For the past 10 years or so, I have attempted to keep track of the way in which my tastes in art (i.e. literature, music, film, etc..) are influenced. I initially started off doing this in the Dot language, but quickly found this to be untenable. I have considered migrating my current stack of thousands of connections to Prolog, but perhaps a simpler, more specific language would be a better option. This language would of course have to provide a way to define core entities symbolically.
a(:Philosopher).isa(:Person)
a(:Musician).isa(:Person)
a(:Friend).isa(:Person)
a(:Musician).isa(:Person)
a(:Magazine).isa(:Media)
a(:Book).isa(:Media)
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Next, it would have to provide a way to track how links between the act of observing art and discovering new links occurs:
reading("Apparat Singles Collection v1").found("The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction")
reading("Apparat Singles Collection v1").found("Doc Savage")
reading("Apparat Singles Collection v1").found("J.G. Ballard").created("Crash")
reading("Apparat Singles Collection v1").found("Alfred Bester").created("The Stars My Destination")
reading("Apparat Singles Collection v1").found("Tom Waits").created("The Mule Variations")
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It would also be nice to define the category of an element in-place (this setting would be idempotent?):
reading("Nodame Cantabile").at('2008.09.12').found("Edward Elgar").isa(:Musician)
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Of course, the verbs used to start a link should not be a requirement. Instead, there should be a way to refer to elements directly and then create links immediately.
$("Rob Friesel").isa(:Friend).recommends("House of Leaves")
$("http://www.houseofleaves.com").refers_to("House of Leaves")
$("Rob Friesel").recommends("Perdido Street Station")
$("Warren Ellis").created("Apparat Singles Collection v1")
$("Weird Tales").isa(:Magazine).recommends("The Brief History of the Dead")
$("Matt Bachtell").isa(:Friend).recommends("H.P. Lovecraft").isa(:Author)
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It would be nice to be able to attach metadata to entities directly:
$("RESTful Web Services").attach {"isbn" => "0596529260"}
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Sometimes, one piece of art is influenced by another:
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