PatternSmithing Alliance Blogs

NOTE: This is a preface post (formerly called Stub post) which gives an intro on upcoming content.

As I continue to work on the upcoming volume to be published, one of the opening chapters that has emerged concerns seeing the world in terms of patterns.  This thesis (that the world can be perceived, modeled, and treated as an intermeshed collection of patterns) is central to establishing the entire field of static pattern engineering as well as orienting individuals toward the activities (patternsmithing, pattern engineering, and architecting) that arise from it.

One of the problems I have struggled with is that the term Pattern has a lot of connotations surrounding it and most of them are seemingly purposefully and annoyingly vague.  For current examples across the web, see the following google query.  In a future post, I will reveal the formalization of the term pattern that underlies static pattern engineering (intuitive hints have been spread throughout this blog) and  with this formal definition I will give plenty of exercises of seeing the world (including that which is formed, that which is forming, and that which is yet to be formed) in terms of patterns.

Once patterns are defined and examples are identified, it will be important to introduce how forces are operating on this pattern and the terms static pattern, dynamic pattern, and active pattern will come into focus.  At that point, it is hoped it will become clear how and why individuals work on creating, transforming, and operating on patterns in their daily lives and why we need a field and set of activities for working with these patterns directly.  Once this post is published, I’d welcome feedback on it, as I am hoping this will be an intriguing opening for the book and ultimately an introduction to the field for many.

Also, on another note, as a reader please begin registering your interest levels (via the polls available) which topics you would be most interested in reading next, as the frequency of posting on this blog is fairly low, I want to make sure you have a voice and that I am made aware of what you are looking to discover.  As always, contact me at http://xri.net/=joel.kotarski with any questions or feedback.

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Work has been progressing on entirely different aspects surrounding static pattern engineering outside the current scope of this site – hence this site hasn’t had much activity. Today, I want to annouce the following partner sites, activities, and organizations that as a whole comprise the current activities surrounding this emerging field:

• The PatternSmithing Alliance (http://patternsmithing.com/) is being established as a centralized organizing and guiding body for the core activities, knowledge, and applications of static pattern engineering technologies.  This site and my activities (including the book under construction) will be considered contributions to the body of work of the Alliance.
• The “ThingK” company (I am finalizing the company name so will just call it that for now) will work on several products and services that not only apply static pattern engineering technologies but also advance the field as a whole.  After research and development, I’ve seen that several viable technologies exist that can enhance people’s lives as well as the field itself – a commercial vehicle will serve the projects well throughout their lifetime to keep their growth and maintenance sustainable.
• The research and development activities on Static Pattern Engineering will still continue by interested members of the Alliance, either as a voluntary effort, projects commissioned/funded by the Alliance or government grants, and/or activities commissioned under the commercial ventures of the “ThingK” company or other participating partners.  This site will continue to track these activities that fall under the first two categories, whilst the commercial aspects will continue to drift away toward channels created by the “ThingK” company.

I wanted to make this sort of a last post that outlines the whole field (as it stands today), because  many of these aspects grew out of this research and development activity.  This blog’s posts, as well as many other posts related to these separate aspects of the field on other sites (where I’ve been busy recently), are now syndicated together at the PatternSmithing Alliance blogs at http://blogs.patternsmithing.com/.   If you are interested in monitoring the entire field and all activities —  not just the research and development aspects, I encourage you to relocate your attention there – these posts will continue to make their way there.

Also, if you are interested in the body of knowledge surrounding Static Pattern Engineering, while waiting for the publication of the first volume, you can visit the PatternSmithing Alliance wiki (link withheld until it fills up more – just created recently) which will continue to reflect the growing body of knowledge and technologies.  From the research and development side, at times the blog will preceed the wiki in terms of knowledge while at other times the wiki will preceed the blog in terms of knowledge.

To begin involvement in the activities of the field, you are encouraged to submit your information at http://patternsmithing.com/.

