Keeping up with trends and fashion

It is probably easier to visualise this not as a conventional database, but, as a formatted space of initially empty areas. When a new topic of interest emerges, anyone can spontaneously label a new empty area with the name of that new topic. Anyone else interested in the new topic can then move their presence into that area so as to be in contact with others interested in discussing it.

In this way, the overall people space would see new areas of interest continuously coming into existence, as and when fashion changes or new trends emerge. People could move between these areas according to their changing interests: leaving one area to go to another. In this way, it wouldn't matter how dynamic or changeable the information base is, the conceptual framework would simply reflect a population of people moving around to different areas within a formatted space.

Treating this situation as a conventional database, would see it as being similar to that of trying publish a book that listed all the trendy meeting places in London. It could be up to date at only one particular moment in time. By the time the book was printed, new meeting places might have become fashionable and those listed in the book may be out of fashion. This would cause the book to be an inaccurate source of reference. Imagine now trying to create such a book that tried to record the currently trendy meeting places of every town and city in the world; this would be nearer to the scale of the problem that we are trying to deal with.

Despite the near impossibility of being able to create up-to-date directories of currently trendy places where people are meeting in various parts of the world, these gatherings do take place and quite obviously the people who are there have discovered where they are being held. It is this enigmatic process of knowing where things are currently happening that needs to be accommodated in the formatted structure of a living database.

London can be viewed as a formatted space, where trendy meeting places suddenly and unpredictably become popular. This view would see movements of people as they moved on mass and for no apparent reason from one venue to another. The only certain way to keep track of the movements of any particular group would be to be part of that group: so that you can move with it when it moves on.

It is the essence of this dynamic scenario that needs to be created to ensure that people can find out where the current action they are interested in is happening. The information is irrelevant. The most important issue is being in the right place at the right time. This will have to involve being in regular contact with the right kind of people.