Thursday, April 28, 2011

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.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

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.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

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.