Response to an Unexpected Email about Clique Space(TM).

Here's a copy of everything but the first two and final paragraphs of an email response I gave to an unexpected email I received this morning:

• Clique Space is still a concept without a proof, it is currently a Java SE subversion managed code base. I started development in about July 2008, and anticipated (guessed) that two years should be long enough to prove the ideas. So, although I didn't anticipate the proof to take as long as it has, what has kept me going is a steady increase in my confidence when I see solutions evolve around implementation details that underscore the primacy of the underlying data [model].
  
  
  I believe that at the moment, I am currently in greatest need of two things: funding for coders and intellectual property protections.
  
  
  I have absolutely no money. While that doesn't stop me proving my concept, progress is awfully slow. Alone, I can't offer any payment for the efforts of another person to help on the proof, but I might be able to offer an equity stake so that should the concept actually work, any individual who helped in the development would likewise share in any earnings. If I was offering this equity stake to an individual or a small organisation, I would anticipate this stake to be very small. While I currently own 100% of Clique Space, I would anticipate my direct stake in Clique Space to ultimately be very small if the concept attracts the right attention.
  
  
  My stake in the IP, currently at 100%, is also negotiable. I would hope that the implementation might become subject to an OSS licence, and that a self-sustaining community would form to support the subsequent evolution of a proven concept.
  
  
  You have probably come to me because you have read my blog, and noticed that while perhaps, I have a great idea, I'm not great at promoting it. I would certainly appreciate help here. As a general rule, I am not one who is given to a jet set life of international hobnobbing; I kind of like my life here in Wollongong.

 It gave me an opportunity to disclose more of my state of progress, so I have quoted it in this entry.

11/12/13

In month/day/year, a nice date to record a possible milestone.

This day sees the establishment of a rough-hewn version of the observer Media Profile spine; that spine which allows Agent Devices to keep a record of which other Agent Devices know of a particular principle or fact.

The observer mechanism permits collaborating clusters of Agent Devices to send transmitters containing signals that alter the state of an observer Clique. Signal transmitters (transmitters that contain a signal indicating the change in state of a particular principle or the constitution of the principle's observer Clique) can include the addition and removal of observer Participants reflecting which Agent Devices know of a particular subject principle, as well as the addition and removal of facts which the subject contains.

Signal transmitters are propagated in waves through the physical Agent Device cluster (the Agent Collaboration) in accordance with the synaptic channels established between neighbouring Agent Devices. Questions entertaining the nature of this propagation are gaining prominence; every Agent Device within a Clique not only needs to be informed of a change in the Clique's state, but once informed, an Agent Device needs to "back-propagate" the fact that it has been informed to every other member of the principle's observer Clique. Back-propagation is a type of transmission because, like signal transmission, back-propagation must necessarily use the synapse mechanism as this mechanism provides the physical medium of transmission from one Agent Device to another.

Such a mechanism involving back-propagation would afford all agent devices the ability to be continually informed of the operational state of every other Agent Device participating in the observer Clique. Cliques can be reorganised if any participating Agent Device fails to back-propagate a signal.

I fear that I'll be informing the world of too much if I say any more at this point in time. Maybe, perhaps, I'm just weird, and this Clique Space (TM) thing is keeping me suitably distracted.

Maybe something else.

I'm still refraining from talk about the Clique Space(TM) technology, but that does not mean that I cannot ramble about other stuff in relation to Clique Space.

I'm an atheist. I'm an unbeliever; I'll go further and disclose that (unless provoked - I suppose) I'm a pacifist anti-theist. This is no big deal for me, I've not had to negotiate any threat of familial estrangement. My life has been fairly comfortable. I think that, unlike perhaps the US (where I hear most opposition to atheism originate) I have lived in a society where one's own childhood development has not been impeded by persuasive charm of charismatic individuals who might otherwise have been able to scare my immature mind into submissive intellectual corners.

