2023-01-26

• Mark Bernstein 2023-01-26 Early Tools for Thought
  • Why TFT Rocks?
    • Boris Mann A common pattern for communities of interest, eg. https://activitypub.rocks
    • Meant to be said out loud with excitement “Tools For Thought ROCKS!”
    • The domain was available and inexpensive!
  • Q&A id:: 63d2b096-a705-486a-82fe-fb7805f1d68e
    • Chris Smith Did the plague delay Silicon-native Storyspace? Do you have a guess when it will release?
      • Mark Bernstein Yes, but I have in in hand. Email me in a week or so.
    • Chris Aldrich Mark, I know you’re aware of the commonplace book tradition, but I’m curious if you know of any early computer scientists—especially any you’ve named here—who kept commonplaces (either in notebook, index card, or early proto-digital system forms)?
      • Jess Martin #Alan Kay journaled extensively (and I believe still does), but he said he never revisits them.
    • Michael Becker What’s Intertwingle?
      • Mark Bernstein Another of #Ted Nelson ’s neologisms, used in Computer Lib/Dream Machines
      • Mark Anderson

        • Everything is deeply intertwingled; especially in a well-designed interactive system Dream Machines, DM p.70 (1987 ed.) DM p.56 (1974 ed.).

        • Intertwingularity also defined, and the box & line diagram: see DM p.31 (1987), DM p.45 (1974)
    • FJK My 1st contact with a real hypertext system was Bob Wallace’s “PC-Browse” (DOS) on a T1000 laptop. - Are you aware of this one?
    • Michael Becker Who said “indirect economies” suck?
    • Alan Laidlaw And thoughts on why Twine isn’t more popular. seems cloistered to a cultural niche but the ideas are very powerful, like a narrative DSL. The core ideas seem like theyd be very useful in enterprise internal wikis, for instance. is there anything else like it?
    • Alan Laidlaw do you have resources to learn more about the 2.5 D limits to our thinking?
    • Gabo What is the difference between a knowledge graph database and a hypertext system?
    • sid Has someone tried to develop or think about tool-for-thoughts from top down i.e thinking how a tool should work that has lets say 100k nodes in it?
    • Mark Anderson Does Virtual Reality offer anything to Spatial Hypertext or free-thinking spaces like Tinderbox map? i.e. does the extra dimension add anything new — does it map our mind/thinking any better than 2D?
    • Peter Wasilko Did any of the hypertext researchers embrace literate programming or use hypertext tools in the development of the source code that went into their systems?
    • FJK BTW Hypertext resulted in the one and only latin user interface I know of, Roberto Busa’s Thomas Opera ominia cum hypertextibus - with f. e. mouse pointer = sagitta (arrow in latin).
    • Marc-Antoine Parent Curious about this thesis you quoted finding issue with link types. I know Tinderbox uses link types, what do you think of them now?
    • Gabo In your opinion, What are the properties needed for hypertext to be an OPEN Hypertext System?
    • Mark Anderson Where did Storyspace’s maps come from? Any relation to Notecard’s Browser cards?
    • lane What work has addressed ergonomic concerns?
    • Guy I’m wondering how we reconcile the idea of spatial hypertext with the desire for local-first, non-proprietary and no-code/low-code file formats (as say outliner tools like Obsidian and Logseq do using Markdown conventions). Can you point to any authors/work on this question?