447e637ed9
energy-steering §5.5: the steering figure is the hops' own energy averaged over
their delivery, not the network's, which is largely flat against traffic.
live-rooms' joules_ceiling is held against an attribution by bytes. The
research taxonomy's compression lever claims cost and a mobile radio's draw,
not network energy. CHANGELOG: the slice's entry.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>
(cherry picked from commit 9b6e4badab)
124 lines
8 KiB
Markdown
124 lines
8 KiB
Markdown
# WAI Content Taxonomy — the bearings doc
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> Living reference for *what web-transported content benefits from WAI,
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> how, and which extension covers it.* Not normative; it's the map we
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> plan cargo classes against. Edit as classes ship.
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## 1. The reframe: a spectrum, not a list of media types
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Everything transported over the web sits on one axis:
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```
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captured reality ──► synthesizable ──► executable ──► symbolic
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(samples) (rendered from (it IS a (already
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a description) program) instructions)
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```
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**WAI's leverage is proportional to how much of the content the sink can
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reconstruct instead of receiving pre-rendered.**
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The discipline it enforces: do *not* claim "everything becomes
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instructions" — a real photograph is irreducibly samples. Different
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position on the axis → a different lever, and a different gain.
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## 2. The four levers
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| # | Lever | What it does | Where it applies |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| 1 | **Codec dispatch** | name a registered codec; the sink decodes it or falls back | all media |
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| 2 | **Neural shared-prior** | ship conditioning, regenerate against a requirement-of-existence model | perceptual media a model can reconstruct |
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| 3 | **Instructions-at-the-sink** | ship the recipe / state / intent; the sink renders | anything whose payload is secretly a rendered result |
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| 4 | **Determinism + receipts** | replay/decode/mixdown-equivalence, content-addressing, JWP signatures, joules | **cross-cutting** — applies even to content that can't be reconstructed |
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Levers 1–2 are the **compression** story: fewer bytes, which lowers the cost
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of egress, encode and relays, and the draw of a mobile radio while it
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receives; it does not lower a wired network's energy, which is largely flat
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against traffic. Lever 3 is the **medium-shift** story: the unit of value
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moves from bytes delivered to what the sink renders, and the sink's decode
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and render energy, measured there, is what changes. Lever 4 is the
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**trust-and-energy** story, and it rides on top of all of them.
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## 3. The taxonomy (with mechanism + coverage)
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Status: ✅ shipped · 🟡 partial/composable from shipped pieces · ⬜ white space.
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### A. Captured reality — irreducible samples (levers 1, 2, 4)
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| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Photographs / images | codec dispatch + neural | `wai.image.*` (PNG/JXL/AVIF/JPEG, neural family) | ✅ |
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| Recorded audio | codec dispatch + neural | `wai.audio.{flac,opus}`, `wai.neural.{dac,encodec32,…}` | ✅ |
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| Recorded / cinematographic video | codec dispatch + neural | `wai.video.av1*`, `wai.neural.{dcvc_rt,dcvc_fm}` | ✅ |
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| Live capture: conferencing, telephony, **radio**, broadcast | codec dispatch + receipts | core audio/video caps + JWP per object | 🟡 (transport out of scope; caps + receipts exist) |
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| Sensor / telemetry / IoT | content-addressing + receipts | `wai.text.zstd` + JWP (or a `wai.feed.*` class) | 🟡 |
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| Scientific captures: microscopy, medical imaging, LiDAR/point clouds, genomic | codec dispatch + content-addressing | core caps; point clouds → splat/volumetric path | 🟡 |
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| Biosignals (EEG/ECG) | content-addressing + receipts | `wai.text.zstd` + JWP | 🟡 |
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### B. Synthesizable media — shipped today as the render (lever 3)
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| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Animation / CGI film** | instructions-at-sink | `wai.film.linear` (a sealed world + camera track + frame schedule, film-equivalence) | ✅ |
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| Motion graphics / titles / ads | instructions-at-sink | interactive-worlds / joule-ui | 🟡 |
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| Music as score / synthesis | instructions-at-sink | `wai.audio.score` (note events, deterministic synth, mixdown-equivalence) | ✅ |
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| Procedural / game audio, soundscapes | instructions-at-sink | spatial-audio (`wai.audio.scene`) | 🟡 Phase 1 |
