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Goals
I'm going to describe a "sideways" architecture view of Metta. Sideways means we view architecture from both low and high levels at the same time.
Low level architecture I will also call "mechanisms" - this is the "how" of the implementation. High level is also known as "policies" - this is the "what" and the "why" of my system.
Understanding the "why" gives us better view of "what" is needed. Understanding the "what" brings us to "how" it is done.
Metta aims to be your mithril compass, that is, a device powerful in determining what is worth and what is not worth doing, in determining when it is the right time for doing so and also on doing the things it can do, without taking up your time.
Imagine a device that knows your habits, your medicinal prescriptions, your work schedule and deadlines, synchronized to your circadian rhythms. A device designed to make your everyday life easier and more pleasant. This is "why".
I have chosen three essential areas where I target current system: mobile, multimedia and social. Mobile means accessing all data when on the move, being able to do your tasks even when away from laptops or conventional internet access. Multimedia brings up not only text-based activities, but video, audio, presentations and everything else you might want to do with your device. Social keeps you connected with your colleagues, friends and, most importantly, family.
Fun, of course.
With Metta it's fun to carry out your activities. Metta doesn't get in the way. Actually, it doesn't let other applications get in the way, too. It also predicts your actions and puts things where you will need them next, so once you reach out - they're already there. Fun!
Your information flows should become more organized and filtered. Information pressure is higher and higher every day and finding interesting bits and pieces becomes more and more exhausting. Metta's agents, filters and social recommendations will address finding things that actually interest you without spending too much time googling. Relevant data will be mined for you and presented the very moment you need it.
Metta will let you focus on things you do as deep as you want to - from a cheerful website skimming and chatting and whatnot to a very focused research work with no distractions. It helps you to do it by creating "managed distractions" called "contexts" or "modalities". In a given context, you arrange things how you like them and the system will remember it. You could give context a name if you want, so it is easy to recall it later.
You only need to have your work done, talk to your family and find yourself some good reading and entertainment, not necessarily on the net. You want your handheld and house devices to be a friendly, helping utilities. This is "what" Metta strives to achieve.
Central to your workflow are modalities, or contexts. We'll call your current context the "focus context" or simply your focus. Managing the foci efficiently is what makes Metta worthwhile.
While you are working on something, you might realise that your current setup lends itself well for some kind of work. In this case just click on "Create Context" button and your current focus setup will be remembered under some name. Recalling a context by name will bring up entire environment as it was before.
You can add special properties into your current modality, like "Do Not Disturb" or "Show me all news related to XYZ continuously".
Contexts are always there, and you are always in some context. When you first start playing with Metta, there's only one default context and you use it without noticing. Whenever you grow ready for adding new contexts your just click "Create Context" button and get a new one right away.
Recalling a different context remembers current context as it is and restores the new context in its place.
Metta may guess that you need a modality change, for example, when it sees that you are visiting a website recorded as part of some modality. To improve guesses Metta should take into account some other factors, but this needs more research first (on some prototype implementation).
Human memory works associatively - you remember bits and pieces of information with relation to other bits and pieces. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to tell your computer "show me that nice picture I saw on reddit a couple days ago"?
When you add some kind of thoughts about an object, you create an association. This association may be deepened and cross-linked and used to retrieve this object later.
Metta provides you with fully associative storage. Agents running in background may enrich this stored data with new links and relations they find. For things you found interesting and related to something else, the system may dig up and present hundreds more relations, filter and sort them and show to you when you try to recall it.
Folder heirarchies are a thing of the past. Users tend to build complicated and difficult to manage file systems, or alternatively drop all of their files into a single folder, usually Desktop. Instead of relying on the user to build a structure for organising their own data why don't we allow the computer to use information already present, and information supplied by the user to organise data.
Associative storage works like your external memory. It's a helper to your exocortex, it works even while you sleep to deepen your knowledge.
This concludes the public goals section, next up will be more technical description of "how" Metta achieves these goals. Follow on to TechnicalMerits.
Excerpt from old front page - rework for Goals.
Being at the center of your personal internet means being social, mobile, giving you expressive freedom.
- Multimedia
- View videos created by others, without delays, without hiccups.
- Listen to music and podcasts created by others, without delays, without hiccups, everywhere.
- Create your own videos and music easily, without tedious setup and grinding to a halt CPUs.
- Augmented reality
- Lets you create environment around you, which anybody can see. Metta helps to keep this data closer to where it is used, making augmented reality experience fast and fluid.
- Easy publishing platform
- Not owned by Facebook, Twitter or any other service - you own it, you control it.
- Copied redundantly over the network to provide backups.
- Synchronized automatically between all your devices.
- Access ranging from private to public, with easy control on who can see, edit, remix and provide feedback.
- Social
- You decide whom you're talking to on the internets. You decide how open or close you are about it.
- Your relation with people around you influences the information flows coming through these people - an information "sieve" if you like.
- Mobile
- There are no central authorities like DNS which could limit your accessibility, Metta will run in fully peer-to-peer fashion on all mobile devices, always connected.