I started my adventure with Clique Space almost a decade ago because, being someone who had been equipped by a childhood where he was relatively free to explore, I felt the common urge to answer what I think are fairly fundamental aspects of existence. These aspects (if there are indeed more than one; I haven't bothered to enumerate them beyond ramblings like the one I am writing here) revolve around such questions like: what is it about the human brain that produces a mind? If a mind can be manifest through a human brain, can it be manifest in something that isn't a human brain? Does the brain perhaps act like a magnifying glass; does it focus a natural property of the universe, and if it might, might that same property be focussed synthetically?

From these questions, I ask myself, what then is being magnified by a human brain? Surely, it has to be the ego: the individual who not only perceives their own existence, but also understands 1: the visceral necessity of defending one's existence against elements that would do the ego harm, and 2: the opportunity of advancement of one's existence through elements that would nourish and protect the ego. In addition to this, I think that it is crucial to recognise the existence of egos other than one's own. If this were not true, then there would be no need to delineate between that which is owned and that which is not owned; the ego would therefore become a redundant artefact, and there would be no evolutionary benefit in having one. In fact, to the point of the existence of other egos and in reference to the second paragraph of this blog entry, a community of theistic egos regularly appears to withhold access by one ego to others as a way of coercing that particular individual to adopt and hold the beliefs of the community. The options for theism's victims are: adherence to a dogma or non-existence, at least to those who you have previously relied on for validation of your existence - other members of the theistic tribe in which the non-believing victim confides.

I couldn't have come up with Clique Space if I were a theist; for if I were, I would have been tied to the notion that the individual is a sacred property for which mere mortals like me have no divine licence to dabble with. Like nearly all of the history of progress, a new technological paradigm can reveal powerful universal maxims that often challenge the boundaries of the theist's world view. I believe that something like Clique Space hasn't been attempted until now because the human species may not have yet felt comfortable approaching and incorporating notions that attempt to see the ego as a universal substance like light or gravity which obeys some collection of governing principles.

Now, turning the criticism onto the opinions of many sceptics and even atheistic ones at that, I have met a few people who profess to be non-believers, who would similarly deny the existence of a mind. I have received the impression that they would dismiss the self as a mere side-effect of neural activity; having nothing to contribute to the individual's existence. I put that this is clearly wrong: if the individual (the self, the ego, even perhaps the soul) did not exist, then the organism in which the individual is manifest would have no reason to defend itself against deleterious forces of this world or to advance itself by capitalising on positive forces. Similarly, an individual that does not recognise themselves, would be incapable of recognising this similar property manifest in the world around them, and would crash through this world to meet its end when it encroached too much upon the space claimed by others - who would of course be similarly ignorant; something I do not observe except in cases where an individual appeared to be mentally deranged in some way.

It appears that a lot about psychopathology is about individuals who have problems recognising the ego either in themselves or in others. Perhaps, if Clique Space is a mechanism that is capable of manifesting an ego, maybe then, a lot about psychopathology could be studied in a Clique Space system. If this were true, what ethical framework would be necessary to keep study of egos manifest by this system from the type of harm that one hominid ego would not subject to another? How could a Clique Space system be sufficiently complex so it could be put into a state which could produce similar symptoms to various psychopathologies, while being as certain as one can be that no ego, possibly manifest by this unstable Clique Space, is enduring the terror of this instability?

Going dormant.

My blog friends...

This will be my last message for a while.

After failing to find the funds to pay the retinue of patent attorneys for the filing of my US patent application, I feel that I will need to keep schtum and not disclose any more detail about the technology evolving around Clique Space. I do this in an attempt to protect my concept, and in the hope that I may be able to refile a future patent application that doesn't include any prior art.

I leave you with this question: in what type of a society must an individual exist when the products of an individual's initiative may be taken from the individual because they don't have enough money to protect these products?

This question effects every individual of this society; not only me.

Immersed in a world of morons.

I truly live in a society of idiots. A society says to a child "tell us what's on you mind", then, when a child grows up and finds that there is something in there, finds a society silenced by its own stupidity. No one wants to know what's going on.

