Tasulist

Tasulist is a fictional term used in speculative fiction and world-building to denote an adherent of tasulism, a hypothetical framework for encoding and analyzing layered information in complex systems. In tasulism, data are decomposed into units called tasuls, which can carry simultaneous semantic, temporal, and causal attributes. A tasulist designs interfaces and models that map how tasuls interact across multiple layers, enabling assessments of information provenance and contextual integrity.

Origin and etymology: The term tasulist was coined in a science fiction context to describe a society that treats information as multilayered. The word combines a fictional root tasul- with the standard agent suffix -ist. It is not part of any established scientific discipline outside of its fictional setting.

Principles and practice: Tasulists emphasize traceability, interoperability of layers, and user-centered access to layered data. Techniques include tasul mapping (visual representations of layered relations), tasul indexing, and tasul-aware search that can retrieve results across layers without conflating them. The approach is primarily conceptual and used to explore information ethics and design implications in imagined environments.

In literature and media: Tasulist concepts appear in several speculative works to explore themes of data sovereignty, memory, and governance. Critics note that tasulism functions as a narrative device to discuss information architecture and governance rather than a concrete, realizable methodology.

See also: Information architecture, data layering, ontologies, provenance.