Underlying Metapattern's potential for integrated information systems is a paradox. By recognizing real differences, and giving them first priority, eventual cohesion is strongly promoted. The strength of Metapattern lies in its high uniformity to support pluriformity.

in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection

 

[R]elationships provide the most important elements in typing.

in: Metapattern as context orientation: meeting Odell's challenge of object orientation

 

Relationships between objects in any information set should, at a more basic level, also be counted as information objects. This opens the opportunity to position them in a relevant context which is, in turn, oriented toward relational typing.

in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection

 

Of course, some mechanism for relating between one object’s different contextual specifications must be provided. Metapattern’s invention is to only share the object’s identification between relevant contexts. It is, mathematically speaking, the necessary and sufficient condition for structure.

in: How so-called core components are missing the point

 

Being aware of what the context-oriented approach tries to accomplish is helpful. Its goal is the simultaneous treatment of differentiation and integration. An object is split according to contexts but, at the same time, the overall object continues to exist comprehensively. A balanced demarcation into an overall object is achieved when behaviors can be both meaningfully differentiated (through contexts) and meaningfully integrated (through the joint nil identity).

in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection

 

Another mathematically inspired idea is to apply contextual differentiation to the object’s identification, too. The result is universality of method. The identification itself resides in a nil context. It is a boundary concept, just as zero has been included in the set of numbers.

in: How so-called core components are missing the point

 

Even […] a nil identity, for the sake of uniform treatment, […] is fitted with a context, too. That is the nil context. So, nothing is context-independent!

in: How so-called core components are missing the point

 

The contextual object immediately is the object … in that context. A nil identity provides for connection between contexts, fundamentally combating redundancy, thereby optimizing reuse.

in: How so-called core components are missing the point

 

The context is the type. I would say that's what it boils down to. Then, the contextualized/partial identities are held together by the object's nil identity.

in: Notes on Metapattern, part 1

 

It is also intriguingly powerful that a particular node can, in the course of time, change its relationship to a nil identity.

in: The pattern of metapattern: ontological formalization of context and time for open interconnection

 

The essence of Metapattern lies in pursuing relevant differences. Please note that the benefit not only comes from recognizing added information value, which of course is a difference by definition. As realistic differences are respected, there’s usually no problem left to benefit from similarities, too. That’s really what the infrastructural turn in information management eventually accomplishes. […]
Metapattern turns the concept of identity inside out. Identity is constituted by coordinated differences. For each context, an object’s intext is … different.

in: Metapattern of natural complexes: enlisting Justus Buchler's metaphysics for informational infrastructure

 

Another interesting Metapattern feature is that no inverse relationships—which traditionally point out the need for a navigational path—appear. They are indicated explicitly, with complete precision and in a positive way. This happens where (partial) identities of an overall object are specified in various contexts.

in: Metapattern as context orientation: meeting Odell's challenge of object orientation

 

Why do attempts at integration consistently fail? Metapattern is unique in that it establishes consistency at the semantic level regardless of scale.
It may sound as a contradiction, but contextual/temporal variety control is an absolutely necessary condition for integration. In short, realistic integration builds upon requisite variety.

in: On metapattern and other themes in information management

 

[I]nstances and types are sometimes mixed in the same model. Rather than being a shortcoming of Metapattern, it exemplifies its powerful variety.

in: Metapattern as context orientation: meeting Odell's challenge of object orientation

 

Including situation in determining behavior allows for an object’s full variety to be modeled. Also what may appear as contradictory behaviors from an absolutist perspective, applied mostly implicitly and which is therefore all the more impossible to address, dissolves into separate behaviors delineated by situations as such. Still confused? Change and/or add situations accordingly.

in: Open conceptual modeling with Metapattern

 

For language users who are naive realists, Metapattern seems to place an unnecessary burden on communication. They feel that way because they remain unaware of contextual shifting. Always specifying context seems superfluous. What they experience is monocontextual meaning, missing that such meanings exist one after another, each with a different … context. However, the changing contexts never emerge, i.e. are implicit. Let me add that such keeping-out-of-consciousness makes good evolutionary sense … most of the time. Such people are ‘simply’ concentrating on the particular task at hand. It is optimal for relatively simple tasks. However, some tasks et cetera are (far) more complex, that is, they do require attention to changes across contexts. Such changes can only be meaningfully related when relevant contexts are also accommodated. It calls for an attitude for which I find the term infrastructural appropriate. It may sound strange at first, but infrastructure facilitates differences through sameness.

in: note 47.29

 

Within a single horizon, however, Metapattern even rules out such inheritance; in a well-differentiated model, a signature’s contextualizations yield disjunct intexts corresponding, as the semiotic ennead suggests, with disjunct behaviors of an object’s plural situationalizations.

in: Perspectivism in federated practice

 

With Metapattern, you don’t go for what is generally valid, but instead specify the always limited reaches of varied validity. That is why context — situation, really, but here I won’t bother you with enneadic subtleties — constitutes the reach for what is taken as valid about an object. Then, ‘within’ a particular context, what is described for an object is all positive. There is no need for negative statements (also read: propositions). For what might be seen as negative about an object’s description in one context, might be again positive about it in another. So, stick to the positive. However, it also follows — talk about logic :-) — that between contexts there is nothing to draw traditionally logical inferences from. In this sense, Metapattern is radical in its approach to so-called pre-coordination.

in: note 71.21