Just listened to a podcast on IT Conversations where Werner Vogels discussed scaleable systems that are inspired by biological processes. What he described is exactly what I was working on in the networking protocols and “Entropy” VM in the MetaWrap project, and of course my seminal BSCAL language (Biological Scalable Cellular Automata Language) from 1986. Some of it was word for word phrases that I used to use. Of course when I said them, everyone said I was mad :). Even when I made it work. I remember a meeting with Fujitsu where they were appalled that there was no centralised management console and that it was not transactional. They didn’t like the idea of describing the data model as a ‘spongy’.

I’m pretty sure that the problem was mine and twofold. I obviously had an inability to communicate the concept successfully and I bowed to pressure from management and the team to change what we were ultimately trying to deliver, which was in the end our undoing.

I really should believe in myself more.