Parenting and child objects

At first thought, the above description of a chain of inheritance seems a very unlikely scenario. Why should a whole lot of experts provide expert or specialist services and let somebody else take the credit? Something about this kind of arrangement seems wrong. However, we now come to the fourth powerful feature of object oriented thinking and design: the parent-child phenomenon.

This phenomenon is an illusion, created in an object oriented programming environment, that an object can have any number of simultaneous existences. In computer programs, an object can be duplicated, or cloned, so that it can appear in several different systems or subsystems at the same time. An example might be an object that is a functioning but empty database. Other objects might have a need for such an object to put their own particular content into. So, instead of building a separate database for every object, clones are made of one master database and given to every object that needs a database for their own exclusive use. In this way, the master database would appear to be able to exist in many different parallel worlds. In the computer programming world of OOPS this is described as parenting: objects birthing several identical children so that each can evolve differently.

Mapping this idea across to a world of people objects, it can be seen that anyone who has a speciality expertise can, like the data base, be available to many people at the same time. In the world of bricks and mortar this isn't practical, but, in the communication environment of the Internet, it is easily accomplished. Experts and specialists can appear in the ancestral message paths of many different people all at the same time.

This is widely encouraged because many people would like to inherit the skills, knowledge and experience of true experts, so, any real expert can expect to have many people trying to include them in their own ancestral path.

This dramatically alters the perception of the expert. Instead of being seen as being in a single ancestral message path, dependent upon receiving messages from a single source, the expert becomes the centre of a hub of message paths. Each expert is thus at the centre of his or her own universe and at the centre of attention. Being at the centre of a hub of people, who are passing on requests for their specialised services as and when they are needed, is effectively positioning the experts at their ideal demand Solution Points. The effectiveness of these solution points is dependent upon how many ancestor message paths an expert can tap into.

Notice how this is so different from the organisational frameworks built up with managed teams. In a managed team the expert would be at the periphery of the team and would have to fit in with the team's rules and regulations. In the object oriented environment, the expert doesn't really need to be in a team at all, but, simply allow someone who is already in a team to inherit their expertise. The expert would then be free to concentrate on their own contacts: their own personal virtual team that would consist of people at their supply and demand Solution Points.

In the book "Lingo Sorcery", I explained the inheritance and ancestor OOP concept by means of a design for a calculator. A single object is called a calculator but in fact it couldn't make any calculations whatsoever. All it could do was to pass on any calculation instructions to a line of other objects. If a request came for an addition, an object in the ancestor message path programmed to make additions responded to the message and sent the answer back to the calculator object. Similarly, other objects specialising in subtracting, multiplication or division would respond to any message that corresponded to their speciality. In this way, the calculator object received all the calculation instructions and appeared to be making the calculations itself.

Now if you can imagine several other objects called calculater1, calculator2, calculator3... etceteras, each of these could also appear to be acting as a calculator simply by including the same functional objects in its own ancestor path. In this way, each of the functional objects would be in a complex network where they were each being called into service by each of the calculators as they were needed. The message paths would see each calculator object as being the central organiser of the same set of objects. Each functional object would also appear to be surrounded by the same set of calculator objects asking it to make calculations for them. The enigmatic effect is that whichever object is looked at in the network of communication, it appears to be the central important figure of a whole lot of other objects. In other words, there is no single dominant hierarchy, every object is at the apex of its own virtual hierarchy.

Mapping this across to the world of people connected together by the Internet, it is easy to see how everyone connected to the system can be at the centre of two quite different virtual worlds (input and output Solution Points). One where they are inheriting the skills, knowledge and experience of others. The other where they are at the centre of a network of people wanting them to help them. This is an extremely potent situation where everyone's particular unique ability can be highly leveraged.

Such a system has immense potential for adaptation and flexibility. Substituting non functional calculator objects for solution providers and the calculation objects for experts and specialist it is easy to see how the total system could be infinitely reconfigured to solve all kinds of e-business and e-commerce problems with the utmost of efficiency.

Solution providers can concentrate on customers needs without having to worry about technical details; passing these on to the experts to supply the answers. Experts and specialists could work only in their own chosen area of speciality, leaving the solution providers to find application for their skills. Everybody would be able to concentrate and become more expert in their own particular niches. This would create an even greater demand for their services.