Of course, that makes sense, because the target audience for the code typed is a compiler, a computer that must interpret the source code in plain text terms.  Yet, I thought – what if the code (this information with potential to cause effects) were written in something like a word processor, where a human being could understand the code but with added markup for emphasis but still the basic underlying plain text code the machine demanded was simple, stripped of formatting, etc?

I thought of the versatility we possess in processing information – something I have been thinking about as I teach my soon-to-be-toddler son about the patterns he will leverage in this world and knowing that I will be amazed as he takes that same journey all of us have taken in conceptualizing, seemingly effortlessly, the complexity of the world we all have collectively built – which is always much more complex than that faced by our ancestors 100 years before, in every generation.

Engineers are making the computers we coexist with more adept at processing patterns and with their large data stores (and linked information is rapidly increasing this store), can find connections between patterns that many humans cannot (for instance, see info on perceptual hashing); nonetheless, human minds deal with such a rich world.  We have embedded our thought into language, and we have embedded that language onto many objects, and we have embedded the text on those object in increasingly creative ways.  Examples abound: typefaces (sometimes multiple within one single page), logos (artistic renderings of common text), ideograms (capturing an idea or metaphor with an artistic rendering), wrapping or warping text around the shape of a surface (real or imaginary), etc.  In all of these cases, human consciousness is quick to process all of this complexity, sometimes at blinding speeds without even hesitation.

I’m saying all of this to set the stage and to ponder some deeper questions — see, I am working on a project which is finally coming together this year but I still face an intriguing problem – how best to store representations of people’s thoughts and the things they create out of them or create them with … and persist them in ways that benefit equally well the creator of the thought, those who may optionally (if the creator chooses to share) consume/build upon/be inspired by these thoughts/things,  the algorithms that help make some of the magic possible with this raw material and thus in turn greatly aid those who work with the algorithms.

The deeper questions surround whether to store minute details on every single piece, with lots of injections of extra or meta information potentially surrounding each piece, thus making it a bit expensive to reconstitute the representations either a human or a computer are expecting to see; or to store it in a simple format that is easily searchable or transformable for the intended purpose.

This puzzle of course faced our early pioneers of this massive uncharted territory called the world wide web.  The early spiders made the choice to capture, store, and analyze the raw information just as it is (and then to transform it to the desired formats as needed).  And we have taken the same approach to much of human knowledge – indexes of common words and raw text predominate over more complex storage representations.  It also is of course cheaper, and if the more analytical representation is needed, processing power can be spent to make the more in-depth analysis.

To take this question into the realm of the absurd, a long time ago in computer technology, we chose to assign a unique code to the signs and symbols that make up text.  The words on this blog post are stored as a sequence of characters based on this code and not a graphical representation of each letter.  That is, knowledge can be stored as “75 110 111 119 108 101 100 103 101″ (the ASCII codes for each letter/symbol) rather than the graphical shape of each letter.  And the fact that it is in bold and the shape of each letter can be stored as markup around that sequence indicating the font and the weight of the word rather than again the actual shape used.  To picture the latter scenario seems ludicrous, because this is a commonly known sequence of characters in a well-defined font and degree of weight to it (bold) and to store it as if it were a work of art seems wasteful and inefficient… given this persistence scheme (the letters and the specifications on how to render it), any computer in the world can easily render an identical result.

But what if it were not a commonly known expression – what if it were a unique expression that one did not recognize?  Perhaps a picture of it would suffice?  But what if a computer algorithm did some pattern analysis and found that it was an artistic rendering of something that was well-known and studied halfway across the globe?  Wouldn’t it make sense to make it as simply a reference to the original with metadata about the unique features (the delta) of it?

Also, back to the knowledge word example.  What if a commonly agreed to representation (a codification) of each word of the English language were in place so that the code, rather than the individual letters, could be captured with the necessary metadata to capture the formatting (font and boldness)?  With that extra space we just saved, what if it were possible to infer the context that knowledge was used in and codify that?

The only purpose of this blog post is to introduce some entropic flow around the question of representation and storage and later transformation of information that I am playing with.  If it simply got you thinking of possibilities and alternatives, whether or not any of them makes sense at this moment, it will have served its purpose.  Ultimately, no strong model jumps out at me now so the standard model of storing text is predominant in my mind; however, I am hoping by cracking open this inquiry and pondering it in the back of my head, something innovative and useful may result – and then only if it has good pragmatic value will I consider something counter to the current trend.

