A meme media architecture for fine-grain component software

Abstract

Computers as meta media are now evolving from augmentation media vehicles to meme media vehicles. While an augmentation media system provides individuals, groups or organizations with a seamlessly integrated environment of various tools and documents, meme media system provides communities or societies with further functions to edit, to distribute, and to share tools and documents. Meme media work as memes, i.e., cultural genes. Documents and tools on meme media can easily replicate themselves, recombine themselves, and are naturally selected by their environment, namely the society of their authors and users. Their accumulation in their users' community will form a meme pool, which will bring rapid evolution of documents and tools. The IntelligentPad architecture provides a standard framework called a pad that works as a meme medium for documents and software components. Its pad distribution system architecture using Netscape as their catalog works as a meme pool. Meme media promises to help the application developers by the use of patterns and frameworks for varieties of typical applications. A pattern in meme media means a common composition structure and hence a common editing structure of meme media shared by the composite tools for the same typical application. A framework in meme media means a set of meme media components and the composition rules that are typically used in the development of a specific kind of applications. Patterns and frameworks allow users to develop their applications just by editing these patterns or by playing with these frameworks.