Persistent Compute Objects, or picos, are tools for modeling the Internet of Things. A pico represents an entity–something that has a unique identity and a long-lived existence. Picos can represent people, places, things, organizations, and even ideas. 

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Once the response has been returned, the pico waits for another event.

KRL

KRL Rulesets execute inside a persistent compute object, or pico. 

While rulesets are the primary organizing feature of KRL, you cannot program KRL without understanding picos. 

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Persistent Data Variables

Rulesets

CloudOS

Operating systems provide significant benefits to personal computers:

• They made the microcomputer into a personal computer.
• They gave programmers incredible leverage through the services they provided.
• They made it so anyone can use a computer and get something done.

An operating system can provide the same benefits to personal clouds. Because it allows you to act as a peer, a CloudOS orchestrates and coordinates online interactions, enables cooperating networks of products and services, supports intention-driven automation, and transforms the way you interact with the world.

Applications

PCAA

We have been using the model extensively for the last 6 months and have found it to be very effective for building CloudOS applications. I wrote about a largish experiment with this model in the whitepaper Introducing Forever: Personal Cloud Application Architectures. The white paper describes an application, called Forever, that uses picos to represent a social graph for purposes of creating an evergreen address book. The interface is built in an unhosted style using nothing but JavaScript. The picos provide the business logic and persistence layer. We called this the "personal cloud application architecture" or PCAA.

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