Optimum Data Objects, an offer for clarification ($20,000)

[Ed Lowry]

       OPTIMUM DATA OBJECTS, AN OFFER FOR CLARIFICATION ($20,000)

                    Edward S. Lowry
                    Acton Mass. USA
                    eslowry at alum.mit.edu
                    http://www.ultranet.com/~eslowry 

A theory that there is an optimum structure for data objects has
been posted in a recently revised paper "Toward Perfect
Information Microstructures" at the above website. The optimum
results from efforts to simplify the expression of complex
software and other technical descriptions. The theory attempts to
clarify the potential for improving the quality of information by
improving the quality of the data objects used to represent it.
To further that clarification, an offer of $20,000 is being made
for refutation of some hypotheses about optimum data object
structure or justification of long term use of other data
objects. The main hypotheses with a common premise may be
summarized as follows:

     For a sufficiently large and diverse set of
     deterministically defined applications, whenever the total
     complexity of deterministic language definition plus the
     expression of the applications in the language(s) is
     minimum, then:

     Hypothesis A:
          all of the data objects will have a common
          unspecialized structure.

     Hypothesis B:
          all of the language will have a common semantic base.

     Hypothesis C:
          if the language(s) are "uniform relationship
          language(s)", the data objects will form hierarchies
          where all objects are "pointers" (or needles) that
          point away from a parent in the hierarchy and have
          secondary connections to at most two siblings and two
          children in the hierarchy.

The offer is specified in "Optimum Data Objects -- An Offer for
Clarification" at the website. The offer is made for sound reason
to expect that any of the above hypotheses or any of six
subsidiary hypotheses are not true. The offer is also extended to
anyone who can provide a suitable justification for the long term
use of other kinds of data object in specifying complex systems.

There are at least a few dozen cases where progressively
optimizing an engineering design terminates with a sharply
defined structural constraint rather than by design choice in a
tradeoff. In each case the structural constraint eliminates a
class of design deficiencies. For example, constraining wheels to
be round eliminates vertical vibration, constraining mirrors to
be flat eliminates image distortion, constraining the top and
bottom of building blocks to be horizontal eliminates sliding
forces. Such constraints often have no adverse side-effects which
raise significant tradeoff issues. 

A proposed sequence of constraints on data objects can eliminate
design deficiencies which cause excess complexity in a similar
way. Like masonry building blocks, the optimum structure for
building blocks of information is affected much more by the
interaction between the building blocks than by the larger
architecture they are part of.

These hypotheses do not seem contrary to any developed ideas
about data object structure. Much searching including an earlier
offer (for a smaller amount) has not revealed any other leading
edge investigation of how data object structure affects
information quality. Comments from the earlier offer did result
some revision to the hypotheses.

What is a reasonable structure for a data object?   Clarifying
commentary is encouraged. Data objects are among the most
important basic structures in any technology, but so far, seem to
be among the most poorly understood. Clarifications could unblock
several kinds of simplification for people working with technical
information, with or without computers. Overspecialization of
data objects appears to be a major obstacle to improving software
and technical education.