malleable software

excerpt from Geoffrey Lit’s essay

Maggie’s essay, Andy Matuschak’s essay

think of PKM, HCI, CSCW, knowledge graph

Bottom-up thinking from hypertext, or

a plethora of new series of applications for application for tool for thoughts

became an idea machine ¹

What if we consider TFT as a set of cultural practices, rather than computational objects?

Think of maps, arabic numerals, and zettelkasten, are essentially cultural practices, as a part of representations

We don’t know whether the apps or the cultural practices enables the tool for thought

computer should be a medium, and how does this has to do with computer?

tool for thoughts are rooted from HCI

See also Notation as a Tool of Thoughts

We think of these as medium as programmers:

• medium is an expression
• Tool enable workflows

Most of what we have think in history are usually Computational Medium of thoughts

1. We need more grounding in cognitive science: embodied cognition, mind theory, ethnographic research.

Thinkers:

• Andy Clark (Natural born cyborgs):
  • hypermind hypothesis: in relationship between our brains and surrounding
• Gorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By)
• Barbara Tversky (Mind in Motion)
• Tim Ingold
• Bruno Latour
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Marshall McLuhan
• Don Norman

Question

How do we represent spatial and aural tools for thoughts?

2. Complementary not competitive artifacts

Competitive: makes you reliant on the tool (google maps)

Complementary: teach you intuition (compass)

3. Focus on studying existing cultural practices, not computational objects

• Spatial memory (building memory palace)
• Classical rhetoric
• logical fallacies, uncover biases, question assumptions
• statistics and its lies
• Information literacy

Daniel Dennett’s “Intuition pumps to check your reasoning”

• Rappoprt’s rules
• Joosting
• Rathering

tools gives users new lenses and see world through emergent properties

Question

system vs computational objects?

See also Pierre Levy in “Becoming Virtual”

Question

Cultural practices are inherently malleable, as are pre-computational systems like numerals and poetry and Zettelkasten, but modern apps like Google Maps are not. Is malleability a necessary property of a tool for thought that effectively mobilizes cultural practices?

Question

Why programming is so textual?

Text are efficient for embedding format, and become a limitations of spaces and memory.