ThinkingToolKit
From espians
ThinkingTookKit
Basic Outline
- abilitity for user to create database tables from templates
- user-defined data structures
- cross-table indexes based on user-defined relationships
- synonym: create/modify/share semantic web ontologies on-the-fly
- personal note-taking tool
- on-line tool (web-based client)
- off-line (phone/pda/pc)
- collaborative online tool
- share data/templates
- visual representation of relationships (text or 3D)
- template groups
- lateral thinking
- What are some disadvantages to this proposal.
- workflow
- a team will be assembled after one of the 3 designs are accepted
- collaborative editing
- the nth paragraph of x after the yth paragraph of z
- voting
- which of these paragraphs should be used between no.s 8 and 9 of the source document
- which drawing is better for the logo
- lateral thinking
- it's all about metadata
History
Back before I discovered #esp, on http://www.openideaproject.org/, Lucas Gonzales introduced me to Edward de Bono's thinking tools. I thought-up this conceptual framework for collaborative thinking as a result of this new knowledge. We had been playing with blogs and wikis, but they aren't up to the task of bootstraping collaborative thinking tools for the internet. The ThinkingToolKit (TTK) was born!
The basic idea is to collaboratively (but manually) compile the relationships between ideas, articles, blogs, wikis...anything accessable via a url. A basic example could be expressed with the phrase "This child 'is a sibling of' this parent." Many other relationships would be defined and grouped into tool sets, for thinking, scheduling, polling, multimedia editing, and more. A basic example of how reputation would work with the TTK could be expressed with the phrase "that user favors the 'is a sibling of' relationship".
I first attempted to design prototypes with Zope/SQL and M$ Access, but got confused about how to deal with the different types of thiking tools, and to add new types on-demand. De Bono's "6 thinking hats" would all use the same data structure, but the tools in _de Bono's Thinking Course_ wouldn't. Who knows what data structure any future tools would have? I'd also want to share tools and develop them in team environments, as well as the ability to translate them, so guilhem's "chapeau rouge" tags mean the same as my "red hat" tags. I was also perplexed as to how to store what I would imagine to be 'large quantities' of 'small, dis-similar records'.
I'm not really a programmer, so when I heard of protoplex (or whatever we called it back in 2004), I said to myself, "This could do it! I'll just wait for the basic platform, and build on top of it! It's even a key to other collaborative tools!" I can't wait!
Reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki gave me something to directly compare TTK with. SMW stores it's metadata on each wiki page, like "'this page refers to that page','that page refers to this page'" TTK, on the other hand, stores metadata in a specialized datastore (shelf, btree, sql, etc), like "'this page','<- refers to ->','that page'". The TTK would facilitate creation of sets of 'predicates' for tasks, scopes, translations, or other (types of) references, and would useful with other tools, such as name completion, highlighting, mouse-overs, wysiwyg editors, etc.
see also:
related chat with sbp (2007)
May 31 10:50:10 jeffarch hm...I guess I could hack a site that just used the "6 thinking hats" but I'd be worried about getting in trouble with deBono's lawy ers
May 31 10:50:23 jeffarch and it's not really what I want to use anyway
May 31 10:50:45 sbp just add another hat. swap the colours round. use smells! "putting on my smells-of-old-boots hat, taking off my mmm...-horseradish hat"
May 31 10:51:24 sbp what do you want from esp, exactly?
May 31 10:51:27 jeffarch yeah, we actually came up with an alternate set, but very little thinking was done in collaboration to develop them
May 31 10:51:38 sbp I've been thinking about this... I mean, any one of us could bugger off and do it righter somewhere else
May 31 10:51:44 sbp ooh, interesting
May 31 10:52:01 sbp is the set documented online?
May 31 10:52:08 jeffarch methinks
May 31 10:52:54 * jeffarch looks
May 31 10:53:11 jeffarch they were like "t-act", "t-fact"...
May 31 10:53:45 sbp I think all I want from esp is 1) to watch tav being tav,since that's highly entertaining; 2) to chat to all the folk in the culture and ju st hang out and chill and do neat things; and 3) ...there was a 3 but I forgot it. perhaps the produce neat things that I subsumed into 2
May 31 10:54:00 sbp t-act and t-fact?
