It looks as if the Clique Space(TM) Agent Device(TM) and administrator clients are coming together in some fundamental ways.
The delegate interface is casting away its intermediate forms, and simplifying itself so that an administrator can do the four Clique Space things upon which everything else sits: 1. forming, 2. disbanding, 3. joining and 4. leaving Cliques. Beyond these four functions, Clique Space is only limited to the functionality of the media which are exposed to it.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
BasicElement: Code listing.
I wanted to provide a listing of the BasicElement module in my last entry. I decided I'd turn my last entry into a bit of a prattle when I found that I couldn't get the HTML to display properly. I'm putting this entry together because I think I've worked it out.
If one looks closely at the way the BasicElement interface is declared, one should be able to understand the basic tenet of the Clique Space concept: modelling the activity of the individual. In a way, I think that the term "model" does not explain this Clique Space(TM) thing enough. Also, I think that because of the the notion that every device - even the Agent Device - is subject to being represented in the Clique Space environment, this listing might also demonstrate that the verb "to model" and the verb "to control" are the same thing in Clique Space.
Modelling an activity is intuitively distinguished from controlling an activity; modelling means observing or perhaps merely simulating an activity whereas controlling an activity implies intervening in an activity going on in the real world, while that activity is transpiring. It is important to note that the Agent Device is a device like any other device to Clique Space for the same reasons that modelling and controlling Clique Space activity correspond.
Something that hosts a running instance which implements this interface is known to the BasicElement as the 'Device'. This Device has a CliqueSpaceContainer which contains all the Clique Spaces and Elements that the device knows of. The BasicElement is a collection of 'Properties'; these properties describe everything the Element is. Limiting Constraints are a type of property which, while potentially contained in all Elements, are expressed only in Participants. There is a really elegant relationship between a BasicElement's properties and a BasicParticipant's Limiting Constraints, but a description of this relationship might best perhaps be left to another entry.
Anyway, being that this prattle might just be seen by the reader as a bit of a distraction, here is the source code listing. I hope the reader respects the little bit of inoffensive asserting that I have included. I'm hoping my blog entries might inspire my readers to get in contact with me. What can you lose?
...some imports that needn't be disclosed...
If one looks closely at the way the BasicElement interface is declared, one should be able to understand the basic tenet of the Clique Space concept: modelling the activity of the individual. In a way, I think that the term "model" does not explain this Clique Space(TM) thing enough. Also, I think that because of the the notion that every device - even the Agent Device - is subject to being represented in the Clique Space environment, this listing might also demonstrate that the verb "to model" and the verb "to control" are the same thing in Clique Space.
Modelling an activity is intuitively distinguished from controlling an activity; modelling means observing or perhaps merely simulating an activity whereas controlling an activity implies intervening in an activity going on in the real world, while that activity is transpiring. It is important to note that the Agent Device is a device like any other device to Clique Space for the same reasons that modelling and controlling Clique Space activity correspond.
Something that hosts a running instance which implements this interface is known to the BasicElement as the 'Device'. This Device has a CliqueSpaceContainer which contains all the Clique Spaces and Elements that the device knows of. The BasicElement is a collection of 'Properties'; these properties describe everything the Element is. Limiting Constraints are a type of property which, while potentially contained in all Elements, are expressed only in Participants. There is a really elegant relationship between a BasicElement's properties and a BasicParticipant's Limiting Constraints, but a description of this relationship might best perhaps be left to another entry.
Anyway, being that this prattle might just be seen by the reader as a bit of a distraction, here is the source code listing. I hope the reader respects the little bit of inoffensive asserting that I have included. I'm hoping my blog entries might inspire my readers to get in contact with me. What can you lose?
1 /* 2 * (C) Copyright Owen Thomas. All rights reserved. 3 * Express written permission must be obtained from Owen Thomas in order 4 * to reproduce all or part of this source or compiled code in a manner 5 * specified in said permission. 6 */ 7 8 package cliquespace.core.cliquespace.basic;
...some imports that needn't be disclosed...
