Alan Kay is still waiting for his dream to come true

However, I disagree with your examples, specifically the Constitution. I apologize for disagreeing with you, but I still don't see how any form of state can function with a population in the double digits of millions. Even if 90%+ of the population were educated in Montessori-based systems.

It goes against the basic economic principles of "incentives". The state is still a monopoly (in the classical sense) of violence, even under a Constitution. The state is also the sole interpreter of its own laws.

Even under a Constitutional Republic, politicians have become the new monarchy, priesthood, and witch doctors. Just like when Christians find a backdoor for polytheism, so do the Citizens the same at the voting booth and in the media to worship kings and queens.

So the state is still the king. We just play musical chairs at each election. In fact, we even have fewer checks/balances on power today than the British Empire had under American Colonial rule. The US government has absorbed private institutions that could check it's power: It' subsidizes church(s), subsidizes and regulates private schools, the Ivy Leagues have become an extension of the state, and the US has become the #1 employer of scientists, engineers, lawyers, etc. This is a combo of socialism and fascism lite, that continues to grow through each election and generation, albeit slowly.

When the Law is King, people still rely on politicians to interpret and carry out the Law. They will defend "their" neo-king/queen (ie favored politican). Previously, they would have been suspicious of unelected officials." That suspicion was a de facto check/balance on power. But, not the sole check/balance.

Example: Obama (and Congress!) passed legislation to support Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. https://www.stpete4peace.org/Ukraine https://www.thenation.com/article/congress-has-removed-a-ban...

Where was the outcry? Trump is bad. But, Congress and Obama are just as bad. These are the politicians people want in power. These are the crimes people overlook and ignore. This is just one more example of how the voters let senators and presidents get away with crimes. It is easy to expose Trump as a shady/scheming politician and crooked entrepreneur (eg Trump Uni.). However, politicians like Bill Clinton, Reagan, etc. get away with murder and Congress is fine with it. So too are the voters. The Constitution has not prevent a global military empire.

Look at how the Constitution was promoted: with G. Washington's celebrity endorsement. The US was thus created partly by a militia leader who used warfare to overthrow a government and won wars. (Losing generals are unpopular.)

In practice, the Law was never in full hands of the King. The King/monarchy had checks and balances going back to the medieval periods. The various religions and churches (plural), guilds, Parliament, and so on.

The Constitution has given people a false sense of ownership and protection and lowered their distrust of the state. This is one of the reasons why parents love government schooling: they can blame tax-cheats for why Johnny can't read.

"Who cares if the Dept. of Edu. is unconstitutional? The ends justify the means."

Canada, Australia, and other states did not overthrow British rule, yet they still became multi-cultural and prosperous... without a violent Revolution that led to war widows, orphans and high taxes.

This is why I disagree with the idea of a state that would let politicians (including monarchs or dictators) have access to lots of money, weapons, etc. I've seen people much better educated and with high IQ ignore the crimes of entire political parties like Republicans, Democrats, and celebs like Lenin, Che, Mao, etc.

In other words: The Constitution, from my p.o.v., promoted political centralization and was a hidden psuedo-absolute monarchy in disguise. Nobles replace the absolute monarch. So I agree with your vision, but I just disagree with political centralization.

(Sidenote: The Constitution was passed despite the delegates not having authority to overthrow the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution expanded the state's power, did not solve the underlying issues with the Articles of Confederation, and set a bad precedent of upper-class members of the establishment being able to expand state power to solve problems at the expense of freedom. )

Thank you again for reading and putting up with this. I realize we disagree on a few things, but your patience is appreciated.

? Alan's DOB

? Alan's age

Here "?" is a whole computer. We don't know what it will do to answer these questions. One thing is for sure: we are talking to a -process- not a data structure! And we can also be sure that to answer the second it will have to do the first, it will have to ask another process for the current date and time, and it will have to do a computation to provide the correct answer.

The form of the result could be something static, but possibly something more useful would to have the result also be a process that will always tell me "Alan's age" (in other words more like a spreadsheet cell (which is also not "data" but a process)).

If you work through a variety of examples, you will (a) discover that questions are quite independent of the idea of data, and (b) that processes are the big idea -- its just that some of them change faster or slower than others.

Add in a tidy mind, and you start wanting languages and computing to deal with processes, consistency, inter-relations, and a whole host of things that are far beyond data (yet can trivially simulate the idea in the few cases its useful).

On the flip side, you don't want to let just anybody change my date of birth willy nilly with the equivalent of a stroke of a pen. And that goes for most answers to most questions. Changes need to be surrounded by processes that protect them, allow them to be rolled back, prevent them from being ambiguous, etc.

This is quite easy stuff, but you have to start with the larger ideas, not with weak religious holdovers from the 50s (or even from the way extensional way math thinks via set theory).

One key question for "civilization" has usually centered around the extent to which enough children can learn to reach beyond their genes to embrace ideas and behaviors that have been invented for the better.

Another key question revolves around the trade-offs between individual choices vs "smartest choices". This reflects the distribution of talents, outlooks, skills, knowledge, etc in any population. And also the distribution of what various people need to "feel whole". (These are often at odds with larger organizations of societies.)

I fear that too many technical people have no feel for the plight of the users (and amazingly to me, for their own plight as users -- they are often willing to put up with execrable BS in their own programming environments).