A promising use for the Active Affiliation

In earlier blog entries, I have alluded to the possibility that the Active Affiliation might be redundant. In today's ~8.5k walk, I had two wonderfully refreshing thoughts; one of which was to demonstrate the real possibility of a hitherto hinted at purpose of the Active Affiliation. This thought came to me because I am contemplating the mechanism around how Limiting Constraint affinity is determined, which determines whether a Participant can exist.

My dilemma about the value of the Active Affiliation in the core data model had been with me since I had conceived the data model in 2004. I couldn't quite comprehend at that point whether or not it was ultimately necessary in a final implementation, so deciding it better that one can always remove redundancy in an over-engineered concept, I included the Active Affiliation in the original patent spec. However, today's thinking has prompted me to reassess my recent earlier stance on the Active Affiliation. The Active Affiliation appears to be useful as the focal point of the Client Device.

Focal point of the Client Device? What does this mean? It means that my emphasis on the concept of the Client Device might have to change slightly from what I said in an earlier posting. I am completely comfortable with saying this because nothing I have had to revisit about the Client Device changes anything from the original patent spec. In fact, the Active Affiliation seems to serve the purpose (which I had felt could turn out to be when I put it in my spec) of being the point at which Limiting Constraint affinity is determined in Clique Space(TM).

In saying this, I am admitting to backing away from my recent assertions that the Participant is where this affinity is determined. To realise the core value of the Clique Space concept, it appears that the Active Affiliation determines Limiting Constraint affinity between any two device/user/role descriptions that the respective Client Devices can take. In fact, the Client Device now acquires more of a holistic definition; an Agent Device can still be a Client Device, but the Client Device is the representation of all Clique Space Elements around an Active Affiliation associated with a single Account. Hence, in accordance with my previous blog entry, the Agent Device can still be considered separately from all other devices, only these other devices may make up a single Client Device if they are described by the same Active Affiliation as the instance or instances of the Agent Devices being excluded from consideration. This realisation really realigns my original intent of both the Active Affiliation and the Client Device.

None of what I have said breaks the original data model. In fact, it reinforces certain components of it, and clarifies others. For instance, it appears that to be consistent, any Active Affiliation will have a single Account. This fact reinforces the necessity for the Connection and Affiliation to be associations between the same Account. A similar relationship is reinforced between the Active Affiliation and any Participants that are created from it: an Active Affiliation can have zero or more Participants, but, because devices are located, viewed, and controlled on Clique Space through their Participants, an Active Affiliation must have at least one Participant to interact with other Active Affiliations.

Clarification is also seen in the association of Connections and Affiliations: one or more Connections can be associated with one or more Affiliations - so long as all these Elements associate the same single Account. This clarification points to a further clarification of the relationship between Active Affiliations and Participants: through the Active Affiliation, a Participant may actually represent multiple Connections and multiple Affiliations. This relationship is a real value proposition for Clique Space in that an individual may join or form a Clique as one Participant even though they have to use more than one "real" device, and they may also join or form a Clique as a representative of more than one role.

This realisation that the Active Affiliation element of the Client Device's structure has specific utility could be one of the most fundamental realisations to the efficacy of the original concept.

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The other thought I had this day was about a main factor determining when the Agent Devices engage and disengage. Although it appears to be a good one, I think I'll leave this blog entry to cover only the above thought, suffice to leave this reminder to myself of the other thought: unengaged Agent Devices try to talk to each other, and engage (create synapses) only when they can maintain a conversation. When this conversation cannot be maintained, they disengage (destroy synapses).