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:

1. capable of asserting themselves: the individual claims possession of things and abilities to act in one's environment
2. capable of accepting others: the individual accepts the claims to possession and abilities to act by others in one's environment
3. 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

I, an individual, make assertion 3 as a person who is not a physicist, and without consulting another individual like Stephen Hawking who is a physicist, who may make a different assertion. It is interesting to note that an individual asserts their individuality to others in the hope these others will accept the fact that at least these assertions are being made by an individual. The individual must accept that things in one's environment manifest other individuals, and that these others will understand that something in their environment represents this individual. This paragraph illustrates how obvious point 3 becomes when entertaining the relationships between the first two points. There is more in the work of Kurt Gödel about this absurdity - more than I can understand.

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.