40 /** 41 * @author Owen Thomas 45 */ 46 public interface BasicElement< 47 D extends Device, 48 CS extends BasicCliqueSpace<D,CS,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC>, 49 ID extends Identifier, 50 E extends BasicElement<D,CS,?extends Identifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 51 A extends BasicAxle<D,CS,?extends AxleIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 52 AP extends BasicAccountProfile<D,CS,?extends AccountProfileIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 53 APR extends BasicAccountProfileRoot<D,CS,?extends AccountProfileRootIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 54 APN extends BasicAccountProfileNode<D,CS,?extends AccountProfileNodeIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 55 MP extends BasicMediaProfile<D,CS,?extends MediaProfileIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 56 MPR extends BasicMediaProfileRoot<D,CS,?extends MediaProfileRootIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 57 MPN extends BasicMediaProfileNode<D,CS,?extends MediaProfileNodeIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 58 AF extends BasicAffiliation<D,CS,?extends AffiliationIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 59 C extends BasicConnection<D,CS,?extends ConnectionIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 60 I extends BasicIdentity<D,CS,?extends IdentityIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 61 P extends BasicParticipant<D,CS,?extends ParticipantIdentifier,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC,? extends Property>, 62 CL extends BasicClique<D,CS,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC>, 63 CSC extends CliqueSpaceContainer<D,CS,E,A,AP,APR,APN,MP,MPR,MPN,AF,C,I,P,CL,CSC>, 64 PR extends Property> 65 extends Element<CS,ID>{The interface's body has been removed because the contents are trivial and don't help illustrate the point I am trying to make in this entry.
85 }
I do think the interface declaration is quite special. It shouldn't be too hard for the observant reader to realise that through this interface declaration, the declarations of the BasicCliqueSpace, BasicClique, and all the Basic~ Elements can be derived. This is because the very high degree of coupling. All of these parts of the Clique Space concept are interwoven to serve a common design purpose: Clique Space is designed to represent an individual in cyberspace.
Monday, July 16, 2012
The BasicElement interface: an expression of the Clique Space(TM) concept in code.
Clique Space's(TM) implementation has been evolving for some time in Java SE. Many (but probably not most) of the features exhibit stability and robustness. I can cheerfully say that the basic expression of the Clique Space concept has exhibited reasonable stability for probably a year or more.
I've been looking for one code module that would conveniently show many of the conceptual features of Clique Space, and I think that one module in particular does this quite well. This module is the BasicElement interface. Primarily, the BasicElement interface encapsulates an important general phenomenon which Clique Space was conceived to capture: the self-referential nature of the individual - the self, or in Clique Space parlance, the Client Device - the purpose of which is to provide an cyberspatial skin detailing one's total capacity and authority to act within any Clique Space to which one is connected.
Yes, indeed, this is what Clique Space is basically meant to provide; an expression of the individual's own presence in cyberspace. The declaration of the BasicElement interface shows how the phenomenon of the individual is addressed. Being that I assert that nothing like this has ever been previously considered, this is quite a disclosure: a target for prior art if it is found that my patent doesn't adequately cover my concept - c'est la vie.
We all know that the nature of the individual is elusive. We all know we are aware of ourselves, and we all infer this quality "self" in others through empathy; the correspondence between what we feel when we perform some activity, and what we observe of that activity by these others in our environment. Even though, for a long time, members of one species on this planet appear to possess a highly refined sense of empathy, we have thus far had very little success in describing the individual as a universal quality; a quality which most of us believe should be a universal and transcendent... if only we had some framework through which it can be expressed and communicated. Hark! I hear another cue for Clique Space!
I have to make some assertions about what I think an individual is. These assertions include, but perhaps are not limited to, the following characteristics. Summarily, the individual appears to be:
How, then, especially considering point three, are we to design a system that expresses this elusive substance? Although the individual cannot be directly expressed through a computer language (the possibility that a computer system may provide an environment through which an individual might emerge is another topic which I will avoid in this entry), a computer language can provide a way that collections of logical absurdities can assert and accept claims of possession and abilities to act.
To do this, a computer language must surround the event horizon of the logical absurdity. Such a system can give an individual that uses it a cyberspatial skin that other individuals using this system likewise would be capable of recognising. This is Clique Space. In order for Clique Space to do this, one has to recognise that Clique Space must be able to surround the event horizon generated by the absurdity. In my patent, I envisaged that encirclement of the event horizon can be achieved with the Clique, the Clique Space, and the first seven of an unbounded number of Element types: Axle (nee Account), Account Profile, Media Profile, Connection, Affiliation, Identity (nee Active Affiliation) and Participant. Individual assertions are communicated through Enabling and Limiting Constraints contained within these Elements.
The implementation has not been far off the mark.
Extra Element types are created around different media types; I have envisaged after publishing my patent that these extra types would appear by deriving types from the set of Elements collectively known as the Client Device's Media Profile spine - the Media Profile, Connection, and Participant. The Identity was once a member of this set. However, the Identity was abstracted out when I realised that the Identity is a Collection of Connections and Affiliations assigned to a single Axle instance and used to generate a collection of Participants. I believe I will shortly drop the Participant and the Connection from this set because like the Identity, a Participant may contain more than one Connection whenever it is appropriate to express one individual's participation in a Clique as a collection of Connections, and a Connection might represent the association of one Axle through one device to multiple Media Profiles. Hence, the Media Profile might remain the only Element from which extra Element types may be derived.
