Gathatoulie

And of these shall I speak to those eager, That quality of wisdom that all the wise wish And call creative qualities And good creation of the mind The all-powerful truth Truly and that more & better ways are discovered Towards perfection --Zarathustra.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

arxana/metacommons

As some of you may remember, http://metacommons.org is already
taken by some offshoot or member of the "Media Experience Trade
Association". As described at http://metacommons.org/about,

"Media development projects are the purpose of Metacommons. A project
can be as simple as a widget or control, or as complex as an entire media
navigation system. Or maybe it's an just an algorithm. If you created something
to aide the design of digital media, and you think it would be useful
to somebody
else in the field, then it would probably make a good project."

This happens to match up with some of our thoughts -- but clearly (and
critically) they mean something quite different by the prefix "meta"! So
in the end, this "metacommons" isn't much of a match at all.

This suggests the need to look for a new name for the "metacommons
project" -- which is OK with me, because, names aside, I wanted to generalize
to "meta-resource-management". Metacommons is snappier, but the notion
behind this generalization is that the project should feel free,
wikilinks style, to
talk about the way "non-common" resources are being managed. I actually
think that the term "common" is somewhat too vague, since any resource
(e.g. Mount Rushmore) has a complicated resource management scheme
attached to it, so complicated as to go render the blunt instrument
"common" almost completely useless! We could try to rescue the term, but
my sense is that it only weighs things down.

As for whether "resource management" is any better, I'm not sure:
the take-away point is that the *term* is less important than the
*mechanism* that the term describes.

Which brings me to the other part of the subject line.

Arxana development has been slowed down for the last couple of
weeks because I've been putting in extra time at my job -- and
I tend to come off of work anything but fresh. In my typical
schedule, I usually take those "tired days" to bop around town,
reading books, or talking to friends, or poking around on the
internet -- and instead of struggling against these things, I'm
happy to think of them as my version of "well-roundedness" and
just enjoy them.

By contrast, the current augmented schedule has made me
feel like an invalid. It underscores a point I've been thinking
about for years (as I *have* wondered about whether or not
I'm being as productive as I should be): I must find a way to
quit this job and work on "my stuff" full time!

But there are some subtle ambiguities to this point. With my
"typical schedule", I *am* able to work on my stuff full time,
or at least very close to it -- so maybe the job isn't the problem
at all!

Indeed, before the weeks of overtime hit, I felt I had gotten
my programming into a pretty nice place -- just a matter of
"finishing up a few details" before making a limited release
to people who I think will be into it. Of course, that takes
time, and here and there it seems to open up a new can
of worms... which can take more time (even though "early
and often" rattles around in the back of my mind as an ideal
that I "should" be adhering to better, there's still some room
for polishing).

More to the point, by the time this release is ready, I'll
actually begin to be able to "do things" with the software.
(At least, that's what I've been counting on.) And so, at
least in theory, will anyone else. Bueno.

I've been *looking forward* to this part of things for what
seems like ages -- even though I predict that making a
release won't change things that dramatically. I figure
I'll still be one of the only people working on the project,
for example. Still, if possible, it would be nice to have
some forecast that's more solid than that guess. Maybe
I won't know til it arrives.

Please forgive me for rambling.

What I am trying to get around to is -- I think it would be
interesting to start a new non-profit that would continue
to do Arxana development from my demo, and which
would serve the purposes outlined above for developing a
"meta-resource-management project". The functional
form of such an organization should of course include
personnel and money. We've learned some strategies
related to the money end of things at PlanetMath.org
(although some of them remain untested in that context,
and some of them may no longer apply in this one). I'm
emailing you guys about it now because whether or not
you'd want to form part of the personnel, you have a lot
more than just a clue about what I'm talking about -- so
I think you're in a good position to critique the proposal.
Which, of course, I haven't even given you, except in this
rather vague and personal narrative. I'd be happy to try
to write up something more solid to share with those who
are interested.

For now, I would like to solicit from you some QUESTIONS
you might like to see answered about these topics.

Currently, references include:

* http://planetx.cc.vt.edu/AsteroidMeta/metacommons
* http://planetx.cc.vt.edu/~jcorneli/arxana/arxana.pdf
* My April Fool's 2004 celebratory email that introduced
Hyperreal Enterprises as a fictional future business entity.

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words cut, pasted, and otherwise munged by joe corneli otherwise known as arided.