2005-04-27
Verospheres
Some authors have a nasty habit of inventing new words – I will succumb to the temptation only once in this essay. The word is coined to describe systematic dependence between things. It describes an arrangement where things must be true for each other: They must act truly in order to act together. The boundaries of such an arrangement is, outwardly, towards things where truth is not a necessity. I call this arrangement a Verosphere.1
As a simple mechanical example of a verosphere, imagine a pocket watch where all internal parts, from the casing to the springs, wheels, pivots, balance cock, hands and knobs, must unambiguously work together – they must be true to each other in order for the clock to work properly. The clock, as with all machines, has one or more flows of energy, or information if you so choose to think of it as such, and as this energy passes from one part of the clock to another; from the winding knob to the springs and casings to the cogwheels and to the hands, these interacting parts must act truly towards each other as conceived by their maker. If they act falsely the watch will fail to work properly.
In information technology, the meeting place between discrete parts is called the interface. Discrete entities can meet in many ways, the most elementary of which can be referred to as hardwired. In a hardwired construction, no individual component has any alternatives for who to interact with, nor a choice in what fashion or manner that interaction will occur. The entire information path of our pocket watch is hardwired with the exception of the knob which can be altered to wind the springs or bypass straight through to the hands themselves.
1I was tempted to use Fukuyama’s term Radius of trust – "All groups embodying social capital have a certain radius of trust, that is, the circle of people among whom cooperative norms are operative", but the term has a narrower context than what I mean by a Verosphere.
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