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.
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