Hi, tldr; some thoughts on notation of hypertexts
I've been interested in hypertext and complex systems for a while and had a series of "Ah-Ah! moments" related to modelling. TW acts as a muse, as a check. I like to think TW as a learning partner (OK I got this idea from Luhmann), and computers in general as an aid to thinking. (The computer was designed as a thought experiment to aid thinking in the first place) I am a member of an Action Learning Set, a group of people who meet to help each other with their mutual learning, and the Ah-Ah! moments come out of this context. One member of the group worked for ICL, a state run computer company. While at ICL she worked on a notation for complex systems called POSD. The departure from the mind-map, concept map family of depicting collections of related things starts from the position of processes rather than objects being the fundamental concern. Its all about the interaction of constantly changing processes. For me, TW helps me understand and explore this. The way updates happen right away, the way a list is produced from a filter, and how that list can change when -- for example -- I remove a tag. One of the problems of the "bubble and stick" diagrams is that the "sticks" or lines joining the objects don't take up as much space on the page as a 2-D shape, yet it is the most complex entity in the model: its a collection of dynamic processes itself. One of the reasons I like TW so much is that everything is a tiddler. All things are equal, they just have different roles: as a tag, as a stylesheet, as an image.... and the "contents" of the tiddler can be dynamic. In the days of ICL 1960s-1980s computer programming was very different, a huge undertaking. The state of the art in the hardware and software was lagging behind the theoretical understanding of computers and complex systems. The people who worked there were mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists, the computers were huge main-frame computers, very slow by todays standards. Because of this maybe, theorising and planning was (or appears to be from my perspective) of greater importance. A test might take days to run on a computer. There was no super fast TiddlyWiki, where you can make things very quickly. It was interesting to Carole Cadwalladr's hand drawn image showing the connections she's drawn out and posted to twitter. I am used to seeing computer generated concept maps, they are part of an expected set of artefacts business consultants like to display. The image clearly illustrates the point about lines being less privileged than the shape. Its not that we know that there is a flow of cash from one party to another, its how we know that to check if the claim is valid. The members of my Action Learning Set all come from a background in Viable Systems Modelling. The modelling method uses what Stafford Beer calls "recursion": inside a system is an identical system. All systems can be modelled using a handful of systems at different scales. Beer chose to draw his systems based on electrical circuit notation inviting the idea that a system is like an electrical circuit, that electricity is like information. The diagrams look very complex, the problems start when you try to draw relationships which occur between levels of recursion. The paper gets cluttered and the mind gets lost. There is also the possibility of creating placeholders for systems which will exist, but are away from the current focus. The danger with complex systems is that your attention drifts off on a series non-linear path and they you end up far away from your intended destination. This can be or course rationalised, each diversion has a decision associated with it, the first of which is "How much time should i devote to making this decision?". The POSD notation is a lot simpler. Processes producing behaviours are drawn and contained in a shape, if they touch they are said to interact. Draw another shape around behaviours which contribute to another behaviour. The notation is explained on a website in a particular stye. Revisiting this webpage lead to the first Ah-Ah! Its designed for hand drawing and thinking, not computer thinking! The Ah-Ah came to me in a playground when I was with my 4 year old daughter. Over the past 4 years I have used artists sketch pad to develop my thinking. I now it in a rucksack and take it everywhere I go. You can think outside! The batteries don't run out! There is no glare! And if you want to, you can take a picture of the sketch on your phone, or a video, or a panorama (provided your battery is charged) The digital camera, phone and iPad have made sharing paper sketches easy! I was sitting on a bench under a tree, a gentle breeze played with the leaves: the sun shone through the leaves onto a sandpit. The surface of the sand was changing all the time. The shadows dance on the surface, there are footprints in the sand, a dandelion seed is blown across the grains of sand. All the elements combined to create a wonderful atmosphere and induce a peaceful state of mind. I had my pad out on the bench, and found myself drawing a POSD diagram. I wanted to capture the processes inducing the sensation in order to re-create it. I could have sketched out a picture using pencil and pencil crayons, but then my attention would have turned to the task of drawing lifelike representations of the scene. The joy of the POSD is that it's a notation! A notation! And notation in general: to some degree the method we use affects the thoughts we generate with it! So, seeing Cadwaladr's notation of the connections between what she claims to be fact checked and "lawyered" was interesting to me. She said "I am not an artist", to apologise for the quality of the diagram in advance. To me, as someone involved in conversations about visual representation of relationships between things, it was quite a surprise to see the diagram: there was little consistency between line type! And why should there be?! Coming at a visual representation with experience of trying to create such images on computers means that there is a underlying need to what to let the computer do the work of searching an classifying when things get too complex for the human mind. The computer can help us be seeing different perspectives on the system. I wanted to copy Cadwaladr's diagram as closely as I could. But i ran into myself when putting in the cash flows. I didn't want to create too many edge-types (Felix warns against this, performance matters). Copying the diagram would mean that I'd have to create a different edge-type for each amount of cash being transferred. Instead I created a separate tiddler with a title describing the flow, and used two "funds" edges to connect them. I then put Cadwaladr's original label in the caption field. Without the edge, TiddlyMap makes it very easy to emulate the notation of a POSD diagram. However, the notation does not translate into TW logic. Another Ah-Ah! for me is that this doesn't really matter! TiddlyMap can be seen as the daddy of drag and drop in TiddlyLand, but the recent drag and drop developments in the core mean that list items can be re-ordered. Machine ordered lists are great, but sometimes the ordering is not the most useful. For example, the Concept tagpill on TW.com... The concepts are ordered alphabetically not in order of importance. The new re-ording be drag and drop is wonderful for the process of thinking. Its quicker and safer. You know the collection is not going to be messed about with, there is a tag and a list! Anyway... having said all that about notation, I would be wonderful if TiddlyWeb had the capacity to add relationships between tiddlers by virtue of them touching each other and by classiffying them by dragging them onto a larger area. Alex http://www.prattens.co.uk/webposd/posd.htm On 10 May 2017 at 08:08, HC Haase <haase...@gmail.com> wrote: > > TW is a "non-linear web based notebook", I was thinking that a possible >> niche use is a "non-linear web based index" > > > This is a very interesting idea. Finding the big picture of things is when > it gets fun. a long time ago I did a kind of similar mapping of relations > between ideas and discourses, and different account of the problem in a > conflict. The problem however became that everything more or less became > connected to everything. > > I think to get these kind of relation mapping more clear, it would be > useful if hierarchies and strength of relations, could be represented more > clearly. Like in the map you made funding of 7,5 million and 714.000 have > the same visual link. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TiddlyWiki" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/ > msgid/tiddlywiki/63510427-1403-4383-be0d-df43f60a2c62%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/63510427-1403-4383-be0d-df43f60a2c62%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/CALc1hYdhb_hYejODk8qaPjnC02NSg-53JSpkp4p%3DUz5COYOPpQ%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
