Everyone can see the code while they
> are running it.
> * * From the expert to the facilitator* - Teams of people can help each
> other in Croquet to change the application, especially at the moment it is
> most needed. You don't have to send a change request to the developers and
> hope they fix it. They can also communicate in more ways than a pre-made
> service could provide.
> * * From the lecture to the hallway* - Croquet is portable, w/o having to
> be always online. A two person notebook-to-notebook 3D network will be just
> as easy in Croquet as linking to a university 3D library of worlds. One's
> personal world is one's hallway for meeting others.
> * * From "access to information" to "access to people"* - One can find the
> initials of the code developers in Croquet to ask why an application works
> in a certain way. In Croquet, one can establish one's own criteria of what
> constitutes the group and how much attention is required to maintain
> participation in the group.
> * * From "learning about" to "learning to be"* - The flexibility in
> Croquet allows world creators to create environments that more accurately
> reflect/simulate what we are most concerned about. The simulation is not
> just a 3D movie about the subject material with extra buttons, it becomes
> the 3D control panel to manipulate and do something about the subject
> material. One learns by doing. Hence, one can practice at being a subject
> mater expert by practicing the same skills and manipulating similar object.
> * * From passive to passionate learning* - This can be accomplished by
> transitioning to the 3D environments in general.
> * * From presentation to participation* - This can be accomplished by
> transitioning to the 3D environments in general.
> * * From publication to conversation* - Croquet lets the conversation go
> deeper into comparing simulations and their rules by manipulating them,
> rather than just watching and talking about what someone else created.
> * * From formal schooling to lifelong learning* - You can take your
> Croquet world and the complete development environment with you. You are not
> dependent on an organization's hosting server.
> * * From supply-push to demand-pull* - In Croquet you can simply ask for
> just a part of a world based on some custom criteria or filter a view of
> someone else's world based on your criteria. Other systems fix the
> experience so you can only experience the world as it was created (with a
> few little changes like the sun's position at a different time of day). 3D
> creates worlds to explore to satisfy their curiosity, when the students'
> skills and need arise to make them ready.

> You might consider reviewing the essay: "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" as
> well.
> http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/<http://catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/>
> ___________________________________________________

> Now, applying Croquet specifically for your needs ... studying autism and
> helping those with autistic traits.

>    - Keeping with the "program it yourself" theme of Croquet, many with
>    autistic traits like the focused discipline of programming, if in a physical
>    environment with few distractions.
>    - Croquet may be able to filter out many distractions in 3D worlds
>    which might not be possible with something like Sun's Wonderland.
>    - Is studying autism and helping those with autistic traits a
>    dynamic field or a well established discipline? Perhaps the software should
>    meet the dynamism of the field, one that can represent, share, communicate,
>    and recreate many (conflicting) theories and models of behavior and
>    thinking.
>    - Are discoveries, techniques, and treatments discovered by one
>    organization or many small organizations and individuals? A one size fits
>    all software might be good for centralized organizations while leveraging
>    and testing by many individuals might be better for a more dynamic/portable
>    environment.
>    - Is it easier to communicate about and describe autistic behavior
>    with words, numbers or recreating demonstrations of behavior? You might want
>    a system which would most easily allow a researcher or caregiver to emulate
>    and record the performance of the behavior by a 3D character/scene model,
>    for later viewing in a 3D world.
>    - Your team might want a software package where the person with the
>    autistic traits can express their view of their world in a more visual than
>    linguistic format and take wherever they go, no matter what organization is
>    caring for them. Something they can have ownership of.
>    - How easy is it for those with autistic traits to
>    save/store/represent what they've learned by practicing in the software
>    package. If they have to resort to text or audio rather than 3D
>    objects/scenes/animations themselves, they may need a more flexible
>    environment.

> Please let me know if this helps your understanding or if you have further
> questions for me.

> Cheers,
> Darius Clarke
> metaverseographer.com

> On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 7:37 AM, Matthew Schmidt <matthew.schm...@gmail.com>
> wrote:

> > So the question has come up yet again with my project as to why there is
> > any reason to use Cobalt/Croquet instead of something with a bigger
> > community that uses a more common programming language, such as Wonderland.
> > We are committed to using an open source stack.

> > Instead of trying to come up with an argument on my own, I'd like to
> > solicit the community's help. Why should we stick with Cobalt/Croquet? We
> > are at a very early stage in development. Really just prototyping. So it
> > would not be a monumental shift if we switched now.

> > Information about the project is here:
> > http://xaverse.blogspot.com/2007/11/isocial-virtually-social-space-fo...

> > Many thanks,

> > -Matt