Scaling synthesis: Start Here

A research project which aims "to find data structures and interfaces that support synthesis and innovation in a decentralized discourse graph".

Appropriately enough, it's presented as a hypertext notebook, built using Quartz, so "click on what is interesting... hypertext notebooks are designed for exploratory browsing. In a linear piece of writing, all ideas would be sequenced into one narrative. In hypertext writing, the narrative is emergent and the ideas are associative. It is like a book where the pages rearrange themselves for you based on your current curiosity each time you revisit."

Hubs could evolve into such things, although in my upcoming PKG chapter I'm rather down on this idea: most people, I still feel, want to develop their notes into linear narrative articles, and not display their notes to the outside world. Future myhub will allow both: it's all just a question of setting each note's visibility.

This particular hypertext notebook has more structure than most: pages prefixes indicate node type (Claim/Question/Resource/Idea), something myhub codes into the content strategy (Like/Think/Do).

I'll probably annotate individual nodes as well, so there's a dedicated tag (scaling synthesis)