... 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.