The Elements and their broad behaviour have been declared on spec in the BasicElement interface, with two relatively minor modifications: the detailed relationships between the Identity and the other Elements, and a delineation between root and node Media and Account Profiles. The BasicElement Java interface is accompanied by eleven other Java interface modules describing subtypes of BasicElement for these seven Element types: BasicAxle, BasicAccountProfile, BasicAccountProfileRoot, BasicAccountProfileNode, BasicMediaProfile, BasicMediaProfileRoot, BasicMediaProfileNode, BasicConnection, BasicAffiliation, BasicIdentity, and BasicParticpant.
These interfaces are accompanied by declarations for a BasicClique so that BasicParticipant Elements have a medium of propagation amongst Agent Devices, and a BasicCliqueSpace, so that all BasicElement types have a pace to reside and the life cycles of all Element instances can be subject to some collectively agreed to degree of administration permitting the activity of individuals to be collectively organised; exactly as society has done for the past five thousand or so years. The BasicElement and all these related declarations are customised on other device types so devices other than Agent Devices may receive projections of these Elements. One instance of a BasicMediaProfile contains one Enabling Constraint which exposes device behaviour as parameters to Clique Space. One Enabling Constraint parameter can be given a value in one BasicParticipant by assigning a Limiting Constraint to the parameter.
Limiting Constraints can be contained in all BasicElements, but are expressed only in the BasicParticipant. The BasicIdentity is used to project an individual's worldly identity to others, and an instance of a class that uses this interface must contain Limiting Constraints which completely cover all, without internally contradicting any, of the BasicConnection instances expressed through the given BasicIdentity instance.
A technical wonder about these Basic~ Java modules is that each parameterises their own declaration and each other's declaration so that implementations (there are two in development at this moment; namely the Agent Device and the administrator client) can customise these Basic~ Elements to behave in accordance to the way a device functions. The BasicElement interface, all its subtypes, the BasicClique, the BasicCliqueSpace, and the Enabling and Limiting Constraints are inseparably woven into each other, providing an impervious container which forms the designed cyberspatial skin around individuals' event horizon, facilitating a virtual link between the absurd singularity of the individual and sensible and logical cyber-environment within which collections of individuals dwell.
I've been looking for one code module that would conveniently show many of the conceptual features of Clique Space, and I think that one module in particular does this quite well. This module is the BasicElement interface. Primarily, the BasicElement interface encapsulates an important general phenomenon which Clique Space was conceived to capture: the self-referential nature of the individual - the self, or in Clique Space parlance, the Client Device - the purpose of which is to provide an cyberspatial skin detailing one's total capacity and authority to act within any Clique Space to which one is connected.
Yes, indeed, this is what Clique Space is basically meant to provide; an expression of the individual's own presence in cyberspace. The declaration of the BasicElement interface shows how the phenomenon of the individual is addressed. Being that I assert that nothing like this has ever been previously considered, this is quite a disclosure: a target for prior art if it is found that my patent doesn't adequately cover my concept - c'est la vie.
We all know that the nature of the individual is elusive. We all know we are aware of ourselves, and we all infer this quality "self" in others through empathy; the correspondence between what we feel when we perform some activity, and what we observe of that activity by these others in our environment. Even though, for a long time, members of one species on this planet appear to possess a highly refined sense of empathy, we have thus far had very little success in describing the individual as a universal quality; a quality which most of us believe should be a universal and transcendent... if only we had some framework through which it can be expressed and communicated. Hark! I hear another cue for Clique Space!
I have to make some assertions about what I think an individual is. These assertions include, but perhaps are not limited to, the following characteristics. Summarily, the individual appears to be:
- capable of asserting themselves: the individual claims possession of things and abilities to act in one's environment
- capable of accepting others: the individual accepts the claims to possession and abilities to act by others in one's environment
- a logical absurdity: a conceptual singularity which, like the black hole analogue in gravity, is impervious to investigation, and opaque to ultimate knowledge within one's environment
How, then, especially considering point three, are we to design a system that expresses this elusive substance? Although the individual cannot be directly expressed through a computer language (the possibility that a computer system may provide an environment through which an individual might emerge is another topic which I will avoid in this entry), a computer language can provide a way that collections of logical absurdities can assert and accept claims of possession and abilities to act.
