Clique Space(TM) and Google Wave

I have had a recent conversation with someone that seemed to me to slightly degenerate into a defence of Clique Space against Google Wave. As I am only one person (one who doesn't exactly revel in the chance to defend himself in the spontaneity of a verbal conversation), here are my arguments in writing so that I might have a chance to defend them after considering any counter-argument that might be given. Clique Space hasn't been defended yet, so I'm taking the conversation I had earlier as the opportunity to do so here.

I'm usually a better person in writing.

Yea, I know I might be pitching a battle against a pernicious software leviathan which can cover a multitude more angles than I might to protect and advance their market interests. However, I believe there is no point in doing this because 1: I feel that Clique Space will complement Google Wave, 2: I don't think I have the energy to make a gallantly effortful but fatefully doomed defence against a software giant with an army of lawyers, 3: etc.

Google Wave looks very functional and useful. Google Wave, however, is not Clique Space. If Google Wave tries to become Clique Space, Google might render itself in breach of my patent, but I don't believe that has happened yet.

Let me list a few differences:

1: Google Wave uses a centralised model. It appears as though Google exclusively owns the implementation, manages its content, and keeps record of all of the content and contributors for ever. Clique Spaces (specifically, as I intend, the public Clique Space) are designed to be real-time systems which do not keep the information they capture. Apart from where caching might be necessary to ensure the stability of a Clique Space and the continuity of its activity stream, no device activity would be persisted by the Clique Space system itself. It is the user's responsibility to record their own interactions while connected to a Clique Space system. In fact, I envisage that an activity stream might be added to a wave that shows the coordinated activity of several collaborations over different media.

2: Google Wave does not model different media so much as aggregate the content generated by different media. Hence, Google Wave does not model itself. As far as it appears, this concept appears foreign in Google Wave. Clique Space, however, can be thought of as a set of devices who's individual and collaborative behaviour is itself modelled through the provision of a set of specific Media Profiles. Every device that Connects to Clique Space needs to work through a Media Profile. Some devices might not extend the Clique Space's functionality, but rather introduce completely separate functionality of their own. Media Profiles model this functionality in the Clique Space device activity stream, and this activity stream is available to any device that, through connecting to a Media Profile that extends the Clique Space functionality, is equipped to capture (and possibly persist) it.

3: Google Wave appears to be able to control the interaction between individuals, but not to the degree that it can in Clique Space. While there appears to be some way to withhold a whole or parts of a wave from the view of individuals, I can see no facility through which access might be suppressed based on membership of a group, or the functioning of a particular media. This might evolve, but yet its granularity might not reach the degree that is achievable on a Clique Space where collaborations can be mandated, permitted or denied depending on the characteristics that comprehensively cover device activity of any type.

These characteristics include the functional characteristics of a device though a Media Profile, the user's individual identity given in an Account, the user's membership of some organisation in an Account Profile and particular attributes of their membership through an Affiliation, the association of a particular user to a specific device or a particular set of technical characteristics of two or more devices through a Connection, the association of a group of users associated particular organisational membership to a particular medium and its technical properties through an Active Affiliation and, the origins of a particular collaboration members through a Participant that is either anonymous or from a foreign Clique Space.

4: Google Wave has no concept of anonymous users. All users must have an account to use the Google Wave system. Because a collaboration under a defined medium might contain members who are not connected to a Clique Space, Clique Space might be configured to permit anonymous Clique Participants. Let it be stressed again: Clique Space has nothing to say about the medium over which a collaboration happens. It simply collects and it might also have the ability to control changes in device status through a Media Profile that devices have connected to.

5: Yea yea, Google Wave does show some type of time-based device activity (the thread grows as time advances) but the concept is not so developed when illustrating a time-line of collaborative activity. Clique Space records activity of as many collaborative and non-collaborative devices as Media Profiles might exist to capture information from them over an interval of time, and to the extent that a Media Profile has been designed to capture this activity. This recording has the ability to be depicted in reference to that time interval, and would map the relationship between device usage, user identity and affiliation, and Clique Space origin.

6: From a purely technical perspective, I believe Clique Space draws on a similar phenomenon (a Clique) that the nervous systems of animals (including ourselves) use for doing things from coordinating muscular activity to encoding memory. I remain to be convniced that Google Wave uses this same phenomenon in any way demonstrably useful to its function.

PS: All possible trademarks mentioned in this diatribe are the property of their respective holders and no revenue has been, or is ever expected to be received by me through their use in said diatribe apart from any revenue that may result as an indirect consequence the success of any argument I may have made. I had to use these marks for the reader might not have known who I was talking about had I not.

I have no knowledge of the technical details of the Google Wave implementation.