GRAVITY FIVE -- Sunday, September 20, 1992

Francis Harvey writes, "It would be good discipline for you to focus your writing in order to keep it to two screens."

Okay, we'll do the brevity thing today.

Gravity is an information representation and communication paradigm that has been used as the basis for a "knowledge base" program called ThoughtShop. ThoughtShop has only been implemented for OS/2 using Smalltalk/PM. This was a big mistake, as this implementation of Smalltalk was riddled with errors at the time (1990). People have labeled ThoughtShop as "an expert system shell", "an object-oriented database", and "a really-smart bulletin board program".

Gravity has changed quite a bit since then. It's currently being worked
into a new, less ambitious, program named Aqueduct. I still plan on
reviving ThoughtShop, but don't currently have enough machine-power, or money, to do it. Aqueduct is best described as "work-group" software that is extremely easy to customize for particular clients. It gets this capability from its scaled-down "Gravity engine".

The Gravity I'm describing in these electronic notes is the heart of
the first program, ThoughtShop, as it will be when I've accumulated the resources to complete a non-OS/2 version of it. More than that, it's a public-domain information representation and communication paradigm that is intended for widespread use by programs other than Aqueduct and ThoughtShop. More than that, it'll be the fulcrum of an unprecedented propaganda campaign launched by fed-up creative types against the consumer-minded corporate world. More than that, it's the catchword for an interactive medium of creative exchange. More than that, it's the common bond for a society of freelance creativists.

This society is named Immuexa. It currently includes eleven people.

( Do we like brevity? I personally find it a lot less interesting. )

From: Barbara Frankel