Monday, October 13, 2008

An isomorphic model about Internet




By model I mean a package of ideas, definitions and concepts useful to do various things but mainly forecast. Another word for it is Knowledge something similar, Turchin uses the definition cybernetic knowledge to be a self-sustaining model. Whoever human or machine possess it then it can go about making predictions about this or another aspect of the modeled entity.

When I was getting an introductory course in Pure Mathematics at Essex University I felt really excited and impressed by concepts like isomorphism between Sets, Groups, Function Spaces etc these generic ideas that enabled us to reason about so many things in the world that surrounds us.

In one of my introductory courses at Advanced Programming at St. Andrews, the statement we model the world with software made me even more curious to discover its foundations from the fascinating software examples of David Turner (SASL interpreter in BCPL, Combinatory Abstact machine in C, self-printing-program-script, etc). For example the SASL model of computation was more friendly for understanding the nature of algorithms than the BASIC model I learned at Hastings College the previous years (1).

Vint Cerf, the co-creatior of Internet's basic software (aka TCP/IP) has stated we put onto Internet whatever we have accomplished thus associating Internet and real world processes is a valid proposition.


In The COOK REPORT on the Internet Protocol November issue 2008, Cook reports on the line of work started by Tom Vest that attempts to relate the Addressing (sub)componet of Internet (2) across that of Macroeconomics. It is a MoE - Medium of Exchange concludes Tom' analysis and ressembles IPv4 addresses with the Gold standard of the old economies. I will spent a lot more with this material and come back with full commentary but for the time being I want to say

Eureka !

This is what I have been doing a paradigm to think about Internet evolution, an isomorphic model of Internet structure, function and working patterns. My target Domain has been not Macroeconomics but Cybernetics/General Systems, the language of MSTT (3) of Turchin.





(1) by logging remotely with a teletype to a mainframe in US linked by Tymnet over the Atlantic (undersea cable or satellite).

(2) the system includes Addresses, ISPs, BGP4, Policy Routing, CIDR

(3) MSTT is Metasystem Transition Theory (wikipedia) , an evolutionary inter-disciplinary scheme unifying Physical and Spiritual phenomena.