RE: [xml-dev] Semantics, Complex Systems, (XSLT) Programs which W rite Themselves

How does an adaptive information system adapt? 
A schema is a statement of state(s).  States change. 
Cognitive goals can be a series of states, yes?

Can a schema rewrite itself?  Invalid does not 
mean wrong.  It means something has changed. 
What about a system where invalidity is used to 
check for valid changes?  In some cases, the 
instance changes to make the schema invalid, 
so how might one hook the feedback to transform 
the schema?

Is latency a key?  Given a very large distributed 
set of interoperating agents, how can they communicate 
and coordinate the revision of the schemas they share 
using only instances?  What is the speed of propagation 
and does that speed affect the coordination such that by 
the time a change has saturated the environment, the 
environment has changed and requires a new schema?

They say one can never step in the river in the 
same place twice but two feet can.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Didier PH Martin [mailto:]

Hence what is creating a non deterministic behavior is:
a) The capacity to apply style sheets to an XML document more than one time
(i.e. n cycles)
b) The capacity to modify the stylesheet before a cycle.
c) The capacity to switch from a stylesheet to another before a cycle.

So, on my side I am thinking about a language that will encode these things.
So, for instance, if you apply a certain stylesheet to this "program" it
will create the whole environment to execute that code. Potentially, a
computing grid can be created from such "program". 

For the other stuff about meaning or semantics, take a look at the work done
with "distributed cognition". The classical cognitive domain is limited to
individual brains. The distributed cognition approach considers cognition as
a distributed act that includes artifacts and people: each entity storing
some representation and being a step toward some cognitive goal.