... and then it suddenly got very easy.

As of yesterday, it seems as though I had fit the yins with the yangs. A milestone reached perhaps?

Evolution of Implementation

As I write this, I'm contemplating the considerations to do with the implementation that I currently am entertaining. I find that, particularly as my implementation matures in functionality and I meet technical challenges with adequate solutions, I am working toward answering deeper philosophical questions; in other words, I find that the fuzziness of philosophical pondering begins to revolve around strongly technical matters as my implementation approaches realisation.

This is just as I hoped: the framing of fuzzy philosophical questions about notions of the self in practical implementation-based problems appears very achievable. I think that if I can continue to whittle down these notions into sharper technical problems, and indeed, if I can meet these problems with robust and simple technical solutions, I might provide some very sound answers to some very deep questions. This is a hope I have had with Clique Space(TM) since that day in mid-2004.

Word to your mother: philosophy is not the pursuit of dilettantes. The self has, for too long in a secular society, been something which has been avoided. If Clique Space answers questions about how the self might be defined and modelled (as I hope it will), a secular society might then just be in a position to pay respect to what it means to be a self; something only thus far which has barely moved beyond the province of religious mysticism.

Clique Space doesn't attempt to explain the origins of the self just as it doesn't attempt to explain the origins of the universe - but I think that it might at least show that such a notion as the self can be quantified, communicated, and asserted as a property of objects in the world.

I could indeed be a dick. If this is my ultimate discovery, then... eureka!

Another Clique Space(TM) product summary.

To wit (extracted and paraphrased from an email I put together to someone who is currently expressing interest):

Note that regardless of how complicated you think the solution to the problem of real-time identity is, I think my solution is very simple, and can be technically covered in a few simple systems design (specifically UML) diagrams.

I have had my idea for nearly seven years. Around mid 2004, I believe I solved a way to integrate the notion of the individual with any devices one might be using and any roles one might be affiliated so that one individual might be able to:

1. represent themselves to any other individual as a collection of devices and these devices' media though which any other individual likewise represented can find an appropriate channel of communication, and engage compatible media with the first individual. Media that can engage two or more participants (one, two, or more individuals) are also able to be modelled in this way.
   
   
2. decide, based both on individual preference and role affiliation associated with each connected device, which other individuals can observe and engage which of each other's devices over a compatible medium. Affiliation is, in essence, also an exercise of individual preference because a particular affiliation is activated for a particular device after that device is connected to a particular Clique Space.
   
   
3. collect, for one's own records, collaborations for which an individual has privilege. Other than being connected to a given Clique Space, the individual does not necessarily have to be a participant in the collaboration of a particular set of devices in order to observe the collaboration in a way that can be communicable through Clique Space.
   
   
4. enforce mandatory privacy rules, but limit the scope of these rules' effectiveness to discretional criteria based on the characteristics of a particular collaboration. Take, for example, two individuals which may not wish to engage a device with the each other directly over any medium, but both will participate in collaborations mediated by a third; lets say that the first two are opposing parties of some type of settlement, and the third is a legal appointee mutually tasked with sorting the issue out.
   

Such a system as I have envisaged would not operate directly amongst the collaboration media of specific device instances. Rather, collaborating devices continue to collaborate in their device-specific way, and information relating to the devices' state is siphoned off to one or more connected Clique Spaces so this information can be used to represent individuals' activity on each of these Clique Spaces.

Likewise, should the device and the medium permit, control information can be sent from Clique Space to the device so individuals can control their activity through Clique Space, rather than having to coordinate the activity of disparate and esoteric devices and media.

So, here are two main domain solutions to my concept:

1. Just as you don't have to know how your eyes work in order to see, you don't have to know how a device works so you can use it in Clique Space.
   
   
2. Clique Space allows you to choose which other users can interact with or can observe you in accordance to settings you can apply independently of any device to which you represent yourself as.
   

A smaller version of Clique Space(TM).

It has been occupying my mind for some time. I see nothing wrong with a four-element Client Device structure; one that ignores notions of affiliation. In this version, Connections are used to form Participants because neither Account Profiles, Affiliations, nor Active Affiliations would be necessary. This type of Clique Space might be good to represent un-stratified populations where no one registered within has any authority above anyone else, and might be better able to realise a Clique Space that represents an individual or small organisation. The main issue with such a Clique Space is that everyone registered within the Clique Space will have the same basic capability.

