Remembering the Future

John Kellden

A realization of Hesse's Glass Bead Game is presented. By associating small images ("beads" and "tiles") with ideas described in ordinary prose, a new vocabulary of glyphs is developed; these glyphs are later assembled in special ways, such that their spatial arrangement asserts symbolic relationships between the corresponding ideas. In particular, arrangements take the form bead-tile-bead, signifying subject-predicate-object assertions. Arranging and connecting multiple bead phrases on a two-dimensional grid allows large groups of related assertions to be made in a compact and appealing visual space, and the communication of rich symbolic connectivity less lengthy and cumbersome than it would be with prose. The entire structure, including narrative, bead phrases, and imagery is represented in the technical forms of the Semantic Web; all beads and tiles are labeled with URIs, and bead phrases become reified RDF.
Joshua Fost

see also Paul Prueitt
or for something really out there The Glass Bead Game