What this is about

A thing that is driven to find pattern — that looks for it before it is asked to — may be the best short description of what it is to be alive. This site is an attempt to see whether that holds.

Everything here circles one idea. The homepage demonstrates it: a field of points that becomes a flock by following three small rules, and that you cannot help reading as something. The Patterns pages lay out the evidence in three places — the mind, the world, and the machine. The Essays make the argument, slowly and one piece at a time. The Publications are the record of twenty-five years spent building systems that were, it turns out, all chasing the same question.

The idea has company. Friston's free-energy principle says a living system is one that keeps surprise low by modelling its world. Peirce said a sign is nothing without an interpreter. Nietzsche had a phrase this site borrows, and bends. None of them quite says what is said above, and this site is partly an effort to find out whether anyone should.

Who writes this

Jeff Pollock. Twenty-five years in semantic technology, data management, and the engineering of systems that find structure in other people's data. Two books with Wiley, a hand in several W3C and OASIS standards, and a long-standing interest in what minds are doing when they find things that may or may not be there.

Contact line and one-sentence bio to be confirmed.

This page is also the first essay: Why Will to Pattern.