Thingamy breaks a lot of rules for enterprise software - the most important being the break with snapshot-thinking, saving of manipulated data and multiple data-objects representing one real-world object.
Thingamy represents reality by singular and minimised unique data-objects that each is alone in representing a real object. Then it lets that data-object capture not only all properties but also all that happens to the real object and keeps the true history of each object in raw form ready for any application of logic to create reports, accounts or any other image you want at any time.
That simplifies flow and process models tremendously, but most important, it leaves the application of logic up to the user. There is no singular truth, only personal interpretation of reality and individual connection of dots - this must be reflected in the data models so we do not waste time or lose knowledge by trying to extract useful data from manipulated data.
You've enjoyed a good book and a year later it's been made into a film, so you're off to the movies to relive the good moments of the book.
But when you leave the cinema two hours later you have to tell your companion - "You know what, I think the book was better, it was not like I imagined it!"
The words, loosely woven story and imaginary descriptions in the book is the raw information that your mind chooses to connect using your own "logic" while the film has done that for you by strict placement of material objects and by colouring the environment - you have been served manipulated information.
You're walking the woods on a clear fall day, enjoying the sights and the pungent smell of the leaves on the ground, and then taking a photo or three of the sights.
A week later you visit a gallery and there you see that large painting, non-figurative, colourful cannot-really-see-what-it-represents but you have instant flashes of that walk last week, you can even smell the leaves.
Eager to revisit the feeling you fire up your computer when back home to look at the pictures you took, but no, no flash of pungent smells, no nothing, just a realistic, dead picture of trees and leaves.
Each leaf is unique, a unique object with masses of properties - you can turn it over, feel it and smell it and your amazing brain sucks it all up and uses it in your own personal ways. The painting conjures up some of these images, as art does.
The photo you took is rigid, each leaf is dead and only a fraction of it's true properties are available - manipulated and condensed information again. And the rigidity leaves your fantasy little room for anything but details scrutiny - "what's that in the corner?"
My kids spent their first years at a Montessori school where freedom to learn reigned, at their own pace using the learning materials and the prepared environment.
When I was a kid I sat on third row for 45 minutes apiece, listening to a teacher droning on breaking only to tell us to "shut up" and "repeat after me".
My kids walked over to the bookshelf, picked up the material and used it with their bare hands while they experimented and manipulated real objects so they could connect the dots on their own premises.
My teacher tried to hammer in a commonly accepted curriculum, theories merely served as a digested and manipulated version of reality.
Look around you, look at the objects on your desk, then lean forward and study some closer. Or pick a pen up and turn it over.
Now imagine you're sitting inside a two-dimensional picture of your office and desk. Leaning forward gives nothing, picking up and turn over is not possible, moving your coffee mug over to the left is a no-no. That's it, nothing more to be gleaned, no new dots to be connected - that's done already on your behalf.
But we cannot bring the real world with us at all times. The teacher cannot tour the Amazon before lunch with the pupils in tow and do Paris in the afternoon, and the business leader cannot have the whole warehouse spread out on his desk.
Luckily we have IT so we can have reality represented in a portable format.
But so far the old world methods have been copied by IT using multiple, fixed and manipulated snapshots to represent reality - usually known as documents, forms, pictures or GAAP accounts. That method lets us down, the film disappoints, the picture does not give flashbacks and GAAPs keeps an army of analysts busy seeking raw data in a sea of manipulated mess.
With Thingamy you can "pick up" precisely "that" data-leaf, turn it over, "see" the colours and almost smell it. Hey, you can also see when the leaf fell from it's branch, what days it was rained upon and know where to find every other leaf that once rustled in the wind on the same branch.
Then you could create your own personal image of reality, a truer understanding of reality. The ultimate task for all leaders, for all analysts, for all of us.
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