Hello people.
I don't know to which group this letter might be best addressed, so I hope it piques some interest to members of the groups to which I have made this reply.
Some of you might remember a fella by the name of Owen Thomas who was exploring his own idea about a system that could communicate a person's real-time presence through the devices one claimed possession of. Thus far, his journey, commenced in 2004 when he received the inspiration for the concept, has continued as a solitary indulgence.
Anyway, I have said before that I was nearing an implementation, and I found that I had spoken too early in these previous occasions. Hence, I do not now wish to disappoint by promising something which might not eventuate. However, I feel that I could be nearing a significant milestone: the abstract nature at the core of my concept appears to me to be nearing a form of completeness where I think I might be able to cobble together a simple demonstration.
I want to emphasise my circumspection: the core of Clique Space(TM), my concept which is intentionally very abstract, may soon be in a state where I will be able to demonstrate an implementation over some very simple media.
I urge you to reply to this message if you would like to know more. I am implementing this thing in Java, and if you know Java SE, I may disclose source code listings. You may be taken aback a bit by my use of generics, but in as much as my use of generics has helped me work out logic errors before they turn into runtime bugs, I do not believe my progress to the point where I find myself now, could have been any faster.
To reiterate: Clique Space(TM) is a concept where one's presence is projected over devices one possesses to others who likewise use Clique Space to project their presence through whatever devices they have. Clique Space allows the individual to engage different devices depending not only on the devices' physical characteristics, but also on preferences set by the individual and groups to which the individual is affiliated.
I believe this concept is so flexible that it reduces the entire variety of individual interaction down to the disclosure or non-disclosure of "components" which describe individual characteristics. Although this assertion requires testing, my hunch since August/September 2004 has only solidified.
I believe that in this concept, I have come up with a mechanism that reduces the complexity of interaction to a question of scale: different device types are described in "Media Profiles", so that in order to use a device on Clique Space, one merely needs the correct Media Profile. All interactions in Clique Space are modelled as Cliques; an Clique contains two or more Participants which are one or more devices commandeered by their owner (through an Identity) to engage one or more other member Participants in a systematic way. This Clique is governed by constraints, and the Clique only exists while sufficient constraint affinity can be maintained.
I probably need some interested people to lend me a hand in the production of Media Profiles.
Get back to me some time.
Owen.