Skip to content

🧾 Glossary

This glossary defines key concepts and terms used throughout the MAP architecture and narrative framework. Terms are listed alphabetically. Multiple definitions are included where distinctions emerged between narrative threads.

Agent

An Agent is any entity capable of sensing and responding to its environment. It may be biological (e.g., a person, whale, or tree), technical (e.g., a computing process), or social (e.g., a family, cooperative, or commons).

  • Every Agent has a unique identity and a corresponding I-Space — a private AgentSpace that houses its LifeCode, Data Grove, and core affordances.
  • Agents can make offers and accept offers made by others to form Agreements.

Agents are expressed as Holons that belong to one or more AgentSpaces. Every Agent belongs to the Exosphere and typically one or more additional AgentSpaces.

AgentSpace

An AgentSpace is a membrane-bound social space where Agents interact, co-create, and participate in regenerative value flows. It is simultaneously:

Every AgentSpace has its own LifeCode, and every interaction between Agents happens within an AgentSpace.

⚠️ Not every AgentSpace is itself an Agent (i.e., not all are Social Organisms), but some AgentSpaces, once sufficiently coherent and governed, may themselves become Agents — emergent wholes acting at a higher level of the holarchy.

Agreement

An Agreement is a structured bundle of Promises between Agents. It includes mutual commitments, often encoded as Offers and formalized via digital signature.

An Agreement may instantiate its own AgentSpace (an Agreement-Based AgentSpace) which becomes the interaction venue for activities governed by that agreement.

Agreement-Based AgentSpace

An Agreement-Based AgentSpace is a bounded interaction context that emerges when an Offer is accepted and an Agreement is formed.

It includes: - All participating Agents - A LifeCode derived from the shared promises and intent of the Agreement - A scoped Data Grove of relevant Holons and references - The governance and coordination logic encoded in the Agreement, including optional roles for verification, mediation, or escalation

While agreements may expire, be revoked, or become inactive, the AgentSpace itself — like all entities in the MAP — is immutable and persistent. Its history, structure, and prior interactions remain verifiable and accessible, preserving both accountability and lineage.

An Agreement-Based AgentSpace is the sovereign membrane where promises take form, interactions unfold, and trust-based coordination becomes possible — with a cryptographically assured memory.

DAHN (Dynamic Adaptive Holon Navigator)

A personalized, dynamic interface layer for exploring the MAP holon graph. DAHN empowers each agent to shape their own experience — not just by choosing settings, but by composing the very way information is seen, explored, and interacted with.

Rather than each app imposing its own interface, DAHN provides a coherent visual and interaction layer across all Mapps. This coherence is achieved through dynamic selection of visualizers — modular components contributed by HX designers to the federated Visualizer Commons.

DAHN embodies the MAP design philosophy: putting agents at the center of their digital experience, enabling expressive, adaptable, and trustable interfaces that evolve with collective and individual needs.

Dance

A Dance is a named, invocable action that a Holon can perform or participate in — such as querying data, initiating a service, accepting an offer, or responding to a relationship.

In MAP, dances represent affordances — the ways a Holon can be interacted with — but the term affordance felt overly technical and lacked poetic resonance.

So we coined the term Dance.

Why Dance?

  • Because dances are relational — they involve interaction, timing, rhythm, consent.
  • Because they convey graceful interdependence, not mechanical execution.
  • Because in MAP, even technical operations are wrapped in patterns of trust, meaning, and flow.

Dances are defined through the MAP Uniform API, where each DanceRequest expresses: - Who is dancing (the Holon) - What dance is being performed - With what input parameters - Under what conditions

And the DanceResponse returns: - The result of the dance - A set of next possible dances based on the current state of the system

A Dance is not just a function call — it's a structured act of agency within a living graph of relationship and meaning.

Dance Interface Protocol

The Dance Interface Protocol is the universal invocation protocol in the MAP. It replaces traditional REST or RPC calls with a more expressive, memetic, and composable request model.

Every Holon exposes available Dances depending on its current state and context.

DanceRequest

A DanceRequest is a Holon-encoded invocation of a Dance. It tells a Holon what is being requested — and under what terms.

