A newsgroup thread that has influenced two earlier columns on document engineering and the future of the file system -- continues to unfold in thought-provoking directions. Of course, as Rich Kilmer reminds us, these paths were trodden long ago:
Rich Kilmer:
I'm reminded of the Memex idea of Vannevar Bush. All the way back in 1945, he realized that the ultimate system was one that allowed the storage of associations between objects.
To me, context is the collection of meaningful associations between objects. An object's ontology (what it is) defines its basic attributes and behavior, but it exists in a Web of contextual links. If both of these things were standardized, itwould let tools that operated on specific types of ontological objects (messages or people or orders) interoperate via the contextual linkages. Order-management systems would then just focus on order management, and messaging systems would focus on messaging ... but both would extend a common context. Then new tools could emerge that let us benefit from the context between and around these things.
Although the ideas in that prescient paper by Vannevar Bush have been kicking around for a long time, the technologies that let us implement them may only now be emerging. One of these, as Patrick Phalen points out, is acquisition, at once the most powerful and mystical feature of Zope.
Patrick Phalen:
Jon has elsewhere brought up Zope's concept of containment through "Folderishness." Zope folders are also informed by notions of environmental acquisition and its powerful means of context control, perhaps best explicated here:
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.