If my concept doesn't cover this idea, then all good, possibly, for prior art. Then again, a Clique Space following my specification that has a single Account Profile, and cannot use Account Profiles from any federated neighbour Clique Spaces to create Affiliations registered on the Clique Space in question has as good as a four-element Client Device structure.

Clique Space(TM) and cyberspace.

Here's something I recently put together in a forum. I think it is another concise description of what Clique Space is meant to do:

• Consider this for an every-day example of such a relationship that has been around for much longer than our traditional notions of technology: your hand is a device for grasping things, your mouth is a device you use to eat with, and your eyes are devices through which you see the world. You are an individual, and blood glucose monitoring devices (I think they're somewhere in your brain) tell you that you are hungry. Your eyes see an apple, and other devices within your brain tell you an apple is within your immediate vicinity. You reach out your hand and grasp the apple, draw it to your mouth, and consume it. Now, it is obviously worthless to consider that your eyes were connected directly to your mouth; the intermediary is your nervous system (a Clique Space of sorts), and the individual 'you' exists as a transcendent supervisor who uses one's will to coordinate the activity of each of these bodily sensor and actuator devices to achieve some ends.
  
  What I propose to have done with Clique Space, then, is extend the notion of the individual as a transcendent supervisor to have control over (indeed, to possess) things belonging to realms other than one's physical body to fulfil one's desires. Allowing an individual to possess devices in Clique Space will also allow one individual the ability to record and to negotiate with which other individuals and under which circumstances interaction is going to take place. Clique Space indeed protects what is mine, yours, others', and what is unclaimed or anonymous. It affords everyone in a cyberspatial world to viscerally claim individual ownership of artefacts within it.

And yet something else about what I think Clique Space might be capable of:

• As a side point, I don't believe I have invented an AI let alone any AI that is as capable as a human (if ever such an 'artificial' thing could possibly exist). On the other hand, what Clique Space might do is provide an environment within which a synthetic sentience might emerge. This is something quite different to an AI; there is nothing artificial about emergent sentience. The sentience wouldn't feel artificial, and if you tried to convince that sentience that it is artificial, you might well be quickly and laudably rebuffed by it.

And a clarifying comment:

• As a tool, I think Clique Space would prove as important in any physical world as it would prove in a world of software and any virtual-reality realm. I use the term cyberspace, but it might seem that by using this word, I am reserving Clique Space's utility only in a virtual world. I want to clearly dispel that myth; I take that cyberspace is the union of the physical and virtual.

Clique Space(TM) functional requirements judged stable.

Good news indeed.

As of about 20 minutes ago (about 12am on Thursday 7 April 2011) I believe I have a stable implementation of the four basic functions of Clique Space:

1. Connect/Disconnect
2. Activate/Deactivate
3. Form/Disband
4. Join/Leave

This feat has only taken me until now to complete. Non-functional requirements like: making Clique Space robust and resilient; mapping basic media, Client Device, and Agent Device functionality through Enabling Constraints (the concept of Enabling and Limiting Constraints have been incompletely implemented); and the development of more Media Profiles for a mountain range of other devices - is all that remains.

That's commendable progress.

Self simulation: causal loop closed.

Something that I had known since I conceived of Clique Space(TM) was the possibility of encountering a causal loop. Although I talk openly about self-reference, I didn't openly admit a causal loop to myself, and hence I haven't talked about it before, because I didn't really know how to deal with it. I felt it best just to continue with my implementation until it moved front and centre.

Indeed, recently, this is what seems to have happened. The issue is manifest in each of us. It concerns the origins of the self (the soul or the mind), and although I rarely give the issue much current personal reflection, this issue perplexes all of us when we do think about it. Although I don't believe I have given Clique Space a soul, I do believe I had to solve the basis of this issue for Clique Space: a self-referential causal loop.

Indeed, it appears that I have corralled this issue, which now rests in the creation of three Elements: the Agent Device's collaborator Connection and this Connection's component Account and Media Profiles.

I have done well.