Finally, I want to briefly discuss the products and services of the “ThingK” company, which started as research projects here and are now in active development:

• The thingk.com web site is the site alluded to earlier surrounding the notion of ‘thingk’ as expressing a more easily graspable term for ’static pattern’.  This will be a free community web site, with a revenue model based on enhancements, that allows any person to begin working with the core tenets of static pattern engineering without any knowledge of the underlying science, research, or activities surrounding it – this was always one of my goals from the beginning.  The PatternSmithing Alliance will recommend the core standards this site will use so that user’s content will always be reusable, expandable, and exportable by them for collaboration with non-commercial interests.  This site is very central to strategy for all of the groups:
  • The research and development activities of the PatternSmithing Alliance (which this site represents) will be interested in expanding the technology and studying how user content and collaboration progresses as case studies in the state of the art of the field.
  • After creators (the users of the site) begin to see the power of persisting and ultimately creating their Thingks, the PatternSmithing Alliance may be a natural avenue for them to continue their progression into learning about the core of the field, first by simple PatternSmithing activities, and then maybe even vocationally as a PatternSmith, StaticPattern Architect, or StaticPattern Engineer.
  • The initial activities of creators (users) are hoped to lead them toward more advanced applications of Static Pattern Engineering : fluxpoints and spawned dreams.
• Whereas thingk.com is a product aimed at people already engaged in the act of creating (even if it prods them to do so) where the target is clearly identified, the DreamSpawn service works with a more nebulous concept – the dreams that begin to fascinate people but often a clearcut direction does not always manifest (sometimes for years).  By leveraging the concept of Thingks (static patterns) and the activities surrouding PatternSmithing, the service purposely guides its clients through training around the technology (and its goals) and the knowledge of PatternSmithing with the clear dedication to watching their dreams become a reality.  This is a very rational process and is only embarked on once a proper analysis and evaluation has been done.
• The FluxPoints project will eventually become a commercial product and service, but is the most advanced merging of static pattern engineering research with computer technology.  Therefore, it will be a joint venture between the research and development activity, the PatternSmithing Alliance, and the “ThingK” company for quite some time.  Essentially, it allows any Thingk (or collection of Thingks) to virtualize further by leveraging an advanced technological infrastructure for collaboration.  This ‘engine’ will be leveraged by the research and development group, the PatternSmithing Alliance, and the “ThingK” company to drive innovations and collaborations.  You can read more about it at any time at the FluxPoints blog (or via the PatternSmithing Alliance blogs which syndicate it).

Thanks.

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This post is just about some decisions made about the technological (and publishing) side of work concerning static pattern engineering.

First, I’ve made a decision about publication of the first volume I am working on for static pattern engineering.  I have decided to publish it using Amazon’s Digital Media Platform.  Therefore, the first title will only be available electronically and will be an abridged version of the final form.  I will be actively seeking feedback from readers in this first publishing round, then I will seek alternate avenues for the expanded publishing round for the physical (and electronic) unabridged form.

Second, for the past few years I’ve been actively looking for a candidate programming language and platform for the virtual work on static pattern engineering.  I am happy to announce that I’ve finally found it – thanks to some extraordinary work at Microsoft research. They have produced the F# language which is about to reach maturity (the v1.0 release). This language will allow me to finally model some of the complexity surrounding the virtual work in an elegant form using multiple programming paradigms. My previous attempts to model some of the data structures and operations using a purely object oriented paradigm were not sufficient using anything else available. I had explored functional programming using Lisp and Scheme; however, the lack of constructs from imperative programming were also not sufficient and I couldn’t find an active project that maintained a connection to powerful frameworks (such as the .NET framework). The F# language effectively merges these paradigms as well as offering effective abstract representation, symbolic, and lexical processing which we will important for dealing with some of the core concepts in a programming language form.

Finally, the virtual side of static pattern engineering is going to take further form in a new project codenamed ‘FluxPoints’. A fluxpoint will be a virtual and active representation of a static pattern (or an aggregation of static patterns) on the Internet (in other words, the medium the static pattern will be expressed in is a ‘physical’ construct that allow it to participate on the Internet). I’d like to note that this is simply a research application of static pattern engineering, so won’t receive full attention here (only in the cases where the application helps inform the core theory); nonetheless, I am expecting some exciting developments from this project and am looking forward to it.

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