Bob Horn’s notes regarding his Mapping Hypertext Presentation.
Frontier for the group: understanding that for communicating to others the basic unit to start with is the sentence…the complete declarative sentence.
This is what is described in Chapter 3 of Mapping Hypertext as structured writing, and information mapping.
Understanding that any sentence that purports to describe something, an object or an idea always has three characteristics:
1. The sentence describes some part of the subject matter (I offered to such classifications of subject matters, the classificatory, and the prerequisite; there are others);
2. Each sentence can be (and usually is) a part of or component of some scaffolding (often visual although most frequently written as only singular essays) that maybe two dimensional (I displayed 25 visual) or three-dimensional (which is one of our jobs this year).
3. Each sentence can be identified and classified by its function (one of approx. 40+ functions in stable subject matters) in connecting thinking chunks into larger meanings.
Example: the Boeing 777 is 300 feet long.
1. Description of the specifications of an aircraft, specifically the Boeing 777 (subject matter: aircraft specifications)
2. Stated as a fact, which names one of the 40+ categories you can put sentences into in stable functional descriptions of subject matters. (Function: fact)
3. It is a claim in an argumentation map if someone disagrees with how long it actually is. This is one of the 25 Scaffolding. (one of six components of an argumentation map)
You can do this with every important and relevant sentence for anything you are describing or wanting to understand.
Yes, you will be able to come up with sentences that don’t fit any of these characteristics. But I maintain based on my experience with hundreds of thousands of business customers that those sentences are not very important and not very relevant. They’re just next-thing-that-pops-into-mind sentences that have vague, messy structures.
Frontier for the future of text lab group process experiment with MIRO:
The Group should experiment with software that would enable the future of text group to contribute together on a problem. Perhaps some of the software like Miro.
Miro – best for live whiteboard sessions
Miro is a creative collaboration platform that allows you to brainstorm with your team in real time. No matter where you and your teammates are in the world, this online whiteboard application helps you to connect, collaborate, and co-create for ultimate creativity.
Key features
· Create, share, collaborate, and save ideas in one place
· Express yourself in real time with sticky notes, images, mind maps, videos, drawing capabilities, and more
· Benefit from seamless integration with other apps
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Frontier: The future of text lab should look seriously at Gigamapping
Also for examples of visual, brainstorming visualizations, and for other methods, look at the book, Designing complexity and the website Gigamapping.
- Title: Designing Complexity : The Methodology and Practice of Systems Oriented Design
- Author(s):Birger Sevaldson
- Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
Look at the examples in this short article about Gigamapping especially figure one. It may help you understand ways that are common in other fields than those focused entirely on text. One of the major problems in systems design in organizations of all kinds, including academic organizations, is complexity, and how to represent it. Gigamapping is a lot better in the analysis phase of human thinking than next-thing-that-pops-into-mind sentences that have vague, messy structures.
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Frontier: what are the characteristics of a standalone diagram?
How to handle all the really big diagrams in the biological sciences. This is a really hard problem, and I look forward to working with others to begin to chip away at it. Let me know if you want to work on it with me.
Frontier: make a software program that will translate my folders full of information into Organized Visualized Panels like the one that I showed that contains 25 scaffoldings. Let me know if you want to work on it with me.
Download Visual language: global communication, for the 21st-century
My book Visual language: global communication, for the 21st-century was mentioned. For anybody who wants it, a digital version is downloadable from the Internet archive. Here’s the link.
VISUAL LANGUAGE -1998
Fabien… sketches, notes, and ideas
All my work has been focused on communicating with other people not with the problem you brought up, which is how to organize your immediate and temporary and maybe lasting idea notes. sketches, and drafts. Your comment made me want to think about the three phases of the kind of work that I do. Here they are.
1. Creating and notetaking of ideas and visions for oneself
Put on any kind of media digital or paper and in any kind of form you like. Not very structured but info chunking could be really useful. I always provide a bold face title to every information chunk including tables and diagrams.
2. Authoring for others
Structure my ideas. Use one of 25 different kinds of visual scaffoldings… create new visual scaffoldings. Frequently, I use the 40+ functional categories of structured writing/information mapping. Or I use a categorization that comes from the subject matter of the process that I am trying to portray in my visualizations. I always provide a bold face title to every information chunk.
3. Reading and note taking
I use several methods:
• for ideas that just come into my mind and I want to rapidly record them I use Microsoft Word in Apple dictation. Just create a document
• for scanning and skipping while reading the most terrible academic writing, I put the citation of the document into LLS system and ask it to summarize it. Most often I use copilot. I file these summaries into categorized folders.
• sometimes I want to read the whole document because it is important and relevant enough for my ongoing thinking. In this case, I usually copy the entire document into Word, so that, as I read every sentence in the document, I can decide whether to make the key ideas bold. I do this because I know that the document is important and relevant enough and that I will forget much of it in the next three weeks and I’ll have to go back to it… in which case I will want to find the key ideas quickly. The bold face text permits me to do that.
4. Organizing my files. This is still a project which I do not have a complete method. It is one of the reasons that I am hopeful about the future of text lab will experiment and come up with ideas and tools that will help me.
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