Each DanceRequest contains: - The ID of the Holon being danced with - The name of the Dance being invoked - A RequestBody — including input parameters, context, and initiating agent identity - (Optionally) an associated Agreement that governs the terms of the interaction

Like all things in the MAP, the DanceRequest is itself a Holon — with its own type descriptor, provenance, access policy, and potential for visual representation.

DanceRequests can be created by: - Human users interacting through DAHN - Other Holons (e.g., service Holons triggering dances) - External systems interfacing through the MAP Uniform API

A DanceRequest is a memetically and permissionally aware act of intent — a moment of coordinated agency within a shared graph.

DanceResponse

A DanceResponse is the result of performing a Dance. It includes not only the outcome of the request but also the forward affordances — what the Holon now makes possible.

Each DanceResponse includes: - A ResponseBody — containing results, messages, or new Holons - A list of next available Dances — HATEOAS-style descriptors of follow-up actions - Provenance metadata and optional diagnostics - Links to updated state, derived Agreements, or resulting relationships

Like the DanceRequest, the DanceResponse is a fully self-describing Holon and can be visualized, shared, or referenced by other components of the MAP.

A DanceResponse is not just a return value — it’s the moment-by-moment emergence of possibility in a living graph of consent and flow.

Data Grove

A Data Grove is the curated body of knowledge that an AgentSpace stewards. It includes both locally created and externally referenced Holons, including data, relationships, expressions, and interactions.

Each AgentSpace has its own private Data Grove. Holons are stewarded by their home AgentSpace but may be referenced in other spaces.

Exosphere

The Exosphere is the outermost, most inclusive AgentSpace in the MAP. It includes all Agents by default and serves as the lowest-threshold interaction venue across the entire platform.

The Exosphere is:

  • Non-governed (aside from platform-level rules)
  • High-reach, low-trust
  • The place where initial Offers may be surfaced to broad audiences

It is not a commons or Social Organism — it is a shared membrane of visibility.

Holon

A Holon is the foundational unit of structure, meaning, and interaction in the MAP.

Every object in the MAP — whether it’s a piece of content, an Agent, a relationship, a service, or a visual element — is encoded as a self-describing, active Holon or HolonRelationship.

✧ Self-Describing

A Holon contains within itself everything needed to interpret and interact with it. When you encounter a Holon “in the wild,” you can ask:

  • What properties do you have?
    What are your current values for those properties?

  • What types of relationships do you participate in?
    To what other Holons are you related via those relationships?

  • Through what visualizations can I view and interact with you?
    Holons reference one or more Visualizers from the commons, allowing fully customizable rendering and interaction — from list views to immersive spatial experiences.

  • What types of data access are permitted?
    Holons carry their own access policies, provenance signatures, and licensing terms — enabling granular, trustable permissioning.

✧ Active

Holons aren’t just data — being active means holons can do stuff... they offer affordances.

Every Holon can declare the Dances it is capable of performing — actions that can be invoked via the MAP Uniform API. These may include:

  • Responding to queries
  • Invoking relationships
  • Triggering services
  • Participating in negotiations, offers, or agreements

In this way, Holons are not passive records, but sovereign, interactive knowledge actors that make up the living substrate of the MAP.

A Holon is not just a piece of data —
it is a meaningful, permissioned, expressive agent of action in a graph of relationships.
It sees, responds, and evolves.

HolonSpace

A HolonSpace is the foundational data container in the MAP, equivalent to an AgentSpace. While the term highlights its function as a steward of Holons, in MAP narratives, the two terms are generally treated as synonymous.

I-Space

An I-Space is an AgentSpace viewed from the interior perspective — focusing on internal structure, properties, intentions, and affordances of an Agent.

Every Agent has an I-Space. For persons, this is often referred to as a Personal I-Space, but not all I-Spaces are personal.

See also: We-Space

LifeCode

A LifeCode (also known as a Memetic Signature) is the values-and-identity encoding of an Agent or AgentSpace. It defines:

  • Aspirational purpose
  • Memetic values and ethics
  • Governance expectations
  • Membership criteria
  • Expressed Promises

The LifeCode is the symbolic "membrane" of an AgentSpace and plays a foundational role in trust-based interaction.

Memetic Signature

Synonym for LifeCode. Refers to the expressive encoding of an Agent’s identity, values, and memetic alignment.

