A small epiphany today: the candidate as a key.

I've just resumed my 6k jogs after nearly two weeks of less than great weather. Just before I went on today's stint, I had a small epiphany that has since spread its tendrils of enlightenment over the whole concept, revealing perhaps many answers to problems that hitherto remained without an answer.

The epiphany happened like this: I was getting ready to go out for my jog, and I was just trying to capture my thoughts as comments in the AdministratorClientMediaProfile class. I'm working on the connect method of this class; a remote method call from an administrator client when someone attempts to connect one to an Agent Device member of their Sovereign's Clique Space.

It was intended that the candidate data structure be used to communicate two things: a collection of named enabling constraints and a collection of properties. These candidates would come in two subtypes: the Owner's candidate would indicate such properties as would be expressed in an Owner Participant, and the member's candidate would indicate such properties as would be expressed in a member Participant. The current placement of this candidate as a structure which can be used in a remote call has fallen out of favour. The candidate as it is currently implemented appears inappropriate.

I made some wistful half-formed remarks about declaring candidate "templates" as a property of an Identity and left for my jog. As I walked out my door, a small frisson buzzed me. I thought to myself that it would just be better to think of the candidate as a named object which contains Enabling Constraints and the location, within the Identities scope, of properties which would fit into parameters of these Enabling Constraints to yield a Participant's Limiting Constraints.

While I was jogging, I did some more thinking. When I got back, I re-edited my comments and what I put down earlier evolved into what has been re-quoted here:

• Consider moving the concept of the candidate into more of a central role as an internal property of an Identity. This may be a good way to establish connection semantics for all external devices. A candidate might then need only be referred to by its name when a connection is requested through an external device.

The candidate has taken a new, and hopefully a simpler position within the implementation. The candidate is a key that is used to instruct an external device to connect to a Clique Space. Entries in the Identity's internal candidates property can be referred to by name when a device is being used to request its connection to a Clique Space. Hence, to reference a candidate held in an Identity, all that needs to be communicated from the device is a candidate's name. Usage of a named candidate in this way appears to be precisely how a user would prefer to determine the way an external device might initiate a connection with the user's sovereign Clique Space so the device can then be engaged with other devices through Clique Space.

Structurally, the candidate completely specifies the set of Media Profiles that determine the Participant's medium. The candidate key, on the other hand, only draws specific mode entries form the Mode Profile spine, so that when the Participant is being formed, additional Properties can be taken from wherever they reside in the Connections and the Connections' Media Profiles.

At the moment, I still think that there will be times where a named candidate will not provide a flexible option when engaging a device once it is connected to a Clique Space. There will be plenty of times where it still appears necessary to be able to create a candidate for a single use; especially in a situation where an individual needs to be flexible, and admit a form of compromise so the Clique can form and some process governed by this Clique can ensue.

Currently, I still think it good to turn this paradigm shift over in my head for a little while yet to see if I can work out if any anomaly renders it unsuitable before I move to implement.

In my journey.

My journey, in the context of this blog entry, is the set of events and an interval of time that have led me to this point in my development of my Clique Space(TM) thing.

In my journey, I have been witness to a changing code base. In my journey, my code base has both grown and shrunk as realisations have born the creation and growth of new structures as well as the atrophy and destruction of structures rendered redundant. In my journey, I have seen my code base changes flow and boil in consequence to the effect of my intellectual endeavours to construct a system that is faithful to the purpose which I conceived in 2004.

In my journey, I have witnessed the following: my code base accrues the software equivalent of carbuncles and stretch marks that one would observe in any part of one's body subject to the stress of general use. My code base has accrued its own set of idiosyncrasies that one might observe of a car or a house over an extended period of time and use.

There is something else I have been witnessing about this code base over possibly the most recent six months: it has been drawing closer to my concept. I suspect this change is significant because up until about six months ago, I thought that my concept could have been the product of insufficient reflection on the problems that it tried to address: namely, how does one make a claim on the devices in one's environment as if these devices were part of one's body - visceral claims about one's own car, one's Facebook page, one's PC, one's golf ball, one's bank account etc that are as strong as the same individual's claim to one's own hands, one's feet, one's fingernails, one's eyes, one's intestines etc.

