Unker Non-Linear Writing System
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Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#2What a fascinating concept, especially this part:
> We have only started to develop how to hold a conversation in UNLWS itself. As we currently have it, it's a very, very different kind of thing than linear atomic turntaking. Rather, it's a sort of ongoing mutual edit of a shared structure, where revision history playback (or live observation) expresses the 'conversational' tone expected by linear conversation, and the fixed form expresses the integrated totality of what the participants have expressed. Different ink colors help to distinguish participants, but there are no boundaries preventing one participant from using another's ink as part of their own expressions. Indeed, there are a few special conversational variants of glyphs which are meant to be easier to drop in to an already-drawn passage than the normal forms; these are recognizable by their use of two ink colors. (It’s a pity that it’s so fiddly to edit pencil or pen drawings.)
I can't help but wonder how this would look like applied to instant messaging: We are used to seeing our conversations arranged in differently colored bubbles, but how would our form of communication change if we instead communicated on a collaborative surface where we could freely choose which color to use and where to add our thoughts? (Similar to how Slack already introduces a small amount of non-linearity in the form of threaded conversations, but applied on a much larger scale, so that non-linear collaborative communication becomes the default instead of an afterthought.)
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#3What a fascinating concept, especially this part: > We have only started to develop how to hold a conversation in UNLWS itself. As we currently have it, it's a very, very different kind of thing than linear atomic turntaking. Rather, it's a sort of ongoing mutual edit of a shared structure, where revision history playback (or live observation) expresses the 'conversational' tone expected by linear conversation, and t…
It's definitely an interesting thought. Max Krieger also explores this at some length in "Chatting with Glue": https://a9.io/glue-comic/
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#4What a fascinating concept, especially this part: > We have only started to develop how to hold a conversation in UNLWS itself. As we currently have it, it's a very, very different kind of thing than linear atomic turntaking. Rather, it's a sort of ongoing mutual edit of a shared structure, where revision history playback (or live observation) expresses the 'conversational' tone expected by linear conversation, and t…
I took note of that part too, it reminds me of this article [1] posted on HN recently. It contrasts the fleeting and context dependent flows of posts on social media ("the stream") with enduring wiki style interlinking of posts where the context is embedded in the linking ("the garden"). It consider it in the context of personal note taking, and I feel what you mention is the garden approach to conversation, as opposed to the normal stream approach.
I wonder what the medium would have to be like to be useful for instant messaging, since not all things being said need to endure or benefit from linking. Maybe the ink fades unless new things are written nearby, proving its relevance?
[1] https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-te...
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#5What a fascinating concept, especially this part: > We have only started to develop how to hold a conversation in UNLWS itself. As we currently have it, it's a very, very different kind of thing than linear atomic turntaking. Rather, it's a sort of ongoing mutual edit of a shared structure, where revision history playback (or live observation) expresses the 'conversational' tone expected by linear conversation, and t…
I took note of that part too, it reminds me of this article [1] posted on HN recently. It contrasts the fleeting and context dependent flows of posts on social media ("the stream") with enduring wiki style interlinking of posts where the context is embedded in the linking ("the garden"). It consider it in the context of personal note taking, and I feel what you mention is the garden approach to conversation, as oppos…
Perhaps well-implemented collaborative sketching could be the medium that turns conversations from streams into gardens (and it’s the only way of chatting in UNLWS I can imagine).
Some of the challenges I see:
— Tracking where the conversation is being advanced, since it can happen at any place in the sketch.
— Sketching, while can be more informative than text, is tricker to conform to smaller mobile screen sizes.
— Ideally it should not be limited to two dimensions only, but multi-dimensional sketching poses hard UI challenges.
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#6What a fascinating concept, especially this part: > We have only started to develop how to hold a conversation in UNLWS itself. As we currently have it, it's a very, very different kind of thing than linear atomic turntaking. Rather, it's a sort of ongoing mutual edit of a shared structure, where revision history playback (or live observation) expresses the 'conversational' tone expected by linear conversation, and t…
It's definitely an interesting thought. Max Krieger also explores this at some length in "Chatting with Glue": https://a9.io/glue-comic/
Thanks, that comic looks fantastic!
Any idea where else these ideas are explored nowadays? I've seen that there are references to related projects mentioned at the end, but so far I had the impression that any research around hypertext (understood broadly) has pretty much fallen out of fashion in academia (and it sure doesn't help that hypertext is usually associated with the specific implementation of the modern web).
Lately there has been a lot of buzz around bidirectional outliners / note taking apps like Roam and Obsidian, so it seems that there is some interest. But somewhat ironically, all the more research oriented attempts that I could find seem to be scattered around the web without any kind of cohesive community.
(Of course there are still a lot of unexplored ideas dating back to Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson. But more modern hypertext research seems comparatively hard to find.)
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#7This reminds me of the film Arrival and relates to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis [1]regarding how language affects our perception and cognition. It's certainly a very interesting design (there's a hieroglyphic electrical circuit quality to it), but it wasn't clear what we can infer or gain from this non-linear form of writing. I feel like non-linear thinking is naturally how our brains work (or has more potential to work), but not how we have been trained to decode symbols, so it'd be interesting to see how this type of language might alter our cognition.
Would this help us look at ideas more holistically? Would this help us be more sensitive to relationships rather than just the objects? Could this open up new patterns of thinking? Lot's of interesting questions.
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#8Completely Offtopic: How does one get a single letter domain name?
Especially with a premium tld, and even moreso for a personal blog it just seems unreal.
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#9Programming is a non linear writing system. Now that I think of it ... if you replace functions names with logograms you get a top to down writing system of sorts.
Re: Unker Non-Linear Writing System
#10Programming is a non linear writing system. Now that I think of it ... if you replace functions names with logograms you get a top to down writing system of sorts.
Maybe a pure logical programming language such as MiniKanren can be seen as non-linear? There you just read in all the rules you defined and (I think) it does not matter in which order you try to match the rules when you query the system.