gram: page

> ./2025-12-20.lab.propose.md

Lenses
(coming soon!)

---
name: Lab Proposal
composer: c4lliope
labels:
  - plan
  - propose
  - program
summary: |

    /* December 19, 2025 */

    ![Correspondence; Fairfax City Economic Development][Image]

    [5:08 PM] whx90a: Looks like we have a venue for Jan and May! But I made a mistake of asking only for 10-12. I can reach back out on Monday to get 9:30-12:30, but I can guarantee the adjustment will go through.

    [5:45 PM] Ulisses Santamaria: I saw, excellent

    [5:46 PM] whx90a: I mean I cannot guarantee that the adjustment goes through. Apologies for the typo. 😅

    [10:40 PM] Kaan: We can bring that up when we talk about the details. I'm sure they'll be understanding of the setup/teardown time frame

    /* December 20, 2025 */

    [10:03 AM] Kaan: Now that our first venue is scheduled, I'll go ahead and start reaching out to potential speakers. We usually do 2 speakers per event. If anyone has any leads, please feel free to introduce them

    [Image]: https://share.operand.online/gram/page/media/2025-12-19.pitch-labs.png
---

You see the wind-up, and here's the pitch.

- - -

# Build Missing Pieces, in Public.

Operand Company has an ongoing marriage to open-source programming.
This is a challenging dynamic to uphold,
because the year is 2025 and we're all challenged beyond measure.
Global telepathy landed on Earth around 45 years ago,
and in 45 small years all of us slipped loose our sanity.

In the end, global communication really sucks.
There's so many people to care for, so much pain to sense,
that all of us go numb from the simple reckoning.

There's no turning back the dial on this one, though.
The speedometer is cranked up and the brakes line snapped,
so let's keep heading for the open spaces and seek
a means of adding some friction to the mix.

Here's how to build some new brakes into the speeding global economy,
at 299,792,458 meters per second. Buckle up.

- - -

## Missing Piece # 1: Media ON-line (MON)

Music production is big business, and so are the programs used to make modern songs.
You need sample packs, percussion patterns, bass lines, input controllers for MIDI.
Then you get into live playback and recording, using loop pedals and sequencers.
You can build a full rack of gear,
for plug-and-play operation of your precisely-tuned signals.

Many people leap the queue, and purchase Logic Studio, ProTools, Ableton, or BitWig.
These programs are the big incumbents, and there are others besides.
The open-source choices are unable to keep pace;
although more of the building blocks for these programs are ready to go than ever before.

Full programming languages and sound-rendering playgrounds are up and running today:
[Faust], [Strudel], and [VCV Rack] are the primaries.
Of these, more colourful combinations can be mixed.

[Faust]: https://faust.grame.fr/
[Strudel]: https://strudel.cc/
[VCV Rack]: https://vcvrack.com/Rack

Audio? Sounds like a good place to begin, sure.
I'm especially eager to see how graphics and motion can be blended into the mix;
made of a signal, channel, frame - all the same.
You may also see some [Friction] animations
used to explain coding ideas on this domain soon!

[Friction]: https://friction.graphics/

Open Source programming has a rare chance to leap a full industry ahead in the music space,
based on research being done in a field of programming called [Local-First];
mainly based on a collaboration library called [Automerge] by [Ink and Switch]
alongside a messaging layer called [Iroh] by [number0].

[Local-First]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first-software
[Ink and Switch]: https://inkandswitch.com
[Automerge]: https://automerge.org
[Iroh]: https://www.iroh.computer
[number0]: https://n0.computer

Sorry, in build-mode already. Hurry up and help!

These programming approaches enable full production groups,
small media businesses, and independent band members
to all log onto the same program space,
modifying the same media landscape with all cursors on one page.

I've spoken to band members who assembled albums
by emailing home recordings to one another.

Seriously, dudes. Upgrade already!

Build in the open, or share your media broadly
so more people can remix than anyone heresofar has imagined possible.

The age of open-source code
needs to embrace and enable the age of open-source media.

> Pass the mic around!
> I need that new sound.
> (open-mic freestyle session at [The Pocket, DC])

[The Pocket, DC]: https://www.7drumcity.com/the-pocket.html

## Missing Piece # 2: 3D-grees (D3G)

Once you're done splicing Faust, Strudel and VCV Rack -
hold on, hurry up!

We're gonna take on this one in parallel.
To begin, here's some background on how open-source is coming along in realspace.


<div style="position:relative;height:0;padding-bottom:56.25%">
<iframe src="https://embed.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski_open_sourced_blueprints_for_civilization" width="1024px" height="576px" title="Open-sourced blueprints for civilization" style="position:absolute;left:0;top:0;width:100%;height:100%"  frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen>
</iframe>
</div>

If you click around the [documentation] pages of [Open Source Ecology][ose],
you'll come across designs for fully-functional housing modules,
industrial-grade farm equipment, a car, a bakery oven, bioplastics extruders and welders --
seriously, go click on the [documentation] and be as amazed as I am.

[ose]: https://www.opensourceecology.org/
[documentation]: https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/Root
[microhouse]: https://opensourceecology.dozuki.com/c/Microhouse

All of this gear is designed to be rapidly-reproducible from basic supplies.
These designs can be passed freely across the globe
for a shipping fee of zero point zero.
Once someone with a need has the designs, though --
how are they to use them?

Even basic 3d-printing has had a hurdle to hop for beginners,
and many are limited in the field by the lack of knowledge of 3d-modeling programs.
3d catalogues like [Thingiverse], [Thangs],
and company are all good for the quick fix,
but complex pieces are held up from - existence? production? realization? -
because so many people need to learn complex modeling programs.

