State versus content: Clique Space(TM) as something which might be useful.

Cliques model collaborations. What does this mean?

First, a refresher on the general principle of Clique Space; one that perhaps does not pay respect to the subjects of federation or anonymous or unidentified (un-Identitied) Participants as they apply to Clique Space for the sake of simplicity, but never mind...

A collaboration is some cooperative activity going on between individuals. Each individual has some capacity to act, and uses a particular device capable of participating in this collaboration. The collaboration is going on within one or more particular media, and, when the collaboration is being modelled as a Clique, this collaboration can be observed by others, according to the degree to which these others have constraint affinity with the Clique and each of its member Participants.

Agent Devices are only special in that they are running instances of the Clique Space Agent Device code. Beyond this fact, there's nothing special about Agent Devices. Simply put, Agent Devices form Agent Collaborations, and Clique Spaces can exist in Agent Collaborations. An Agent Collaboration is modelled as a Clique within the Clique Space that exists as a result of an Agent Collaboration. Each Agent Device is controlled by an individual like any other device, and each Agent Device exposes functionality through the same control mechanism as any other device.

Clique Space users (individuals) connect other devices through Agent Devices which are members of a Clique Space to which they want to connect. All the devices one has connected to a Clique Space (including Agent Devices) generate activity in their own device specific way. Changes in device state are siphoned and modelled as activity in a Clique Space. Each connected device lets Clique Space know which other devices it is exchanging information with so the Clique Space can model this collaboration as a Clique. The exchange going on between the external device and the Agent Device to which it is connected is a collaboration like any other: it is modelled as a Clique - called the serving Agent Device's Clique.

For any given Clique, each Agent Device that is managing the direct link to an external device participating in the collaboration that the Clique is a model of, or any Agent Device managing a direct link to a View and/or control mechanism enabled device observing this Clique, becomes a member of an an Agent Collaboration which is modelled as a Clique of its own. The Agent Devices of this collaboration Clique coordinate, cross-reference and model the incoming external device state and interpret and disseminate outgoing device commands so that any user, not necessarily just the participants of the collaboration (Participants of the Clique that models this collaboration), can, if they have sufficient affinity, observe, and interact with the collaboration if a potential observer chose to observe a collaboration through Clique Space.

A given observer might later want to participate in the above collaboration. This given user might have connected a device which permits their participation in the specific collaboration's media as well as expressing to a Clique Space through an Identity, sufficient constraint (Limiting Constraint) affinity to participate in the Clique they are observing. In this case, they may either join this Clique with their given device, or, if possible, activate the given device remotely by sending commands through the Clique Space Agent Collaboration aether. The individual user would probably send these commands using the same Clique Space View enabled device through which they might be observing this Clique.

Necessarily, if the given user wishes to activate one device in a Clique Space mediated collaboration through another device, then this other device must 1. possess a View and/or control mechanism enabled device, and this capability must 2. be exposed through the device's Clique Space Connection, and 3. be expressed (projected) through an Identity which 4. furnishes the individual with this capacity to activate one device through another View and/or control mechanism enabled device.

While one individual may restrict remote device control only to devices expressed through Identities revolving around that individual's Axle (Account), such an individual may cede some remote control authority to other individuals in accordance with the constraint affinity these other individuals may possess with an Identity through which this device is expressed. Other individuals may only remotely control a device possessed by this individual only if, and to the extent that, this individual has permitted this activity to take place.

Now, to my point.

It's fairly straightforward: Clique Space's intended purpose is not to model or control a collaboration beyond those characteristics which determine whether a Participant can exist, or remain in existence in a Clique specific to this collaboration's media, and to the extent that the underlying Identity has sufficient Limiting Constraint affinity with the Clique, or is willing to make compromises (allow a Participant to acquire Limiting Constraints contrary to those of the underlying Identity) to achieve this affinity.

A Clique is not much more than a record of a collaboration; complicated exchange goes on in the specific collaboration's media as it would do regardless of whether any given device was connected to a Clique Space or not. Clique Space's ability to model, and perhaps to control a collaboration leaves the content of the collaborative exchange to the concern of the devices.

Mechanics that compose the various Clique Space collaboration media (the Agent Device as a Clique Space collaborator with a group of Agent Devices modelling a specific Agent Collaboration, or the Agent Device as an engager in a synapse with another Agent Device, or an Agent Device as a member of a Clique Space, or more generally, the Agent Device as a serving Agent Device interlocutor on a specific Clique Space with an another device in accordance to a medium specific to this exchange) are all modelled and controlled in the same abstract way: as a Clique composed of two or more Participants. The mechanics of these collaborations involving Agent Devices have a depth that Clique Space's abstract collaboration model does not penetrate because the relevant Media Profiles do not (cannot) expose all the functionality of the mechanics of these media through Connections generated from these Media Profiles; attempting to do so would introduce infinite regress.

Media Profile manufacturers may choose to represent some proportion of the collaboration's content exchange in Clique Space because doing so might be convenient. This might provide Clique Space users with the opportunity to model, and particularly, to get a Clique Space to automate the control of events on behalf of the devices' operators in accordance to the wishes of these users.

Hence, the value of Clique Space is in its ability to aggregate, model, and control devices in relation to the individual users which use Clique Space to assert their possession of them. Clique Space doesn't exist to provide users with an additional opportunity to participate in the totality of the content of a collaboration's exchange; external devices ordinarily (whether connected to a Clique Space or not) manifest external collaborations where the content exchange takes place in some medium specifically defined by the manufacturer of these devices, and which remains external and largely opaque to Clique Space.