I receive a reply by someone after I left an email list that calls itself "Personal Clouds". I left in disgust (I was actually thrown off, but these things coincided closely enough) at the fact that this list appears to be just as moronic as any gathering of morons can be. I sent the letter to ask for some feedback as to whether my revised paper on Clique Space(TM) was going to be published as part of a submission by some of these spotty morons. The letter reads as follows:

• Owen,
  
  
  I'm sorry I didn't respond around the time you sent the paper.
  
  
  I read through it a bit, and felt it would work well as a white paper for SSRN and for the Clique Space website, to explain what you are doing.
  
  
  I didn't see any clear way to integrate what you were discussing into a more general paper on personal clouds, because it is so focused on your company.
  
  
  I hope that helps,

Well, yes it does. It helps me work out that there is no one capable of grasping any idea of any merit. It makes me think that humanity is very inefficient when it actually comes to understanding the contents of any idea; I'm no one special, but still, I get nothing when I try and wave an idea in people's faces for more than five years. The society talks about "innovation" and encouraging its people to be innovative... my story is why people just say "bugger off society you fools."

Funnily enough, my ideas are focussed on my ideas. My ideas appeared to me relevant to this Personal Clouds list because that's what a Sovereign Clique Space is. More to this, Clique Space provides a perfectly good mechanism to federate the Agent Devices in the Sovereign Clique Spaces of two or more individuals to create federated Clique Spaces which facilitate organisations of indeterminate size.

I have been convinced that everyone is screwed in the head.

I replied to this letter with this:

• Thanks for the sincere reply.
  
  Evidently, the Personal Clouds list didn't catch on with my work. Perhaps I'll be remembered when what I believe will be inevitable actually happens, and people start thinking about how the self might be manifest in synthetic environments. Maybe there'll be some interest in what appears on SSRN.

  
  I'm off to sulk. I'm going to sit in my corner and surround myself with my code until I die. It's a much safer place than causing injury to my ego by trying get my point across to a society full of morons. Some of these morons will probably grow wealthy in the exploitation of Clique Space when the rest catch on. Too bad for me. Don't bother me if recognition is posthumous - I won't care. My ideas will be my property or no one's property.
  
  Go away now, and tell everyone not to bother me again.
  

Those who make hay out of an idea like Clique Space will (if I'm not one of them) be fraudulent morons who are bullshitting their way through life in a society of gullible morons.

This society, when one of its number try to present an idea to others, behaves as if one's ideas won't matter. Some in this society promote themselves as being the go-to people when one has ideas that address a certain problem, but even these people can't comprehend. Even when one appeals for help in testing their ideas, this society generally regards the individual with complete contempt. Conclusion: this society is completely full of morons. Morons, morons, everywhere!

You're probably an idiot. Stay away from me.

Role Based Access Control.

Here's a UML class diagram of the general Role Based Access Control mechanism. It is put together according to the one that can be found from a Wiki page on the subject.

Fair enough.

Here's the same diagram of the mechanism adapted with classes from the Clique Space(TM) data model.

The adapted RBAC data model does not use all the classes defined in the Clique Space data model. However, it can clearly be seen by me that those Clique Space classes that do match the function of the RBAC ones do so rather well.

There are obvious omissions (incompletenesses) in RBAC.

Firstly, RBAC has only one hierarchy. RBAC does not distinguish between 1. the functional compatibility of various different devices and 2. the responsibility assigned to different individual roles. RBAC has the equivalent of point 2 only; the Affiliation does the same thing as the User/Role Constraint association of the RBAC model.

Secondly, I can't work out what the Role Activation Constraint class is meant to be. There is no equivalent to this beast in the Clique Space data model.

Thirdly, it seems that the Session class in RBAC represents some application or login session with a server-based system. Hence, the best fit for this class in the Clique Space data model appears to be the Connection Element, even if the relationship of the Agent Device to the device represented by a Connection is not quite identical. The Connection is an association between a Sovereign and a Media Profile in the same way that the Affiliation associates a Sovereign and a Mode Profile. Hence, a Connection has a single Sovereign, and so the Sovereign end of the association between it and the Connection has had its multiplicity changed to 1.