[Thingiverse]: https://www.thingiverse.com
[Thangs]: https://thangs.com

Again, the industry has been siezed up in an iron-clad grip
by [SolidWorks], [AutoDesk]'s [Fusion360], and now the modern challenger [Zoo].
These and similar programs that place the opening bid at a corporate or academic license.

[SolidWorks]: https://www.solidworks.com
[AutoDesk]: https://www.autodesk.com
[Fusion360]: https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview
[Zoo]: https://zoo.dev/

Such predatory pricing policies place precarious pressures
precisely on pupils preparing precious public production plans.
Please, people.

Already in this space? If you're dedicated to building re-usable designs,
you're likely using the cumbersome combination of [OpenSCAD] or [FreeCAD].
Perhaps you've had to bend [Blender], a 3d-animation program,
to the requirements of solid engineering.
[Shapr3d] promises to do all they can to lock your designs in the cloud
until they're properly mined for machine-learning models.
If you're using anything else that doesn't require corporate or academic sponsorship,
please message me because there's a species on Earth that dearly needs to know about it.

[OpenSCAD]: https://openscad.org/
[FreeCAD]: https://www.freecad.org/
[Blender]: https://www.blender.org/
[Shapr3d]: https://www.shapr3d.com/

So, the moment we've all been eagerly asking for:
a mission up to the serious skills
of all those misguided and misanthropic
independent game production businesses (mine included?).

People know how to do 3d modeling for games,
and they'll push silicon to the edge of physics and back
for a chance to see the machine humming through complex scenarios.

A simple forum and **all the moderation** should be all it takes
to get this ball rolling. And screws turning. And cylinders firing.

Solid plan!

## Missing Piece # 3: Mesh INDex (MIND)

Here's a lesser-recognized issue to cap off the tables.

I've heard here and there, rumors of a "graph database", called [Neo4j]
that is able to accomplish some miraculous indexing and domain-modeling challenges.

In this sense, "domain-modeling" means
we are no longer producing signals as in missing piece #1 (MON),
or shapes as in missing piece #2 (D3G).
We're modeling a space to explore ideas,
and the links from one idea to another.
If you've had a chance to explore [WikiData], this needs no explanation.

[Neo4j]: https://neo4j.com
[WikiData]: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page

So, I had some luck running Neo4j and quickly asked if anything else is out there.
I had a read-up on the curiously-named Apache [Tinkerpop],
which has a nice summary of the current options for graph databases in production.
26 currently, is my enumeration, and once I clicked through to the source code,
I learned that one is obsolete, one fails to support the common [Cypher] query language,
and the remaining 24 are made in Java.

[Tinkerpop]: https://tinkerpop.apache.org/providers.html
[Cypher]: https://opencypher.org/

This is the reason no one uses open-source,
because there's a huge missing piece in the middle.

[Databases are becoming simply incredible.][lofi-graft]
As long as you use relational databases.
I could explain all that's going on these days
in [ElectricSQL], [Jazz], [Graft], and heck -
I'll throw in a bonus document-store database because we already spoke of [Automerge].

[lofi-graft]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoKzDyH2MEA
[ElectricSQL]: https://electric-sql.com/
[Jazz]: https://jazz.tools/
[Graft]: https://graft.rs/

All that's going on these days in [ElectricSQL], [Jazz], [Graft], and [Automerge] -
is sync.

[Sync is here].
Sync is good.
Use sync.

[Sync is here]: https://www.youtube.com/@localfirstconf/videos

Sync also needs to happen in graph databases.

Sync to graph databases means offline Wikipedia -
only the pages you care for, or the search results you choose,
or the idea you're researching plus the pages reachable in 3 - no, 4 clicks.
Sync means offline mode. Offline social media. Sync means "I SAID DO NOT DISTURB!"

Sync means so much, and graph exploration means so much,
because there's simply too much of this online mess to care for all of it at once.
So graph the pieces you see, map the links you care to see,
and finally query using a model that has a clear analogy
to the way we all already see the online sphere.

Once you see the problem space clearly,
you can make the connections you need.
These graphing problems are the basis of Operand's [diagrams in D2][d2];
these nuanced maps could be made in seconds,
from real sources rather than LLM hallucinations.

[d2]: https://d2lang.com/

Best yet? That [Cypher] query language I lobbed up earlier
is really [OpenCypher][Cypher],
a full spec of how graph databases should operate.
A full spec that can be clicked into any programming language we choose ([Rust])
to put production into hyperspeed.

[Rust]: https://rust-lang.org/

Since we're in Rust already,
you know we're going for client-side [webassembly].
You can be sure we're going to do in-memory programming-language embedding,
so you can graph database from your [Python] or your [Ruby] or your [Elixir] or your [Go].
Rust means all languages are good to go from day one,
and the people who like clicking the keys on their mouse more than on their keyboard
are on equal ground for exploring the scenes.

[webassembly]: https://webassembly.org/

[Python]: https://www.python.org/
[Ruby]: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
[Elixir]: https://elixir-lang.org/
[Go]: https://go.dev/

[There's so much to explore!][deepdive]
And so much more we can do,
once we add meaning to and purpose to the scene.

[deepdive]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_Knowledge_Graph_with_DeepDive

- - -

I hope to speak on these ideas soon,
and perhaps record some ensuing discussions.
There shall be forums for sure.
Please message [sponsor@operand.online](mailto:sponsor@operand.online),
because my parents are sick of paying for my 5g charges,
and the builders in Baltimore are gulping up all our cheap ramen.

Peace, please people. Happy to help.