A Psychosomatic Verbal Block

The Instrumentation Specialized vocabulary Areas will contain terms that are useful in specific situations. One Area will have the names of every dinosaur, another will contain the scientific names of every plant, a third will contain the name of every disease and so on. These three Areas could be simple lists without much organization, but Instrumentation is designed to use hierarchical structure to simplify the recognition, recollection and use of complex terms.

There are 16.7 million Blocks of terms in the Specialization layer. Each Block contains 256 terms which I normally arrange in four tables each containing four sub-tables (or banks) of sixteen cells. This "standard structure" allows terms to be grouped according to combinations of the Types of the I Ching.

This page contains some prototypes of designs for Blocks of terms that are arranged using the standard structure. It also contains a few more speculative examples which do not have terms to arrange. One alternative pattern is the Robotic Interface where the right and left hands have separate duties. I am sure that there are other patterns, but these seem to be the most regular and obvious.

The terminology for the full hierarchy is:

Specialization provides 256 Areas
Articulation provides 256 Divisions within each Area
Description provides 256 Blocks within each Division
Creation provides 256 Terms within each Block

Indexing

The #00 cell in each Block will contain the name of that Block. This means that the #(01-FF)(00-FF)(00-FF)00 collection of cells will contain a self-documenting Table of Contents for the Specialization layer by default. This will consume 1/256th of the address space (16.7 million terms, but less than .4%). The terms will be distributed evenly across the entire address space so it won't create any noticeable gaps. (FYI, #00000000 is 'true' or 'yes', so the "Casual Conversation" Area isn't part of this scheme)

Maintaining this Table of Contents will require no additional effort beyond maintaining the #00 cells in the Blocks themselves. Each 'Area' (the highest division) will contain 255 Division descriptions, each Division will contain 255 Block Descriptions and each Block will contain 255 terms. The only other usability requirement is that the #00 Divisions should contain the most iconic Blocks within their Specialty.

There are (currently) two 'meta-patterns' for the Division layer of Specialized terms, #00 should be 'descriptive' and #FF should relate to control.

The overall pattern of terms in each Block is more important than the exact contents of the individual table cells at this early stage of the development of the specialized vocabulary. Experts (and much testing) will be needed to finalize anything specific.

Vocabulary Building Blocks

How will Instrumentation do business?

How will Instrumentation entertain me?

How will Instrumentation arrange my "music collection"?

How can I make music with Instrumentation?

How does Instrumentation appreciate art?

What is the Instrumentation view of Sociology?

Where will Instrumentation live?

How does Instrumentation support Architecture?

How does Instrumentation fulfill its civic responsibilities?

What is the Instrumentation programming interface?

How does Instrumentation augment human intelligence?

What is in the Instrumentation Command Code Block?

How will Instrumentation encode Unicode?

What else can Instrumentation do?

I plan on creating Blocks for categorization, ethics, architecture, government, technology, sex, communication, reasons for living, dog breeds, consciousness, humor, deportment, programming design patterns, the hierarchy of needs, etc. Some of these may blend together or change beyond recognition or vanish completely, and I may have better ideas tomorrow, but there will be more Blocks created.

Some of these Blocks will be easy to finish and others will be posted unfinished. I know that these Blocks are only the first halting steps towards creating the <echo>Ultimate Index of Ideas</echo>, so my major goal is to demonstrate the form or structure of the Blocks. These tables are like roughhewn chunks of marble, much shaping and polishing will be needed to reveal the true forms of the elephants sleeping within.

Some of these Blocks would be used by experts and some would be used by novices who were approaching a "field of interest" like medicine or the law.

The Blocks that have the simplest aspects (with one or no laths) within the Description layer would would be overviews used to supplement the index system
The aspects with combinations of two or three laths would tend to be HOW-TO and student Blocks
The aspects with exactly four laths would be reserved for future expansion
More complex aspects with five or six laths would be the vocabularies used by specialists
The aspects that lack one or no laths (with seven or eight laths) would be used for control

If you can create a definitive Block for inclusion in the Specialized vocabulary, you will achieve ego boo beyond the wildest dreams of people who can only create single Described terms.

This isn't an easy thing to do. Finding the exact right word to perfectly express a combination of complex concepts is the essence of poetry and competent poets have always been in short supply.

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