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| Text-to-speech | neural prior | ship text + a voice prior (`wai.neural.*` speech) | 🟡 |
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| Data visualizations / charts | instructions-at-sink | ship data + spec (joule-ui) | 🟡 |
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| Diagrams, vector art, **fonts** | instructions-at-sink | formats the web already carries as instructions; envelope only | ✅ (precedent) |
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| **Maps / geospatial** | instructions-at-sink | `map` standard | ✅ (sibling) |
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### C. Interactive / executable — it IS a program (levers 3, 4)
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| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Videogames / interactive worlds** | instructions + determinism + receipts | interactive-worlds (`wai.world.*`) | ✅ |
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| 3D scenes / models | content-addressed assets | `wai.mesh.glb` | ✅ |
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| Gaussian splats | content-addressed assets | `wai.splat.spz` | ✅ |
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| **AR / VR / XR** immersive scenes | instructions-at-sink | interactive-worlds + a sink pose/camera mode | 🟡 (substrate exists; XR sink mode unbuilt) |
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| **Volumetric / light-field / holographic / 6DoF video** | instructions-at-sink | `wai.splat.4d` (temporal Gaussian tracks, frame-state-equivalence) | ✅ |
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| **Avatars / digital humans** | instructions-at-sink | `wai.avatar.pose` (skeletal sim + animation ops, skins a `wai.mesh.glb`) | ✅ |
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| UIs / applications | instructions-at-sink + receipts | `joule-ui` standard | ✅ (sibling) |
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| Documents-as-programs (interactive/reactive) | instructions-at-sink | joule-ui / interactive-worlds | 🟡 |
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| Simulations / digital twins | instructions + determinism | interactive-worlds sim registrants; CAD/mathground lineage | 🟡 |
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### D. Structured / symbolic — already instructions (levers 1, 4)
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| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| Text / markup / documents | codec + content-addressing | `wai.text.{zstd,xz}`; reading surface = `Access`/`Lumina` | ✅ |
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| Code / software / packages | content-addressing + receipts | `wai.text.zstd` + JWP | 🟡 |
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| Datasets / tabular / scientific data / knowledge graphs | content-addressing + receipts | `wai.text.*` + JWP; `JouleDB` lineage | 🟡 |
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| Notifications / messages / event-&-state feeds | instructions + receipts | `wai.feed.state` (broadcast profile, replay-equivalence) | ✅ |
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### The cargo-roadmap phases
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Five classes were built as phases of `cargo-roadmap.md`; each has shipped.
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| Content | What it shares with the thesis | Phase and status |
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|---|---|---|
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| **Object-based / spatial audio** | the audio form of the video thesis: ship sound objects + a scene, render to the listener's speaker config; mixdown-equivalence is the audio counterpart of replay-equivalence | **Phase 1**, shipped (`wai.audio.scene`) |
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| **Haptics** | instruction streams to actuators; tiny payloads, pure recipe, deterministic | **Phase 2**, shipped (`wai.haptic.signal`) |
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| **Live state-feeds** | sports/events as *state*, not pixels — the multiplayer-games precedent applied to broadcast | **Phase 3**, shipped (`wai.feed.state`, the broadcast profile of `wai.world.live`) |
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| **Digital humans / avatars** | a high-bandwidth capture that reduces to a rig plus a pose stream | **Phase 4**, shipped (`wai.avatar.pose`) |
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| **Volumetric / light fields** | the splat path extended in time; frame-state-equivalence | **Phase 5**, shipped (`wai.splat.4d`) |
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| **Full-sensory / olfactory** | the far end of the axis | on the axis; not scheduled |
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## 4. The one sentence to navigate by
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> **WAI carries whatever it can reconstruct, and verifies whatever it
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> carries.** Reconstruction (instructions-at-sink, neural priors) is the
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> compression story; verification (determinism, content-addressing,
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> receipts, joules) is the trust-and-energy story — and the second
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> applies even to the content that can't be reconstructed.
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## 5. Reading the map
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- Lever 3 applies most directly to animation film (a sealed
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camera-on-rails world) and to live state-feeds.
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- Object-based spatial audio carries the same equivalence rule to
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audio: mixdown-equivalence is the audio counterpart of
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replay-equivalence.
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- Lever 4 needs no reconstruction at all: content-addressing, JWP
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receipts and measured joules apply to *every* class, including raw
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captured reality.
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See `cargo-roadmap.md` for the phased build plan.
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