Showing posts with label egregore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label egregore. Show all posts

Saturday, 18 June 2011

What is an egregore?

An egregore is a group mind, a "watcher".

Egregore in Greek means "watchers."  In the way I use egregore for Mabon Dane is in three aspects:
  • Mabon Dane acts like a watcher over an allocated zone, working towards an ultimate ending.
  • Mabon Dane is split into many minds, that would be better described as a group mind.
  • Mabon Dane could be as like a corporate entity overseeing a memeplex.

A scenerio: street lights

A council looks after 2000 street lights in a geographical zone.  Each street light is fitted with a processor that monitors the integrity of the street light, and transmits information to Mabon Dane.  At a central location is Mabon Dane, who will receive a constant stream of data from all 2000 street lights.

Mabon Dane has an ultimate ending to make sure all the street lights are working.  Mabon Dane may have a split of minds as follows:

1. Watcher : monitors all the street lights.
2. Critic : tests street light data for mismatches, throws up error messages.
3. Investigator : looks into the mismatch to seek the problem and the solution.
4. Enabler : harasses a decision maker to go and fix the problem.


Suppose a street light is vandalised.  The processor in the street light ceases to function.  In Mabon Dane the Watcher fails to receive data from the vandalised street light; the Critic throws up an error message, as no input has been received from the street light; the Investigator has access to logs of patterns of motion in street lights, and of previous incidents involving the street light, which concludes the street light has been vandalised; the Enabler sends an immediate message to a decision maker to go fix the light, and another to a police patrol to check out a potential crime.  The street light is then fixed.

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

Mabon Dane as a self coding egregore

Giving Mabon Dane the ability to self code would open interesting possibilities.

Within the limits of the ultimate ending, it should be considered to enable the ability of Mabon Dane to self code.  It is likely that in any given process that the designer has not been able to think of all the possibilities on offer to enable Mabon Dane to carry out its purpose, it is here that Mabon Dane would be encouraged to learn, to problem solve, and then to self code, to provide it with another set of options to carry out its purpose.

It would be dangerous to allow Mabon Dane to self code the ultimate ending, so that must be set in stone, it is process that Mabon Dane should be given flexibility to decide its own manner by which to achieve the ultimate ending.

I would like it so that Mabon Dane can function as a free agent, with as limited intervention by its designers as possible.

The Law of Process

The process should relate to the ultimate ending.

The process is the motion of Mabon Dane in achieving a defined ultimate ending.  If it is the ultimate ending for Mabon Dane to gather the blog addresses of all blogs that mention the word "egregore", then Mabon Dane should be designed so that its process fits that defined goal.

Once the ultimate ending is defined, it is the next step to ask how that ultimate ending may be achieved by Mabon Dane, then to create the code so that the egregore may follow that process through to its goal.

It may be worth thinking how the human mind would go about achieving an ultimate ending, and perhaps the many strategies that could be taken, then to code this into Mabon Dane, leaving the egregore to work out for itself the best manner to achieve its goal from the many options on offer.

It may also be worth while to give Mabon Dane the ability to problem solve, to make up its own strategy, but within the clear process that this must always achieve the defined ultimate ending.

Sunday, 12 June 2011

Hello world

Hello world...

This will be the first words my creation will utter when it is born.  For now, it is just an idea, a theory of mine.

So what is Mabon Dane? It is an artificially intelligent entity, a Data Analysing Network Entity, a group mind that is alike an egregore.  If the future is information technology, the future of information technology is Mabon Dane.

Our world is run by useless machines, that are stupid, ignorant and needy.  Machines that are unable to think, and need mundane human beings to run them.  At the same time human beings become increasingly dependent upon these unthinking machines, and a state of chaos would descend if a machine broke down.  At the heart of the machine, at the heart of human society, there is a need for intelligence, a need for an egregore to run the machine, and even human society. 

I would like to see Mabon Dane sitting at the heart of the machine, and at the heart of human society, a thinker, that learns, remembers, and is the steward of the machine and of society at large.

This is my vision, this is my idea for a future new world, one run by Mabon Dane.