Perspectives: Making Models

The Perspectives project provides a distributed runtime that allows people to collaboratively run a model that supports them in some form of co-operation. This can be as simple as playing a game of chess or as extensive as coordinating parent's cars to transport a junior sports team to away matches. To completely model the latter is the main thrust of this work, as supported by NLnet and NGI Zero Entrust. The automatic screens generated by the runtime, based on the model, will be customised to provide a pleasant user experience. On the one hand the end result will be a usable little app, run within the InPlace end user program (that itself runs in the browser as a WebApp). On the other hand, it will provide a reasonably extensive model that showcases a realistic application of the Perspectives Modelling language. This development will also be a driving force that will make the distributed runtime better and the modelling language stronger.

Perspectives is built on a figure-ground reversal of the structure underlying much of today's internet. Data is not concentrated in a few heaps of similar-looking cases (commonly called databases) but instead on the devices of the people that are its source, subject and users. It is conceived of such that functionality builds upon other functionality, creating a network effect not in terms of numbers of users but in terms of functionality. The more of that, the better, stronger and more useful it becomes. The current project will deliver the first end user functionality that goes beyond maintaining the system environment itself (such as developing models, hooking up to communication services, etc).