Finally, the RBAC model has no formal method of recording consent. Consent should be seen as the most important component of a system that models the interaction of individuals. Consent happens when the interacting is taking place; it cannot be given before or after. Clique Space models consent in the structure of the Clique and its Participants. An unspecified log-file mechanism laid over an RBAC database is the best that RBAC can do.

It almost appears that the person or people who designed RBAC gave up hope that their model could represent the flexibility of the multitude of personal relationships. It looks like they only saw the role side of these relationships, and were blind to the compatibility side. It appears that they decided that the incompleteness they experienced with this lack of a good mechanism could be swept under the metaphorical carpet by their Role Activation Constraint class.

I hope Clique Space will show these individuals the error of their ways. In time, I hope Clique Space will demonstrate a superior solution to the same problem domain as RBAC. Without an implementation, one can only hope. Still, hope is what drives me to this implementation.

The three spines.

This diagram provides justification for why there are seven Elements in Clique Space(TM). The first diagram of this blog.

So, what does it say?

In Clique Space, there are seven Elements. These Elements are represented in the diagram above by the blue hexagonal Chips. There are three spines. The diagram shows the Participant at the centre of the diagram; the Participant is the Element that is common to all three spines. Each spine is labelled by the Element named in the outermost Chip. Therefore, starting at the top, and going clockwise, we have: the Sovereign spine, the Mode Profile spine, and the Media Profile spine.

The diagram discloses that in order to create an Identity, one must have a Sovereign. As the only Sovereign that one has access to is one's own, the only Sovereign one can use to create Identities is one's own. In order to create an Affiliation, one must have a Mode Profile and an Identity. In order to create a Connection, one must have a Media Profile and an Identity. One does not necessarily need to use one's own Identity to create a Connection or Affiliation.

As the paragraph above establishes, the red arrows in the diagram indicate which Elements of a particular type one needs in order to create the Element to which the arrows point. There are two red arrows from the Connection to the Participant and this is meant to imply that one needs to have one or more Connections to create a Participant. One also needs an Identity to create a Participant. However, the two yellow arrows with a dashed tail indicate that one needs zero or more characteristics (properties) which may be sourced from one or more Affiliations or the given Affiliations' Media Profile hierarchies.

Properties are settings which are paired with the corresponding Enabling Constraint given in the Clique's medium (derived from a subset of the flattened Media Profile hierarchies of the given Connections) and for each Enabling Constraint:Property pair, creates a Limiting Constraint. These Limiting Constraints are stored in the Participant. Properties may also be sourced from any Element so therefore, needn't come from any of the given Identity's Affiliations or any of the Mode Profiles associated with these Affiliations.

Basically, that's the justification for why Clique Space has seven Elements. I hope this helps others understand Clique Space.

There are a few subtle things that this diagram doesn't make obvious.

For instance, because a Participant expresses a collection of Connections, only characteristics associated with those Connections may be also be candidate properties for expression in the Participant. Additionally, because a subset of the flattened Media Profile hierarchy's Enabling Constraints are selected to be expressed in the Participant, only those Media Profiles from which Enabling Constraints have been selected can supply candidate properties. I also think that those candidate properties must be related to a specific Enabling Constraint contained in that particular Media Profile, but perhaps that's taking things a little too far.

Another relationship this diagram doesn't make obvious is that one may use any Identity to create a Participant. However, this Identity and the Identity of all the Connections must be the same. If a property has been selected from an Affiliation or a Mode Profile, the Identity of any Affiliation acting as the source must match the Identity given to the Participant. Any property sourced from a Mode Profile must be sourced from a Mode Profile that has been associated to one the Affiliations of the given Identity.

In 2004, I could see the seven Elements, but couldn't fully appreciate the relationship down to the level which I have described here. Maybe much of the relationship is now prior art. But still, if those Elements were removed, there's not much left to invent with, and I think the relationship was a product of the concept's development, and not necessarily an inventive step.

Oh, and yes... how does one create the outermost Elements? There are things that are too complicated to explain even as text following the diagram. I know what they are, but it'll be good just to leave them for another blog entry. At least, I can quickly say that the same mechanism being left out is used to create all the Elements; it just isn't mentioned in this entry because it would steer the reader too far from the purpose of this entry.