Ah, this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 Super interesting! It's like, data, without an interprete

Ah, this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945722 Super interesting! It's like, data, without an interpreter, has no meaning. We rely super heavily on humans as general purpose interpreters, and when we design computers, we make sure as much of the meaning as possible is implicit. Rich was saying that the interpreter is secondary, which is only true if data serves a single purpose. Alan is getting at the idea that data could serve every purpose if only the interpreter wasn't implicit. If the concept of "data" referred to both the value and the meaning, the language and how to interpret it. But, from a reddit comment: An interpreter doesn't magically give meaning to data, since the interpreter has to translate to something, and that something has to be written by a program that understands both the from and to sides of the conversation. The point of dit is to literally be that universal language. Yes, you do need both sides to explicitly lay out what they main, both to convey and understand the meaning. The difference is that the number of connections is unlimited. You need a human for that critical first step, but then the machine can speak "dit" language to any other machine that speaks dit. Rich couldn't conceive of the idea that dit could be real. I think it can. I think we can make Licklider's vision, data and programs that can move around without respect to the original developers intentions because they all speak dit. Thank you for sharing, super interesting!