The Sage Commander

Some of you reading this blog may have gotten your first exposure to Rolonics through the work of my buddy, my dearest friend, and (what seems like) my life long collaborator Bill LaForge (or BiLaf as I sometimes refer to him). Bill has pioneered the field of Rolonic Software Engineering (RSE). His corpus of work is a treasure trove of Rolonic theory and practice. (A good starting place is AgileWiki.)

Rolonics, however, is a broader theory than RSE. Rolonics deals with universals. This will both delight and frustrate software engineers since some of it is practical (that is, able to be manifested in software and software practice) and some of it is elusive and difficult to capture.

In an earlier blog entry I referred to structures and streams and stated that they are two sides of the same coin – interrelated and inseparable. In fact, let’s call them what they really are – space and time. How much more universal can you get than that!

Since Rolonics is my filter for the world I find examples of it everywhere. A particular source of inspiration is Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War and its commentaries. Last night I came across a quote from Roger Ames’s translation and commentary and it got me thinking. One of the recurring themes in Sun-Tzu is the concept of the Sage Commander -- the person of wisdom who sees the inter-connected world and operates within it for his advantage. To quote Ames, “The commander in defining the configuration of his forces treats his spatial form as a temporal flow”. The Sage Commander is a master of space and time – a Rolonicist.

Snap on "parts"

Well, in my last post I mentioned the relationship between structures and streams. However, an interesting thing happened that got me thinking about the other two characteristics of a Rolon - wholes and parts.

When I went back and looked at my own post, my attention was caught by the two embedded links in the post (hashtags and twemes). It turns out that I also have SnapShots running on my machine. For those of you who don't use it, SnapShots displays a call-out icon next to each hyperlink. When I move my cursor over a link I get a pop up of a 3" or so square call-out box with a miniature preview of the web page at the other side of the link.

This got me thinking. Since my post included references (rolonic classifiers) to these other web sites they became part of the context of my post. Since they were rendered by SnapShots I guess they are a perfect representation of a whole and its snap on "parts". Interesting!!!

My first look at lifestreaming

Streams are flowing everywhere. From text messages to Twitters to Facebook, millions of time-based, serial streams have emerged as the next big thing. What I find particularly interesting as a Rolonicist is that we are finally moving from the era where structures were the dominant species.

Those who follow Rolonics know that structures and streams are two sides of the same coin. Here are two early attempts in the stream world to unite the two. Both hashtags and twemes are notable examples where streams are analyzed and structural tag references are extracted.

Let's keep an eye on this. I have yet to see anything that handles "change over time" state or two-time.

St. Augustine and present awareness

Of what are rolons aware.

St. Augustine speaks of "a present of past things", "a present of present things", and "a present of future things".

Rolons have a state space of past-present-future.

Memory-awareness-expectation.