Agreed - I like to think of the macro-column as a declaration of the winner of the competition and the spatial domain of the local inhibitory action it triggers. It seems that you are seeing the mechanism clearly.
I think you could say that Numenta feels differently about this. This is their house and I don’t go out of my way to annoy my host.
BTW: I am still working out how to explain the answer to your previous post. I know the answer but am trying to work out how get in across in a way that makes sense. The answer is the working of part of a much larger system and I am trying very hard to avoid a 10 page answer.
It has to do with a small local temporal/spatial match being a puzzle piece that fits into a much larger pattern and how that pattern forms. It does not just snap into being - there is a process.