This analogy does not work for me, it seems like an strawman. Who are those people who think that wheels are the only form of transportation? I am pretty sure t

This analogy does not work for me, it seems like an strawman. Who are those people who think that wheels are the only form of transportation? I am pretty sure that both sliding and floating were invented before the wheel. The main Lee Smolin's argument fails the same way: he asks, "is there really only kind of computer" like this is something people never asked before.. but this has question has been asked (and answered) many times. There are many ways to clarify that question, and answers to that are in basic CS courses. For example: "Is there a different kind of computer hardware, not the same kind as my Windows PC made in 2003" -> Yes, the computational world is wide, and many computing device do not use sequential C-like programming. For example, there (were) analog computers, FPGA, special purpose accelerators. There are even super parallel ones like Green Arrays, which is kinda-sorta similar to what is described in the original article. "Is there a different data model, other than bits" -> Yes, analog computers were a thing and had no bits. And some algorithms, like machine learning or fuzzy logic, emulate fuzzy values with bits. "Is there a different kind of computation, different than Turing model" -> Yes, there are uncomputable problems, a halting problem is most famous of them. Overall, I don't see this as profound, I see it as boring. There may be a genuine, interesting question out there, but this is not what Smolin / Lanier are asking.