May 31 10:54:07 sbp t- for tuxedo?
May 31 10:54:13 jeffarch t for thinking
May 31 10:54:17 sbp ohh
May 31 10:54:19 sbp silly me
May 31 10:54:47 sbp t-act reminds me of tactile which reminds me of masticating taffy for some odd reason
May 31 10:55:13 sbp t-fact reminds me of that crap 80s band, T'Pau
May 31 10:55:25 sbp since you can only pronounce it T'Fact
May 31 10:55:37 jeffarch http://www.openideaproject.org/Projects/MAin/HelpForZwikiTypes
May 31 10:55:58 sbp ah, thanks!
May 31 10:57:16 sbp I like these sorts of things
May 31 10:57:24 jeffarch I knew I kept this stuff around for a reason ;)
May 31 10:57:33 sbp I worry a little about how they correlate and collide with intuitive reasoning
May 31 10:57:42 sbp but I worried that when I started studying grammar...
May 31 10:57:57 sbp "if I learn grammar, it won't be as natural anymore! I'll start overcorrecting and stuff! eek!"
May 31 10:58:03 jeffarch LOL
May 31 10:58:09 sbp and I did... but eventually it helps in weird ways
May 31 10:58:14 jeffarch interesting
May 31 10:58:43 jeffarch tav just showed up in #esp
May 31 10:59:00 sbp I think rather than learning boring things about how things are done, learning things more *thoroughly* is good. learning how things work behind the scenes and so on...
May 31 10:59:05 sbp ah, good! the ancient mariner himself
May 31 10:59:21 jeffarch questioning stuff
May 31 10:59:44 sbp yeah... and deepening knowledge to link more stuff up, I guess
May 31 10:59:53 jeffarch zactly
May 31 11:00:04 * sbp high-fives
May 31 11:02:56 jeffarch we haccked zwiki to give all these "types" but I don't want a wiki named "foo" with a piece of metadata added to it called "TAct"
May 31 11:03:55 sbp what *do* you want?
May 31 11:03:57 jeffarch I want to read "foo" and have it lead me to something else, that leading having a "TAct" motivation involved in the creation/discovery of "something else"
May 31 11:04:14 sbp oho
May 31 11:04:21 * sbp thinks about that for a second
May 31 11:04:36 jeffarch "it's the arrows, stuipd!" ;p
May 31 11:04:41 sbp is this related? http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/PaperTrail.html
May 31 11:05:07 * jeffarch reads
May 31 11:05:19 sbp it seems to be recurring in my brane recently. tav and __t mentioned something like it on the Monday. Saul mentioned something like it on #e sp... you've mentioned things like it twice now. even that Carl dude mentioned something like it
May 31 11:05:37 sbp it's like it's a hot potato and I don't... quite know what to do with it
May 31 11:05:46 sbp except chuck it at everyone else like they chuck it at me, of course
May 31 11:06:50 jeffarch hmmm...my first thought is that my concept allows for very fine detail
May 31 11:07:41 sbp well I was thinking that the TAct motiviation imparted by foo is a bit like moving on through a decision chain
May 31 11:07:52 sbp and that decision chains are basically Paper Trails as timbl's describing there
May 31 11:08:09 jeffarch where one arrow could represent a sentence/paragraph unitization, and I could add "hat" metadata arrows to that initization
May 31 11:08:23 sbp so the requirements for moving on might be analagous to timbl's very different example of requiring director ratification for a spec to go t o PR, say
May 31 11:08:49 sbp add hat metadata: sort of like annotating a document shaila-like?
May 31 11:08:52 jeffarch ya..."so'n'so needs to see this"
May 31 11:08:57 sbp to explain the thinking motivations behind it in terms of hats?
May 31 11:09:03 jeffarch ex-fucking-zactly!
May 31 11:09:19 sbp awesome. so that's why you shail!