Now, up to six months ago, the evolving code base - the changing implementation of the concept - was generally saying to me that it might only work if I made certain compromises to my concept. However, since I had worked out the Sovereign's Clique Space (this happened on 17 December 2012 when I posted my first account of this phenomenon) it now appears that what I had correctly labelled as "speculative faith" up to this point, had become a testable hypothesis.

In effect, I saw the way to the goal-posts when I observed the role that the Sovereign (labelled as the Account in my patent that I published in 2008 and a part of the data structure present in my concept since 2004) and the Sovereign's Clique Space played in allowing the individual to make visceral claims about things outside of a hominid form. These deliberations in December last year concluded my philosophical deliberations on the relationship of the possessor and that which is possessed in a detail which appears to have coincided with another event: the code base began to diminished in size by a significant amount. I am unaware of just how much it has diminished so far, but I believe it would be at least 20%. Other structures like the relationship between the Identity (erstwhile Active Affiliation), and its component Connections and Affiliations have gained clarity and robustness.

My deliberations on 17 December last year also demonstrated the efficacy of the Media Profile. This development included the overlaying concept of the Media Profile spine first thought useful as a mechanism to admit a process of obtaining progressively more delegated functionality through a particular device. The notion whereby subclass adaptations of the Media Profile, the Connection, the Active Affiliation, and the Participant to a specific medium was retained on all classes but the Active Affiliation after the deliberations on this earlier blog entry pointed to the redundancy of these "delegates"; it is not considered necessary that devices using a specific medium go through a multi-stage login process to obtain their Participant in their serving Agent Device's Clique.

I hope to see the observer mechanism, as a (Media Profile) spinal adaptation will realise a component almost as profound, and no less intertwined with, the concept of the Sovereign and its Clique Space. Although the specific specification of the observer mechanism is an artefact of development which emerged subsequent to the publishing of my patent, my original inspiration in 2004 was that Clique Spaces are manifest though collections of Agent Devices, each cooperating with others forming Cliques which may grow, shrink, and disband. The observer mechanism simply draws on the data model disclosed in the patent to ultimately realise this behaviour of the Agent Device.

Another line in my email signature: "Philosophy. Atheist gap-filler."

Sometimes this Clique Space thing gets me thinking about the nature of the self. Such thoughts are often the subject of religious dogma. My family background is Anglican, but I am not an adherent to any religious philosophy, save any familial and traditional ties to customs originating from Anglicanism and Christianity in general that still roost in my secular atheist belief system.

So, I like the quip in the title of this entry. It'll be my repartee to the conundrum that theists think they're presenting with the oft heard argument that "If one doesn't have God (a god), then how can one have morals?".

I think it'll also make a handy repellent. Make it so.

Implementation of the observer mechanism.

As I write this entry, I am taking some time away from coding the observer mechanism.

This observer mechanism, like any other mechanism that models and moderates the behaviour of devices within Clique Space is a medium. Hence, the observer mechanism must exhibit the structural components necessary for the representation of any medium in Clique Space: the abstract classes for the Media Profile, the Connection, and the Participant require implementations that can be instantiated.

However, the observer's medium is a medium that models a functional subset of the behaviour of the Agent Device, and hence, there are other structures that need to be implemented.

The Clique needs a subclass on the Agent Device: the observer Clique must contain only observer Participants. This Clique is importantly distinct from a Clique that models the way other media are modelled and controlled in that the observer Clique indicates which Agent Devices have knowledge of a specific component. Every observable component has an observer Clique when an Agent Device responsible for the creation and management of an observable component transmits knowledge of this component to another Agent Device. The Agent Device that created the observable component is the observer Clique's Owner, although in an observer Clique, like any other Clique, ownership can cede to another Agent Device, and so like any other Clique, the observer Clique is not anchored to any one location.

