Introduction
This blog is dedicated to an exploration of a distributed computing concept called Project MAD. The hope is that MAD is someday used as a blueprint for hardware and software systems more powerful and flexible than the ones we have today.
I am where I am today, creating this site, because I have a working model in my head, one that satisfies every major problem I've thought up to date. It is what is generally referred to as having a vision. I am not, however, the kind of person who assumes that just because I envision it, it will work. I also write fantasy fiction in my spare time; I can envision impossible things quite easily.
MAD is not an attempt at a money grab, it is not me attempting to implement the various systems described here, myself, and it is not me attempting to recruit people to do the work for me. I am no salesman or tech CEO eager to turn a few nice-sounding words into a private funding round. If a billionaire dropped ten mil in my pocket on a whim, I genuinely wouldn't know what to do with it, not if I wanted the best possible chance of success. That isn't my skillset.
MAD is theory. When you read the blog, you will find that a lot of it is written to be very high-level, lacking details and disconnected from any implementation. This is on purpose. Many things that are now part of Project MAD would never have entered my mind if I had viewed the project through the lens of existing technology. If nothing else, every failure to implement things would have been harder to take.
If I were ever going to see MAD implemented, I would want to gather experts, and have major architectural decisions made by the people who know those systems, not by me. While in theory I could start an open-source project which may slowly evolve over time with input from experts, there are still a lot of ground-level choices that would impact the future of the project, and I'd still hope to get input from experts before I made those choices.
Above that, though, I am the wrong person to try to implement these systems. I have programmed occasionally since high school, and have a bachelor's in Computer Science, but I have never those things professionally. Many of the core systems, such as OS concepts and programming language parsers, are beyond anything I was ever taught. When I try to write code for them, my brain locks up. Romantic dreams aside, I will not be the one who creates these systems.
In that context, it is important to me that I find a way to get all the concepts out. I will never create Project MAD, and I may never be a part of any group that works on it. But, I'd like people to at least see the same vision that I do. If they see it and disagree, that's fine. But I don't imagine I'd rest if the vision disappeared without ever being understood.