Social structure as genetic encoding

[Michael Allan]

PS,

I wrote:
> A complex example might be a creative literary application in which
> authors can cherry-pick characters from one version of the story to
> another.  Or variations of plot.  Or atmosphere.  ...

It now appears that exactly this is enabled, at least where the social
structure is rationalized as in this figure (attached):
http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/G/p/vohall#PS

Suppose the red pipe positions are alleles of arbitrary complexity
(complex alleles).  Examples (again) from a literary application are
variations of plot, character or atmosphere.  Ordinarily we'd expect
these to be difficult to define or transfer from text to text.  I had
envisioned a mechanism for this, but it was never going to be easy to
code: http://zelea.com/project/textbender/d/approach-complex-wide.xht

Now up pops a mechanism that's almost coded, and it appears to be
optimal for both definition (existence, shape) and ease of transfer!
At first blush, I can't imagine improving it.  If allele Vw (adding
little star) is an improvement, then it couldn't be much easier to
locate and get a handle on than what's shown here in figure PS.  And
regardless of its actual complexity (could be more than shown) or of
the current wild genotype for population Va, it couldn't be much
easier to recombine Vw (get the little star) into that genotype and
throughout the population than the procedure in figures PR1 and 2:
http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/G/p/vohall?oldid=6110#Patch_relaying

Revision control systems cannot do this.  We need pipe positions
(credit Thomas) and transitive voting to formalize the social
structure (definition), plus social practices to formalize the
transfer procedure, e.g. PR1 and 2.  These are all novel inventions.
They aren't just "catchy and simple" names.  Right?

David Bovill said:
> I remember talking about this a few years back, and I still don't
> get what the problem implementing what you describe as recombinant
> text is. As ever you have given an important and central concept
> that many people over the years have struggled with, a catchy and
> simple title - but since 2005 we have had several systems that
> actually implement all the features you describe for recombinant
> text - a p2p population of text fragment variants in which
> attribution to each fragment is carried and traceable across the
> variations - its called distributed version control (DVCS) - or the
> de facto standard - git.

This is incorrect, too.  Git did not pioneer DVCS (nor even open
source DVCS).  It was inspired by BitKeeper (1998), which came out of
Sun's TeamWare (early 90s).  Myself, I was using Darcs in 2004 before
Git was conceived.  Then I switched directly to Mercurial (the other
newcomer) in preference to Git.

Recombinant text dates from a 2001 patent application (withdrawn).
http://brevets-patents.ic.gc.ca/opic-cipo/cpd/eng/patent/2340792/summary.html

Mike