Note there is a deceptive system effect of consciousness which @galtenberg called fascination.  I call it deceptive because it cannot be fully depended on save for a data point of an affect.  Quite simply, it is when something repeatedly (at least for a period of time) grabs your attention in such a way that it can appear as resonance.  Quoting @galtenberg, he expressed two things quite well about its mechanisms:

Fascination can lead to resonance [but not always].

and

Fascination wears off…

In other words, the first quote refers to the fact that fascination can be an early indication or precursor of resonance but it does not imply the latter; hence, why I like to call it a bit deceptive.  In fact, we used to call it false resonance at times – it would give a false indication of resonance.  Other times, it was an excellent earlier indicator of resonance.

The second quote deals with a quite simple test : If it is in fact merely fascination and not resonance, the brain will give a definitive clue – the sort of magical fascination will begin to fade (unless other mechanisms like an addiction are at play, at which case it will return in a cyclic loop over time) and the fascination will wear off.

This contrast between these two leads to an important question: If one is following what fascinates the brain, will it lead to evolution of consciousness (which Csikszentmihalyi talks at length about) or to depravity?  I have asked that lately again because for better or worse I have heard about some quite depraved individuals in the last few months, both in the news as well as personally.  One thing is in common in all these cases – they are quite driven by something that fascinates them deeply (my usage of the term here could spark some debate because I am dragging it through the mud perhaps but bear with me) but leads to ultimate depravity and destruction in their life and the lives of others.

It could be easy to label the fascination in all of these cases I am talking about by saying it is driven by some basic human drives – sexual gratification, fear, grief, horror, or morbid curiosity in the specific cases I am thinking of but that is too easy.  For instance, during the grieving of my father passing away last year, I had what I would call fascination with one disturbing aspect of his passing but this led me toward discussion with others and ultimate resolution and passing through the grief; however, there was a sort of binary choice – I could have gotten caught in a repeating cycle of going over the same ground over and over without any resolution whatsoever or I could the extra attention to actively work through the challenge I was faced with.  I would say that the former approach would have led to depravity.  Nonetheless, the fact stands that this fascination was nothing related to resonance – this period is now gone (thank goodness) and did not lead to the phenomena we call resonance.

I don’t have answers at this point (even though we debated it years ago) – that is not the point of this post.  I am merely chewing on the question again and offering it up as food for thought for others who may be interested.  If you feel like discussing, feel free to comment on this post here on the blog, or on my friendfeed profile when it echoes over there or reply to @joelkotarski at twitter when it echoes over there.

(below is wikipedia disambiguation page embedded for quick reference without leaving the blog post)

I chose the name Entropic Flow as sort of a contradiction in terms – Flow is the state of mind described my Csikszentmihalyi and can be attributed to ordered consciousness, while Entropy can be described as  lack of or moving away from order.  I believe that order can emerge from disorder.  Dee Hock coined a term ‘Chaordic’ to describe processes that make a combination of Chaos and Order.  Anyway, because life and thoughts don’t always fit inside the line of projects and endeavours, I want the overflow to go here, hence though the thoughts will spill into all kinds of categories and hence appear disorganized, I believe they will emerge into other things.

Actually, this blog was started a long time ago but never syndicated into the PatternSmithing Alliance blogs – it was actually intended to be private, but I have since decided to open it up and start publishing from it as of today.  The topics will be quite broad and cross all of my diverse interest areas.  As noted, at times the topics may appear entropic but the intention is that these will flow into larger themes (either within the same post or over time as themes develop).  Of course, there may be zero audience for these thoughts, in which case the blog becomes a killer diary.

Many of the best creations occur when people go back to simpler tools that allow for expression.  I gave examples of a white board and notepad but here is a more vivid one – the target might be a piece of music, and of course the artifact of music paper might give the power to virtualize the music and have an orchestra (or several orchestras) play the music – however, it is very difficult for someone to simply sit down at a computer with software for placing notes on scales and simply compose the music.  Often the composer will step away and grab one or more of the instruments or even hum parts of the emerging piece to themselves – testing the emerging song for resonance.  Now, the designer of the computer software could add lots of features to make this feedback loop tighter – that enhance the medium of placing musical notes on the scales inside the software (like having the notes/chords play on the computer as they are placed, or to highlight a portion of music and loop it over and over until it is right).

In the same way, these next advancements of the user interface seek to simultaneously enhance the experience of conceptualizing, enhancing, and creating thingks but also more closely mimicking the very effective simpler virtualizing artifacts we’ve been using for years.