To do this, a computer language must surround the event horizon of the logical absurdity. Such a system can give an individual that uses it a cyberspatial skin that other individuals using this system likewise would be capable of recognising. This is Clique Space. In order for Clique Space to do this, one has to recognise that Clique Space must be able to surround the event horizon generated by the absurdity. In my patent, I envisaged that encirclement of the event horizon can be achieved with the Clique, the Clique Space, and the first seven of an unbounded number of Element types: Axle (nee Account), Account Profile, Media Profile, Connection, Affiliation, Identity (nee Active Affiliation) and Participant. Individual assertions are communicated through Enabling and Limiting Constraints contained within these Elements.
The implementation has not been far off the mark.
Extra Element types are created around different media types; I have envisaged after publishing my patent that these extra types would appear by deriving types from the set of Elements collectively known as the Client Device's Media Profile spine - the Media Profile, Connection, and Participant. The Identity was once a member of this set. However, the Identity was abstracted out when I realised that the Identity is a Collection of Connections and Affiliations assigned to a single Axle instance and used to generate a collection of Participants. I believe I will shortly drop the Participant and the Connection from this set because like the Identity, a Participant may contain more than one Connection whenever it is appropriate to express one individual's participation in a Clique as a collection of Connections, and a Connection might represent the association of one Axle through one device to multiple Media Profiles. Hence, the Media Profile might remain the only Element from which extra Element types may be derived.
The Elements and their broad behaviour have been declared on spec in the BasicElement interface, with two relatively minor modifications: the detailed relationships between the Identity and the other Elements, and a delineation between root and node Media and Account Profiles. The BasicElement Java interface is accompanied by eleven other Java interface modules describing subtypes of BasicElement for these seven Element types: BasicAxle, BasicAccountProfile, BasicAccountProfileRoot, BasicAccountProfileNode, BasicMediaProfile, BasicMediaProfileRoot, BasicMediaProfileNode, BasicConnection, BasicAffiliation, BasicIdentity, and BasicParticpant.
These interfaces are accompanied by declarations for a BasicClique so that BasicParticipant Elements have a medium of propagation amongst Agent Devices, and a BasicCliqueSpace, so that all BasicElement types have a pace to reside and the life cycles of all Element instances can be subject to some collectively agreed to degree of administration permitting the activity of individuals to be collectively organised; exactly as society has done for the past five thousand or so years. The BasicElement and all these related declarations are customised on other device types so devices other than Agent Devices may receive projections of these Elements. One instance of a BasicMediaProfile contains one Enabling Constraint which exposes device behaviour as parameters to Clique Space. One Enabling Constraint parameter can be given a value in one BasicParticipant by assigning a Limiting Constraint to the parameter.
Limiting Constraints can be contained in all BasicElements, but are expressed only in the BasicParticipant. The BasicIdentity is used to project an individual's worldly identity to others, and an instance of a class that uses this interface must contain Limiting Constraints which completely cover all, without internally contradicting any, of the BasicConnection instances expressed through the given BasicIdentity instance.
A technical wonder about these Basic~ Java modules is that each parameterises their own declaration and each other's declaration so that implementations (there are two in development at this moment; namely the Agent Device and the administrator client) can customise these Basic~ Elements to behave in accordance to the way a device functions. The BasicElement interface, all its subtypes, the BasicClique, the BasicCliqueSpace, and the Enabling and Limiting Constraints are inseparably woven into each other, providing an impervious container which forms the designed cyberspatial skin around individuals' event horizon, facilitating a virtual link between the absurd singularity of the individual and sensible and logical cyber-environment within which collections of individuals dwell.
Monday, July 9, 2012
How much structural symmetry is there between the Affiliation and the Connection?
This question has been occupying my mind for some time, and it relates to the way some Elements in Clique Space(TM) appear themselves, to exhibit precisely the properties that Clique Space was conceived to model. How far can I go with this? Can a Clique Space Agent Device use its data model to model relationships between its own Clique Space component object instances as they are created and deleted?
This question is a rather silly reductio ad absurdum. However, it might be interesting to note that discussions throughout this blog have touched on something I call the serving Agent Device's Clique.
Let's have another look at the serving Agent Device's Clique. I am in the process of removing the "three stage delegate" device Connection mechanism from the implementation, and working toward a new relationship between two of the implementation's components: both the Connection to the other device and the serving Agent Device's Clique modelling the collaborative exchange between an Agent Device and the other device must exist simultaneously. Delegate capacity (a capacity for the Element to contain and project an Agent Device's delegate server RMI stub to the other device through which commands will be sent back to the Agent Device from the other device) is removed from the Identity because a singular Identity will now be correctly implemented to represent collections of Connections and Affiliations around a single Axle. The delegate capacity will be shared between the Connection and the Participant: the Connection contains the RMI stub, but any message sent from the other device identifies the serving Agent Device's owner Participant created from this other device's Connection when instructing the Agent Device to perform some action in relation to a change in the other device's state.
