Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Replication and reproduction



So, in terms of the 'MacArthur Park' (recipe for baking a cake) analogy we used in the youtube posting the behavior P is 'baking the cake'. The expression x!(P) sends along the channel x the recipe for baking a cake. Now, the behavior D(x) receives a recipe (for anything: baking a cake, making a paper airplane, ...) then in parallel follows the recipe (bakes the cake, makes the airplane, ...) and also sends the recipe back out on the channel for someone else to pick up. Thus, if to P we adjoin the behavior D(x) when we send out the recipe, i.e. x!(P|D(x)), then we send out not only the recipe for baking the cake, but also the recipe for copying the recipe. The limit of this process is an infinite supply of cakes (to let 'them' eat -- whoever they are ;-)

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