There is at least one minor issue with this model. If an observer Participant is a component (all of Clique Space's Elements are components), and if the observer Participant, in being a component other than a Clique, is observed, then how is that observer Participant observed? One cannot create another observer Clique because the creation of another observer Clique (Cliques - including the observer Clique - are components, but they are the only type of component that is not observable) would involve the creation of more observer Participants. This is an infinite regression, and so to avoid this, any specific observer Participant's observer Clique is the Clique which contains the observer Participant. This solution not only appears to be a convenient way of avoiding the infinite regress, but it appears to have a certain (though circular) logical necessity; in this mechanism, I feel echoes of the same necessarily visceral emotional base (the ego) that I seem to observe when I observe myself.

With this mechanism, component transmission can be tracked and controlled by a collection of Agent Devices. It appears that this mechanism is crucial to the cooperative activity of Agent Devices, and I believe this mechanism will have something to say about cognitive function in biological neural systems.

Anyway, implementation awaits...

The Individual as an Axiom

The pre-eminent concept of the pure individual is only now starting to emerge in discourse on identity. This "pure" individual ("pure" being a name I give here for lack of a better adjective, perhaps "abstract" is more fitting) delineates the activity of one set of devices from another. An individual in Clique Space(TM) knows one's self through one's Sovereign - one of a collection of well defined Clique Space Elements. Individuals assert claims on devices through Connections - another type of Clique Space Element, and claims on authority through Affiliations - another type of Clique Space Element.

Individuals project these claims to others via Identities which are another type of Clique Space Element. Individuals interact with each other using combinations of Affiliations and Connections projected through an Identity in a Clique; a Clique is not a Clique Space Element, but it is a collection of a well defined combinations of these earlier stated Elements for each individual which are expressed in a Clique as Participants which are Clique Space Elements. Each Participant expresses characteristics selected by each individual and agreed to by all individuals of the Clique; no Clique can exist without the mutual constraint affinity of each member Participant.

I believe that the preeminent concept of the individual as someone who makes assertions (as opposed to a device which does not - at least not without an individual to govern it) is something discourse in the identity community appears not to have fully embraced at this stage. I think, however, discourse is approaching a precipice over which the individual will be recognised as the only entity having the characteristic of making assertions. Once the individual and their capacity for assertion is accepted as a precondition of identity by society at large, many riddles about identity will resolve themselves, and a system like Clique Space will show its worth.

That's my hunch anyway.

A crucial mechanism.

A short narrative about the structure of the Clique Space(TM) "component" mechanism is disclosed here.

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Components are pieces of information that an Agent Device knows about.

Components are stored in an Agent Device's component container.

Components must implement methods which are called when added to and removed from the Agent Device's component container. These call-backs give the component implementations the opportunity to manage their lifecycle.

Cliques, Elements, Clique Spaces, and data representing external device state when represented in Clique Space, are all components. Cliques, Elements and Clique Spaces comprise state information relevant to Agent Devices - an Agent Device is merely a device which, through one or more Clique Spaces, is modelled in terms of the individual who possesses it as one or more Participants. Each Participant is associated to precisely one Clique and one Clique Space.

An observable component is a component to which an observer Clique can be assigned.

An observer Clique is a Clique that represents all Agent Devices which have a copy of a given observable component.

No observer Clique exists if only one Agent Device has a copy of the given component.

All components except the Clique and its observer Clique subtype are observable.

A communicable component is a component which can be transmitted by one Agent Device and received by another over a synapse.

All observable components except the Sovereign and the Sovereign's Clique Space are communicable.
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One very interesting phenomenon about this mechanism is enabled in what is given in the final point of the above narrative: the Sovereign (specifically, the Sovereign's identifier) is known only to those Agent Devices in which the individual's presence is manifest. The Sovereign, and its Clique Space cannot be disclosed even between Agent Devices in which the individual's presence is manifest. The concept of an individual's sovereignty is so secret that Agent Devices which manifest the same individual presence cannot even communicate this information amongst themselves.