So anyway, what am I getting at here? Well, put the delegates and all the mechanical minutiae for the serving Agent Device's Clique aside (I feel I had to explain it in part just to get it off my chest), and concentrate merely on what the Agent Device's Clique represents: a collaborative exchange between two users; the operator of the serving Agent Device, and the operator of the device which is connected to a particular Clique Space through this Agent Device, if these are indeed different individuals. While it should be obvious to the reader that the serving Agent Device's Clique models the collaboration between an Agent Device and another device (because I have just stated this), the same reader might also be ask themselves whether, because of the dependency between the serving Agent Device's Clique and the other device's Connection, this Clique appears also to represent the instance of the Connection to the given device.
I think such an observation is very interesting, as it appears to promise a similar symmetry in the relationship that manifests an Affiliation. More thought is definitely required before I start to head off in a specific direction here,but one question is this: who is collaborating with whom? Clearly, in the serving Agent Device's Clique, the two Participants are representing the operator or operators of the devices which are collaborating. However, consider this: where the Connection represents an association between an Identity (more accurately, the Identity's Axle through a given Identity) with a Media Profile, then who, if this association might also be seen as a collaboration, represents the component Media Profile? Likewise, if we are going to do something similar with the Affiliation, then who represents the Account Profile?
When we entertain this "structural symmetry", might we in actuality require two more new Cliques (rather than one because the symmetry in the Affiliation bares no functional relationship to the serving Agent Device's Clique) to model the structural symmetry: 1. one Clique to model the specific relationship between the Connection's Axle and Media Profile and 2. another Clique to model the specific relationship between the Affiliation's Axle and Account Profile? Would these Cliques have any natural value? I think they may...
Hmmm...
This question is a rather silly reductio ad absurdum. However, it might be interesting to note that discussions throughout this blog have touched on something I call the serving Agent Device's Clique.
Let's have another look at the serving Agent Device's Clique. I am in the process of removing the "three stage delegate" device Connection mechanism from the implementation, and working toward a new relationship between two of the implementation's components: both the Connection to the other device and the serving Agent Device's Clique modelling the collaborative exchange between an Agent Device and the other device must exist simultaneously. Delegate capacity (a capacity for the Element to contain and project an Agent Device's delegate server RMI stub to the other device through which commands will be sent back to the Agent Device from the other device) is removed from the Identity because a singular Identity will now be correctly implemented to represent collections of Connections and Affiliations around a single Axle. The delegate capacity will be shared between the Connection and the Participant: the Connection contains the RMI stub, but any message sent from the other device identifies the serving Agent Device's owner Participant created from this other device's Connection when instructing the Agent Device to perform some action in relation to a change in the other device's state.
So anyway, what am I getting at here? Well, put the delegates and all the mechanical minutiae for the serving Agent Device's Clique aside (I feel I had to explain it in part just to get it off my chest), and concentrate merely on what the Agent Device's Clique represents: a collaborative exchange between two users; the operator of the serving Agent Device, and the operator of the device which is connected to a particular Clique Space through this Agent Device, if these are indeed different individuals. While it should be obvious to the reader that the serving Agent Device's Clique models the collaboration between an Agent Device and another device (because I have just stated this), the same reader might also be ask themselves whether, because of the dependency between the serving Agent Device's Clique and the other device's Connection, this Clique appears also to represent the instance of the Connection to the given device.
I think such an observation is very interesting, as it appears to promise a similar symmetry in the relationship that manifests an Affiliation. More thought is definitely required before I start to head off in a specific direction here,but one question is this: who is collaborating with whom? Clearly, in the serving Agent Device's Clique, the two Participants are representing the operator or operators of the devices which are collaborating. However, consider this: where the Connection represents an association between an Identity (more accurately, the Identity's Axle through a given Identity) with a Media Profile, then who, if this association might also be seen as a collaboration, represents the component Media Profile? Likewise, if we are going to do something similar with the Affiliation, then who represents the Account Profile?
When we entertain this "structural symmetry", might we in actuality require two more new Cliques (rather than one because the symmetry in the Affiliation bares no functional relationship to the serving Agent Device's Clique) to model the structural symmetry: 1. one Clique to model the specific relationship between the Connection's Axle and Media Profile and 2. another Clique to model the specific relationship between the Affiliation's Axle and Account Profile? Would these Cliques have any natural value? I think they may...
Hmmm...
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