Folk Applications

Applications would benefit from and prove the value of Folk Memory as a platform.

Here I consider some applications that might find such a platform desirable. Each requires a large, structured and continuously growing repository for information, much of which is provided by the users themselves. I expect the ambiguity and non-determinism of the platform to be reflected through the application to these users, who are well prepared to deal with this reality.

Users would enter the system when they launch the application with its embedded server and providing the freshly started server with the network name of a currently running, but otherwise undistinguished, peer.

Connections would be made or broken as players inserted their characters into new rooms. Possessions could be left or dragged along behind a character by authority promotion as they are manipulated in each new environment.

The natural desire to avoid overcrowded rooms would prevent server traffic concentration. Since each player contributes additional server capacity, their participation in very large games would still be welcome.

Trail climbing would lead toward a distribution of objects on servers congruent with the hypertext structure of the document.

Agent mediated searches would be breadth first from the point of initiation, and would yield continuously growing results limited only by the initiator’s patience. {What about RecentChanges?}