• Flourish is based on quickly weaving together the conceptual fabric of the think portion as well as the relationships that define it and although it is available as a low-level language, it ultimately works with human interactions/gestures with the user interface to accomplish this.
• The new user interface design builds off of Flourish but uses a look and feel that looks, well, hand-drawn, if there is a high degree of flourishes going on.  Flourishing is a concept within the system and measures the rate of development of a Thingk and is based on the similar concept in positive psychology which can be reviewed here.  A Thingk that is not yet ‘done’ but its creator is neglecting will in fact be languishing and the fact that it is is either a reflection on the mental state of the individual (are they languishing?), a reflection of their relationship to the Thingk (is it time to pass it on to someone else?), or if we haven’t done our job right, a negative reaction to the user interface that is causing the impedance mismatch we are trying to solve (the relationship of the user to our offering is languishing).  Either way, it must be noted in all three cases that they are no longer using flourishes to advance their Thingk.  So flourishing in the Thingk.com offering is a measure of  the number of flourishes that are happening on a Thingk-in-formation.  This concept will also be extended later to the interaction of the community with the Thingk-in-formation or Thingk-at-completion-state.  The flourish portion of the user interface for building Thingks will also be used to be inspired by and weave together Thingks others (or even you yourself) have created, and this also will eventually be factored into the concept of flourishing.  Either way, the look and feel of the user interface will reflect this in ways I cannot yet reveal but I am pretty confident I think you’ll enjoy.

More to come later!

I can’t talk about detailed specifics on two core components of the FluxPoints framework; however, after working with their consequences, I believe they can bring about a transformation of how we use the web.  Both are geared around the goal of bringing flux to endpoints that wrap around static patterns or Thingks (that is, fluxpoints).  There will be several mechanisms for bringing flux to these endpoints, but these two additions, it is hoped, will change the nature of how people respond to information on the web.

The first, and oldest, mechanism is the NeoReQuest framework, and changes the way we look at the standard web request and the way we frame a sequence of interactions with the web.  The notions of context, intention, and most importantly, autotelic behavior surround this longer running transaction we frame as a new form of web request.  Eventually, NeoReQuest will be a standalone site as the value this way of walking the web will bring will far outgrow the fluxpoints project; however, the fluxpoints framework will frame the activities on partner sites (thingk.com, dreamspawn.net) as NeoReQuests.  This serves a two-fold purpose: to bring flux from the partner sites to these activated endpoints and to evolve the neorequest framework so that it can be effortlessly incorporated into future partner sites when it is time to go public.

The second project focuses on one of the best forms of analog flux that carries meaning that we have encountered and has been completely overlooked on the web.  Armed with the technological platform we are arranging and some basic concepts, this form of flux provides us some of the best measurements and provisioning of flux from the human mind than we could ever hope to achieve without it.  To be honest, since this idea came to me I have not been able to tuck it away for future work.  This is probably the most active Thingk in my mind at the moment and the energy of it will drive all of the other initiatives forward (except it will probably slow work on the book I am writing).  Of course, I’m being purposely vague, but those who work with the beta testing of Thingk.com will be able to experience early stages of this technology.

Finally, the PatternSmithing Alliance is the “centralized organizing and guiding body for the core activities, knowledge, and applications of static pattern engineering technologies”, and these are three such technologies (that is, fluxpoints, neorequests, and voxpoints).  All three are semantic web technologies at root (that is, they both expose and consume data using the semantic web framework) and the Alliance will maintain the specifications for the ontologies and schemas used for all three.  This is also an invitation – I am interested in collaborating with individuals who are interested in any of these technologies.

As a last note, I want to pay homage to Dr Stephen Thaler, whose series of Thingks and experiments he performed with Imagination Engines, and his generous sharing of information to the web community all along and my subsequent exposure to them, gave the initial inspiration for the FluxPoints project.  Although I am not using any of Dr Thaler’s technology in this site, the spirit of his ideas and the results he obtained live inside this project – I have no doubt exposure to his ideas directly transformed my own conceptions of SPE technology back in early 2001.  This sort of attribution (the “inspiredBy” attribute in the Thingk-related ontologies) is essential to track.  Thank you, Dr Thaler.

