GRAVITY FIFTEEN -- Wednesday, September 30, 1992

No philosophical wanderings today. I'm studying math now so I'm
quite thoroughly stuck in the left side of my brain. What I had planned on writing about visual images will have to wait until I'm in a less technical frame of mind. If you're not privy to compu-babble, you may want to skim or skip the following.

I mentioned earlier that each aspect has a dimension associated with it.
This is important for formal reasons. To an agent, all items appear as a
linear sequence of information. Item sequences are always preceeded by header information that defines the dimensions needed to correctly interpret the item.

When an agent reads an item, it cannot tell what kind of item it is until
it has read and interpreted this header information. This is because all items, whether they are text items, image items, sound items, or system items, have the same filename extention: 'i'. In other words, all files have the same format in Gravity. You don't have 'TXT' files and 'DBF' files and 'GIF' files and 'EXE' files. Just 'i' files (this extention must be lowercase).

An item is an item is an item. Everything stored in memory, saved on disk, or transmitted over a communication line has the same format.

Files can include one or more items of different aspects. One file might have three system items, two text items, and one sound item. A file could contain just one text item. The order that items appear in a file is not important. All items in a file are assumed to be available to an agent simultaneously.

One thing I've fretted over is what to call each thing in the linear
sequence that defines an item. The term 'byte' generally refers to an
eight-bit value, which is much too small. The totally unacceptable term
'word' refers to a larger chunk, usually of a size the machine is used to
dealing with. This term cannot be used because it'll cause confusion for
people who don't understand techno-speak.

I don't want to use 'number', or 'value', as these have their own meanings. Interpreting sequences of bits as numbers is sometimes useful, but semantically this information need not have any numeric correlation at all. We're used to thinking of binary information as numeric because computer science grew out of mathematics. '10101' doesn't necessarily mean '21'.

The word I'm looking for denotes a single unit of information, whether it's a single letter, a single color, a single tone, or a single component of
a name. Following the lead of Richard Dawkins, I call each unit of
information a 'meme'. (If any of you know of a better term, let me know.)

Items are comprised of memes. How the agent interprets an item's sequence of memes depends on the header that preceeds it. The header can have one, two, three, or four dimension values. The number of dimension values in a header determines what kind of item it is. One value defines a text item. Two values define an image item. Three values define a sound item. Four values define a system item.

How exactly this is done will have to wait until tomorrow.

From: Bob Barnes , Joe Lucia