This message was sent to ontolog, June 15, 2021

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Working on this very simple threaded forum design and thinking about how this relates to ontology and network science in general, just a small thought that feels exciting and potent.

You want to put something on the web, you write that something in the HTML programming language – ‘Hyper Text Markup Language”

HTML is about “containers” – start and stop points in linear sequences – “bounded intervals” so to speak – and it is 100% hierarchical and in that sense, linear – first to last, top to bottom – in a straight line.

As I am working on this forum design, I am also very aware that HTML execution by the server is also sequential. Linearly ordered, one thing at a time in absolute order.

Starting at the top of the page, get the first object, get the second object, get the third object

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Now the thought, still cooking in the back of my brain – is that this looks like a potent criteria for optimization – maybe, to honor Alex’s question about globalization (humanity rather than nation), even “global optimization”

To optimize something – what you need is a linear variable – some variable in commanding control of all the variables nested underneath it.

A strong case can be made the “the problem with money” is that is it is a simple one-dimensional linear variable – very easy to understand – “more money=good, less money=bad”)

Jeff Bezos is very good at linear optimization – but it’s very localized – to him.

We need “poly-centric optimization”

I want to meditate on this a bit more – but for way-back – I am reminded of Richard Bellman’s “Dynamic Programming” from many years ago.

I think we need something like a monster compression algorithm based on well-defined optimization criteria.

Everything on the planet fans in to one integral optimization. “Give me your poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free…..”

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PS, this threaded forum architecture takes this same linearly-cascaded shape:

1) What group are you in

2) What is the first topic for that group

3) What is the first comment on that topic

4) What is the first reply to that comment

Tue, Jun 15, 2021