• This will be an invitation only beta, which means:
  • Some colleagues and friends will be asked directly to join – please feel no obligation but your feedback will be greatly appreciated if you can assist.
  • Throughout the last few years, I have been looking at interesting individuals who may be interested in patternsmithing and Thingk persistence – you will be receiving a hand-crafted email as a personal invitation – once again, no obligation please – only do this if it brings you value but if you do your feedback is greatly appreciated.
  • As expressed on this blog, if interested feel free to contact me at the contact form http://xri.net/=joel.kotarski and I will be able to accomodate you.  Also if you think you know someone who would be interested from the category above, please contact me here as well.
  • We’ll probably have limited invitations to spread around among private beta users – these will probably only be on a request-only basis, however, to control capacity initially.
• For those in town, we will most likely host an in-person meeting where we will go over some details about the site and what is being accomplished – for out-of-towners we may also host a teleconference as a separate event.
• Since we will be testing privacy and security (with potential bugs to be found), I ask that you put the kind of ideas you may spontaneously work on but not your actual work and certainly not anything you would consider intellectual property at this point.  Much of the data from the private beta will be wiped clean on launch so that we can fully test; however, I am planning to make an easy mechanism to tag content you wish to transition over to the full system – also, I will be soliciting feedback on making this process as painless as possible for those generally interested in getting value from the work they do in beta testing.
• As always, being asked to participate should not imply obligation to participate, and participating should not imply obligation to give detailed feedback.  Anything you do is greatly appreciated and will be rewarded in some manner.

Polymeric finally admits that the user interface should get out of the way of the user – that the best expression comes out of the user if they are guided and prompted along but in a non-intrusive way.  At the core of Polymeric is the ContextProvider – the context is used to provide suggested components, prompted questions, and directions for exploration.  The ContextProvider works at three levels : what the user has done before (what Thin(g)(k)s* they have created, what Thin(g)(k)s have inspired them, as well as the components of each), what they are doing right now (the current word they may be trying to type, what question they are answering), and where the engine can infer they are going (via pattern matching of current text we can infer related directions for exploration).

*: Thin(g)(k)s means Things, Thinks, and/or Thingks (or any combination thereof).

At the center is the Polyermic edit box – a text editor (with optional rich editing functionality but this is hidden away and only appears under certain circumstances) which is fed by and feeds the ContextProvider.  At the moment, we are planning to have users use WikiWord format to denote Thin(g)(k)s across the entire site – it is just a format that works well.  The ContextProvider loads several layers of information, but the first layer of information is a static list of WikiWords (that is, pointers to Thin(g)(k)s) which the user has had contact with (either by creating, being inspired by, or using as components in their other creations), primed for usage in this context.  Let’s look at the post I am writing currently on this blog – four WikiWords are at play and only three are Thin(g)(k)s.  The Thin(g)(k) WikiWords are : “ContextProvider”, “Polymeric”, and “Thin(g)(k)”.  I’ve repeatedly typed all three manually throughout this post, but if I was editing this post in Polymeric in the actual Thingk.com web site, these words would have been suggested to me.  This due to the first and second layers of information: “Polymeric” and “Thin(g)(k)” would have been loaded in context in the first layer (as my creations and/or creations I collaborated with others on), but the moment “Polymeric” was suggested to me and I picked it, the ContextProvider would have loaded all the components of the Thingk “Polyermic” into context, including (but not limited to) the “ContextProvider”.  And one of the other Thin(g)(k)s that would have been loaded is a reference to a project which inspired context suggestions and must be payed homage to: GoogleSuggest.  GoogleSuggest inspired many people as an autocomplete mechanism to use Ajax to give suggestions based on user inputs, but this is in the context of one singular input, whereas we will suggest individual parts of a larger body of text – this is of course nothing revolutionary – you can see the same feature on your cell phone.  The difference here is that a Thingk, behind the scenes, will be a RDF resource that follows the ontology defined for Thin(g)(k)s at the PatternSmithing Alliance, including linkages between Thin(g)(k)s at the RDF level.  Like most semantic web applications, we would never dream of having our users manually hand-type RDF; however, by choosing one of these WikiWords, the text of the Thin(g)(k) is not the only persisted but also the relationship/link to the Thin(g)(k) itself.  This was the crucial problem to solve – to give the user an intuitive mechanism for forging these relationships.

The Polymeric user interface has an additional set of features which are fed by the ContextProvider.  Several of these are based off the usage of WikiWords – for instance, it is possible to use a WikiWord for a Thin(g)(k) not currently on the site (for instance, my mention of GoogleSuggest would have started the process of creating an authorative reference on the site to Google’s project, pending Google’s permission to create such a thing) as well as suggestions to the user to turn a repeated pattern of text into a WikiWord and therefore a Thin(g)(k) on the site.  Additionally, the outer borders of the user interface will have bits of context floating in based on what is going on inside the editing area: a cloud of moving WikiWords that can be grabbed and dragged onto the editing surface that changes over time, and prompting questions that fade in and fade out  to guide the user to starting or evolving their work.

Once we open up the private beta, we will be soliciting feedback from some of you, so please contact me at http://xri.net/=joel.kotarski if interested.

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.

• 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.