Behind the curtains
Prior to jumping into product specific details, i want to share a few details about myself as i think this would contribute to shaping a more clear picture.
At the time i am writing this, i am the proud owner of 33 years of life (although not so sure on the owning part; possession is more accurate). I graduated from law school and afterwards i switched gears and enrolled in a cybersecurity master's degree. I'm not going into specifics, but switching gears like this required multiple training courses and certifications. I wasn't a top student either in law school or in cybersecurity classes, but i did not aim to become one. I did however, aim to become a hacker and after some more training and learning, dreams came true. I passed the Certified Ethical Hacker exam which is one of the entry level certifications this career path.
Therefore, this quote stands true:
Benjamin DisraeliNurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.
Even though i was walking on a hacking/penetration testing career path, at some point, something happened... and i did not resonate with this path anymore... i had a different purpose. I continued to work in cybersecurity for a few more years until time decided for me that...it's time to pursue the next challenge.
And my next challenge was (and is and will be) peace. Although it might seem as an ambiguous goal, it's actually not, though it is by far the most complex one. Some view peace only as a lifestyle or a state of mind/spirit but it is actually both at the same time and more than that. Peace is a framework which balances the collective with the individual and is the utmost superior mindset one can have. When everyone adopts this framework, magic starts to happen. Similar to other frameworks, peace can be broken down into an actionable plan and is a never ending pursuit. If peace would have been a programming language, it would definitely be PHP, as it is vulnerable.
I always wanted to create tools which empower people and this is exactly what i am currently doing. For more than two years i sat in the shadows implementing a few ideas, along with 2 romanian developers. Around that time agents were not a thing yet (at least for the large public) and genAI was struggling with basic operations or questions. Most of the code output was spaghetti code.
PAX GLOBAL (the entity powering everything together) infrastructure was built with natural intelligence, which is my favorite kind of intelligence. We thought-traveled to the future, identified potential issues and then returned to fix them before they would appear (this is also the mindset we need to adopt for a peaceful world - identify mistakes in the past, anticipate the future and fix the present). Think bold and act swift.
What is Specula?
Specula is latin for watchtower. And this is exactly what it is. A tool which allows you to see far, far away and to always be informed before taking a decision (even if that decision might seem insignificant).
Create dashboards and add widgets based on what information is relevant to you. Maybe you want to set a due date, maybe you want to read the news without any clutter, maybe you want to learn a new word. There are multiple use cases. It's meant to be this way... a bit generic. It was built with flexibility in mind. You first need to identify your pain points after which Specula can adapt to your needs and your screen as well. After you create your dashboard, you can choose to either keep the dashboard to yourself or to share it with other people.
Rationale
Below you can see the foundation on top of which, Specula came to be. In the documentation section you can also find a few relevant research papers which provide more insights.
Status Quo (current state)
- Hardware fragmentation: high number of devices with atypical screen-sizes are manufactured.
- Software fragmentation: multiple operating systems with multiple software versions (some of which introduce breaking changes)
- Limited Data Sources: current solutions are not flexible enough in terms of data sources.
- Inert data: user is limited to only observing the data.
- Isolated data: user cannot share the data.
- Data is spatially constrained: user is limited by the canvas size.
Status Melior (better state)
Specula.vision is an application designed to simplify the interaction with key information. Its primary focus is to ingest and output information with an intuitive and flexible approach. Users can create multiple dashboards, each containing multiple widgets.
- Cross-Device: user can access the dashboard regardless of the physical device.
- Cross-Platform: user can access the dashboard regardless of the operating system.
- Multiple Data Sources: large variety of data sources.
- Actionable data: user can set alerts.
- Sharable Data: users can share their entire dashboard.
- Data is NOT constrained by digital space: canvas size is unlimited.
Specula can help with:
- reducing clutter
- improving focus and productivity
- remembering
- minimizing digital noise
- collaborating
- making informed decisions
- corelating information
- expressing yourself
- learning
...and we just scratched the surface.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and i hope that now you have more context on what this tool is and is not. Where we are heading and where we are not. More manifesto articles will follow.
Ex animo,
PAXᴳᴸᴼᴮᴬᴸ