Offer

An Offer is a proposed bundle of Promises, expressing both:

  • What the offering Agent is willing to do or provide
  • What reciprocal Promises it expects in return

Offers are shared into specific AgentSpaces (e.g., the Exosphere or a Social Organism) and may result in Agreements.

Promise

A Promise is a voluntary, sovereign commitment made by one Agent. It is the atomic unit of value coordination within MAP.

Promises may be formal (e.g., I promise to transfer 10 units of water in exchange for 5 units of labor) or informal (e.g., I promise to show up with care and attention).

All Agreements are built from bundles of Promises.

Social Organism

A Social Organism is an AgentSpace that has developed enough internal coherence, governance capacity, and memetic identity to act as an Agent in its own right—a Holon one level up.

Unlike the default Exosphere, which includes all agents by default and lacks any collective governance, a Social Organism is formed intentionally. It may emerge from one or more Agreement-Based AgentSpaces and evolve into an agentic identity through extensions to its LifeCode.

A key property of Social Organisms—described by Ken Wilber as Social Holons1—is that membership is non-exclusive. That is, an individual agent can participate in multiple Social Organisms at once. This contrasts with Biological Holons (e.g., cells or mitochondria), whose parts typically belong to a single organism. Social Holons reflect the fluid, overlapping, and context-dependent nature of social identity and affiliation.

Social Organisms are not merely large groups—they are living holons: capable of acting, adapting, evolving, and participating in higher-order Social Organisms themselves. A canonical example is a corporation—a persistent, governance-equipped AgentSpace that can form agreements and delegate authority to sub-agents.

Other examples might include co-ops, intentional communities, DAOs, or bioregional networks.

See also: AgentSpace, Exosphere, LifeCode, Agreement, Agent, Holon

Stewardship

In the MAP, stewardship replaces "ownership" to describe the relationship between an AgentSpace and the Holons it is responsible for. Each Holon is stewarded by exactly one AgentSpace, though it may be referenced in many.

Stewardship emphasizes care, consent, and accountability.

Uniform API

The Uniform API is the singular interface through which all interactions with the MAP take place. It is based on the metaphor of the Dance, framing every invocation — from data queries to service calls — as a shared, consensual interaction.

At its core is the dance() function, which accepts a DanceRequest and returns a DanceResponse.

  • The DanceRequest specifies:
  • The Holon (or relationship) initiating the Dance
  • Parameters for the action (e.g., queries, inputs, filters)

  • Optionally, an OpenCypher query — enabling expressive graph traversal and transformation

  • The DanceResponse returns:

  • Results from the invocation (e.g., data, confirmation, computation)
  • Updated state where appropriate
  • Additional DanceRequest options (HATEOAS-style), revealing the next set of affordances available in the current state

Because the MAP is knowledge-graph native, all interactions — including service calls, interface rendering, and value flows — are expressible as Dances across a dynamic graph of Holons.

The Uniform API means every Holon interaction is symmetric, discoverable, and composable — turning the MAP into a danceable language of consent, action, and agency.

Vital Capital

Vital Capital refers to the many forms of value — not just financial — that flow through MAP Agreements. These include:

  • Social capital
  • Ecological contributions
  • Attention, care, and creativity
  • Knowledge and memetic resources

Vital capital flows are explicitly tracked via Promises and Agreements.

Visualizer

A Visualizer is a Holon that describes how another Holon should be rendered and interacted with — in 2D, 3D, text, graph, gallery, immersive environment, or any other format.

Visualizers are contributed to the Visualizer Commons and selected at runtime by DAHN based on: - The type of Holon - The preferences of the Agent viewing it - The popularity and contextual fit of available visualizers

Every Holon can reference one or more Visualizers, allowing radically different renderings for different contexts — from dashboards to immersive journeys.

A Visualizer is not just a UI component — it is a semantic lens, a votable style, and a participatory aesthetic contribution to the shared experience of the MAP.

Visualizer Commons

A federated network of stewarded sets of Visualizers. DAHN dynamically selects and configures visualizers from the Visualizer Commons to present and enable interaction with the MAP' self-describing, active Holons

We-Space

A We-Space is an AgentSpace viewed from the exterior perspective — how it participates within larger structures, how it exposes interfaces and affordances, and how it relates to other spaces.

A Social Organism is always a We-Space, but not all We-Spaces are yet Social Organisms.

  1. Wilber, Ken. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Shambhala Publications, 1995. ↩