Generic Organisation

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In computability theory, an abstract machine or programming language is called Turing complete if it is capable of emulating a simplified model of a programmable computer known as the universal Turing machine (after the mathmetician Alan Turing who introduced the model). Being equivalent to the universal Turing machine essentially means being able to perform any computational task – though it does not mean being able to perform such tasks efficiently, quickly, or easily.

An important aspect of this concept is that it shows that the concept being described by a computer program is independent of the program itself, and that the concept could be translated between any Turing complete language without any loss of meaning. But what exactly is the concept then? The concept itself is purely abstract and any description of it no matter how concise is still only a description - just like no word which means "apple" will ever actually be an apple. But we can think, feel and visualise concepts without the use of language constructs, which shows that there is some fundamental strutural way of representing them which our minds and bodies use.

Some universal Turing machines are made from only a few exceedingly simple components, for example it shows that any computer program can be described completely with only one kind of logic operator similar to x AND y. In the project, our aim is to create such a core set of basic components with which to internally describe all the applications and organisations made within the development environment (the development environment is also an application described internally this same way). The internal language allows the system to impliment itself and all its applications in any language, platform or technology as necessary.

But what is the best set of basic components to use? Ideally we'd want our internal descriptions to be more compact and exhibit a less complex structure than the languages it can impliment them in, so that we can move away from specialisation and make creating and collaborating on applications and organisations more accessible. In essence, we want our internal desciption of our concepts to work in a similar way to our minds where there's no arbitrary syntax, but rather a completely structural approach is taken.

Applications and organisations are essentially very simple in structure compared to the kinds of problems that computability theory and Turing machines were devised to deal with. We know from experience that such structures are already heavily recursive in that a department, branch office or even a role of an organisation can itself be seen as an organisation, and this can be carried on down into the programming structure of the applicational tools used by the organisation. So the idea is to find a set of components which apply to organisations in general which can be used recursively so that the same set of components can be used to describe all levels from programming details up to management decisions.

When we take a closer look at the workings of organisations and project management, we see a definite set of generic concepts with which to begin our unification process: budgetting, cashflow, stock, storage & distribution, scheduling, production etc. These concepts really are generic to all organisation no matter what the specifics of their operations, and we could also describe any computer application as such an organisation too. But we haven't gone to basic enough components yet because the preceeding list is really just another list of organisations which still need more refined description before our basic components are revealed.

todo: Breaking down these sub-organisations moves us into more abstract teritory - booking, statistics, processing, transport, storage....

See also

• Schedule
• Accounts
• Storage and Distribution
• Production