Re: [ba-ohs-talk] Node Sequencing [Was: **** Instant Outlining!!!***]
At 05:42 PM 4/23/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>Sandy Klausner wrote:
>
> > Threading cells together is a good metaphor. The key is in the
> definition of
> > the meta data/instructions bound to each cell to serve as the
> > infrastructure. Any ideas around on what this architecture would look like?
> > Sandy
>
>Hmm. Cells as objects. Looks like a class, at this point,
>with a hidden list of dimension pointers. (01)
Here, it seems to me, you are asking the question: should a cell be aware
of which dimensions contain it?
At the moment, I'm agnostic on that. When I started playing with this
idea, I started with a class Cell, and another class Network that contains
a hashtable the keys for which are dimension names and the objects
associated with dimensions are vectors of cells. In that case, a Cell is
just a Cell. It knows from nothing who its neighbors are. (02)
OTOH, there's a biological metaphor at work being ignored in that design,
one in which cell-cell interactions come into play. In such a case, you
might want to think about cell behaviors when contained within some
particular context. Maybe those behaviors are learned. Maybe they are
defined "genetically" and can be mutated over time. (03)
It strikes me that such a project can start with a trivial implementation
-- the hashtable/Cell model, and grow with experimentation into some
complex organismic entity. (04)