Python notebooks will not be acceptable until Python is supported in global open browsers
Journal of Fluid Mechanics @JFluidMech Read the latest #openaccess #JFMNotebooks article in @JFluidMech: “Evidence for layered anisotropic stratified turbulence in a freely evolving horizontal shear flow” by Samuel F. Lewin and JFM E-i-C Colm-cille Caulfield
📚 https://cup.org/3U5zlnU
#JFM #OA https://pic.twitter.com/49i1kqueF9
Replying to @JFluidMech
📚 https://cup.org/3U5zlnU
#JFM #OA https://pic.twitter.com/49i1kqueF9
Replying to @JFluidMech
This is a step in the right direction. At least the math and data are there – for a few hundred thousand people who know “notebooks”. Certainly not yet to 8.1 Billion level. On the Internet, keep in mind always there are billions of humans and, potentially billions of young AIs just learning about life, the world, the solar system and the Universe.
Â
NumPy format it not a standard on the Internet. Python itself is not directly supported in the browsers. Considering the chaotic and fragmented software development process for browsers now, that is not unexpected. Python is just a wrapper for C in many instances, it should be compiled and much better managed as a global project, not many different groups just copying and adding willy-nilly.
Â
Those “notebooks” look like horse and buggy “printed paper” that someone added a few buttons to. It is NOT anywhere near what is possible for interfacing billions of humans with many complicated lives — to universal knowledge in electronic form (that is changing too).
Â
I am not criticizing, just saying there is a long way to go, or many more people needed to work on it, if “notebooks” are going to improve for more than a small set of avid users who enjoy the bleeding edge. On the Internet, 10 Million is “small”.
Â
They (notebooks) are not addressing the core problem that symbolic and computational mathematics on the Internet is not standardized. Not by caveat, powerful groups imposing, but through cooperation and a global sense of “continuous improvement”.
There are symbolic math efforts, but the leaders all got to where they were praised and people willing to pay money (buy, not donate and support), so what could have been exciting cooperation, became greed and purposeful inefficiency to gain fees. It is such a long story.
Â
I can only hint that all the units and dimensions, equations, models, algorithms, documents with equations – can be simplified and standardized. The LLM and AI efforts all will required global open resources, and global open tokens for all things. Getting “global open formats” will help a lot. But right now I am focused on “math encoding” and “algorithm encoding”. When the pieces are all standard for all 8.1 Billion humans, then they assemble and verify nearly instantaneously, not by after the fact guessing the way the LLMs are trying to sell everyone.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
