Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Continuous Hierarchy

One might ask, what is continuous hierarchy? Well, I'll tell you. It is not the hierarchy you typically think of. One might think of the edges of the hierarchy getting shorter and shorter. One might think of the nodes getting bigger and bigger. Edges get less important. Nodes begin to overlap. If the hierarchy is view in terms of set theory, the edges of the sets begin to bleed into each other. A member could be both in and out of a set, or somewhere not quite in a set. The set boundaries may disappear leaving half of a set boundary. Some boundaries become distinct and some are non-existent. When languages and cultures meet, they exchange words. Jargon from a specialty creeps into natural language. (URL is you are el. english and spanish and hebrew?) I don't believe this is fuzzy sets or fuzzy logic. Here's why: everything is also dynamic.
Distance collapses. Languages collapse under the pressure from other languages. Cultures collapse. Technology lets languages extend into countries. Infrastructure that is distinctly hierarchical gets undermined. Only a system based on continuous hierarchy can survive. The top and the bottom are right next to each other. There is no top and there is no bottom. Only shifting hierarchies. Hierarchies continuously reforming different links. Loose links. Constant restructuring. Adaptable hierarchies. No ego. Only purpose. An organization with a vision survives. Critical skills are shared so there aren't any weak points.

Now. How does one write a system with these capabilities which does this in an efficient manner?

4 comments:

yottzumm said...

I am now thinking that the set theory idea has some extensions, like sets rotating, sets getting larger and smaller, sets moving etc. A whole animation of set theory. I don't exactly know if this applies to continuous hierarchy, but it's a lot funner to think about than static set theory

yottzumm said...

Well, if we have animated sets, then we could have calculus of animated sets, where you could estimate the change in area or volume of a set. If the set is broken, then I don't know.

yottzumm said...

But I don't really know what the area or volume of a set is. I'll google it

yottzumm said...

Ah, there is such a thing as a measureable set. I guess that's not continuous hierarchy