Why would a collection of Agent Devices (an Agent Collaboration) have anything to tell each other when they know who they are? A nervous system that makes up an individual has nothing of substance to share among its member neurons about the individual manifest by this membership; each individual member neuron already knows the individual it helps manifest by virtue of the fact that each member neuron possesses the secret which allows the individual to exist. This piece of information does not need to be communicated.

Instead, the individual manifest by an Agent Collaboration governed by a common Sovereign must be the only individual who knows the identifier of their own Sovereign. This identifier, after all, identifies the scope of their own existence. An individual may connect to their own Sovereign's Clique Space only if they know the value of their Sovereign's identifier. Hence, an individual would be well-placed never to allow another individual to know the value of their Sovereign's identifier; the consequences to such an individual's existence as a sovereign entity could be acutely bad.

On the flip side, the value of the Sovereign's identifier could be used as a private part to a key pair. An individual may still readily be identified as the presence manifest through different Connections, Affiliations or Identities if the individual wishes to disclose a digital signature with these Elements.

Hence, the value of the Sovereign's identifier (also the name of the Sovereign's Clique Space in my implementation) is a property which identifies an individual to themselves; a singular property of absolute value to the individual.

Another Clique Space(TM) usage scenario.

Say, I and two others are going out to have a dinner at a restaurant. The occasion is that it is a mother's day dinner out, and I am taking my mother (one of two other people) out to dinner. I am paying for her dinner, but the other individual is paying for their own meal.

 

Say, we all live in a world where Clique Space is commonplace. What, you might wonder, does this mean? At the most abstract level, this means that you possess one or more Agent Devices and you use your Agent Devices to cooperate with Agent Devices of other people in Cliques which form, grow, shrink, and disband within and between administrative domains called Clique Spaces. Agent Devices are devices like any other and have a physical manifestation like phones, cars, and computers. Other things like credit cards, Facebook pages, twitter accounts, bank accounts, and other abstract entities having a largely conceptual existence can be considered devices in Clique Space if they can exchange state information with one or more Agent Devices.

 

Now, back to the restaurant example, myself and the other two co-diners walk into the restaurant and meet the waiter. Before we are ushered to our table, the waiter verifies with us who is in our Clique, and who the Clique's Owner will be. I say I will be the Clique's Owner as I know who will be paying for who's meal; the waiter, an individual who has activated their "waiter" Affiliation through a selected Identity, gives me the Identity through which they have done this. I possess relevant Identities of my co-diners, and I use all Identities to form the Clique that I will own.

 

This Clique lasts for the duration of our meal. The restaurant uses the information in their account and in the service record of our waiter. I use the Clique to assert that I will pay for myself and my mother. The third diner accepts the condition that they pay for their own meal or the Clique wouldn't have been able to form. The waiter has joined my Clique because the Clique I have formed accepts that payment will be automatically deducted from each diner's account into the restaurant's account sufficient to pay the bill of service.

 

Each Participant has the opportunity to persist their individual Clique Space activity; interactions with others constitute this activity, and so each Participant has the opportunity to keep a record of this Clique in case there is any contention as to the bill, the proportion of the bill payed by each diner, the service offered by the waiter, or the activity recorded against other media like the bank's transaction system.

 

Each Participant except my mother disclosed their bank's transaction facility as a medium in this Clique. When the Clique formed, the devices that compose each Participant's transaction facility were nominated in the relevant Participant as Connections - activated against the relevant Identities by the individuals who hold the Identities (myself, the waiter, my mother, and the third diner) to be expressed in the corresponding Participant. Again, the Clique cannot form if the media requirements set by the Clique's Owner candidate (my candidate Participant) are not met by all other candidate Participants.

 

Hence, the Clique will only form if the medium and all constraints regarding the usage of this medium are met by all candidate Participants. Actual Participant instances will only be instantiated when constraint affinity can be met, and can only exist while ever constraint affinity can continue to be met.