Answers On A Postcard
VagueWare has finally taken it's first few steps. Wiggy claims it's late. Me? Well I believe the only solutions worth a damn are those that evolve - which is what VagueWare is all about. VagueWare is no different, it evolved from the rigidity of Scoop to the flexibility of MediaWiki. In the process becoming the very first example of what it is hoped can be achieved - the free evolution of ideas. I only wish I' thought of it. Well... actually... I did. The concept behind VagueWare at any rate.
Last year, when I chose to inflict Big Brother on my self, some event caused to to delurk and I ended up having an oddly philosophical debate via email. Well, perhaps not a debate - more like two people considering axioms trying to see if they would fit into a hypothesis which they could both accept. Just as we seemed to be getting somewhere life intervened and the whole thing evaporated. This is not the first time this has happened. On a whole raft of different subjects I've almost, but not quite, gotten to a conclusion only to have life intervene. At the time it's mildly frustrating. It's also frustrating when you encounter some PhD banging on about a wonderful new idea that you had years before. (Okay, this has only happened twice I can recall, and I'll admit I've also had some completely barking ideas over the years.)
Anyhow, last year I got to thinking about the problem. Being a techie I tried to apply IT to the problem to see if this frustration could be avoided. So I sat down and tried to think of an on line forum which would allow mental meanderings to have a life of their own. However, I was totally unable to think of a system which would allow it to happen. I looked at so many different CMS engines. I even considered a wiki at one point. But everything I considered seemed to require too much overhead - administration, moderation, etc. I even contemplated coding-up my own solution. But the whole idea started to look too complex - so I slipped the idea onto my mental long-term (if ever) to do list.
I'm not sure it was by accident or design, whether it was Wiggy's original plan or not, but VagueWare seems to have turned into precisely what I'd been looking for. It's a simple solution, obvious after the fact, and given the rest of my life I doubt I've have thought it up. It's like a picture of a candlestick - you look at it for years until one day somebody points out two faces, and suddenly the whole world changes. There is such a wonderful unforced symmetry about the whole VagueWare model. A model which is so complex in concept yet is so simple in implementation. I know it's simple because I've tried it - jumping in and changing things to reflect my opinion of what's trying to be said. I know it's complex as every attempt I make to define the concept just gives me a headache.
Perhaps it's process of mental evolution. Perhaps language can't cope with such concepts. Perhaps I got too close to the underling concepts when I was trying to find my own way last year. But I simply cannot export my concept of what VagueWare actually is and how it works. I though I could simple join in and write up my realisations. Yet I've joined in and although I can see an answer on the tip of my mind it's an answer to a completely different question. Well, it's more like a realisation about myself - as soon as I can grok in fullness I'll likely post it. In the meantime anyone reading this who is not already involved in VagueWare please head over there an see if you can work out what the hell I'm on about.