May 31 11:09:20 jeffarch I envision a whole set of tools just for shailating
May 31 11:09:23 sbp (ooh, I made a verb)
May 31 11:09:55 jeffarch vs one for thinking, one for scheduling, one for meatspace events, etc, etc
May 31 11:10:18 sbp gotcha. Concept 11
May 31 11:10:35 sbp (er, I think it was 11)
May 31 11:10:53 sbp I was reading your Shaila template the other day
May 31 11:11:14 jeffarch like "video clip" <- belongs at this time range -> collaborative video editing
May 31 11:11:18 sbp well, not so much reading it since it's like all the other shailas... but I mean reading your intentions about publishing it as a template a nd so on. and it got me thinking about what you're doing...
May 31 11:11:47 sbp I realised I hadn't actually used a shaila before since generally whenever I'm involved, I'm involved in the places that you are so I alread y know what's gone on
May 31 11:12:16 sbp so I started to think about how I'd actually use one of your shailas... and I realised that it's like an index document, but thematically an d temporally organised. and I realised that that is awesomecakes
May 31 11:12:20 jeffarch it's like I can only produce fractal shards (fairy dust?) to sprinkle around to hope it helps define some larger concept
May 31 11:12:33 jeffarch w00t!
May 31 11:12:34 sbp ooh... fractal shards
May 31 11:12:51 sbp Fractal Shards/Fairy Dust. that is a Design Pattern right there!
May 31 11:13:01 jeffarch LOL
May 31 11:13:44 sbp totally writing up a stub for it
May 31 11:14:36 jeffarch seeing how other use tags give clues for moderation
May 31 11:14:44 jeffarch brings in the trust matrix
May 31 11:14:56 jeffarch and trusted user id
May 31 11:15:42 jeffarch just being able to deal with metadata in imaginative ways
May 31 11:16:14 sbp https://projects.espnow.com/24weeks/wiki/FractalShardsFairyDust
May 31 11:18:09 jeffarch heh
May 31 11:19:40 jeffarch wrt to shailas, being able to tag ranges of conver sation into groups, and individual irc messages into topical categories == creating a shaila for irc
May 31 11:20:20 jeffarch as long as the topical categories/groups are common throughout espia
May 31 11:20:28 * sbp archives the most recently edited ten trac wiki pages for posterity...
May 31 11:20:46 sbp ranges into groups... what do you mean by groups?
May 31 11:20:49 jeffarch that also brings up "an economy for thinking"
May 31 11:20:55 sbp oh, so like, pulling all recurrent topics into one mass?
May 31 11:21:21 jeffarch "where was topic 'foo' mentioned"?
May 31 11:21:24 sbp so people don't have to keep wading through to get back to the interesing bits...
May 31 11:21:25 sbp gotcha
May 31 11:21:34 jeffarch "how has the idea of 'foo' changed thru time"
May 31 11:21:49 jeffarch "has any progress been made with 'foo'"
May 31 11:21:54 jeffarch (task management)
May 31 11:22:13 sbp hmm
May 31 11:22:19 sbp we need shailas for each of our media...
May 31 11:22:24 sbp but we only want one or two media
May 31 11:22:26 jeffarch exactly
May 31 11:22:32 jeffarch each medium needs it's own shailar
May 31 11:22:36 sbp still, do you think (if esp continues) it'd be good to have some shailar training materials?
May 31 11:22:50 sbp yeah, sorry, was just repeating something I remember you having said before :-)
May 31 11:22:52 jeffarch ya, I mentioned it at cx, actually :)
May 31 11:23:00 sbp oh, cool
May 31 11:23:06 jeffarch training==development ;p
May 31 11:23:15 sbp odd, I don't remember that. or perhaps I do, but only subconsciously
May 31 11:23:19 sbp ah. hmm
May 31 11:23:30 sbp well as long as we're on the same wavelength, even if I don't remember why! hehe
May 31 11:24:32 jeffarch "Now that there are more avenues to communicate than IRC, some method is needed to summarize the happenings in each. Could we get a volunteer from each service to do this?
May 31 11:24:32 jeffarch There will be discussion of this, and more, in IRC tomorrow (30 May 2007), but we could have a “shailar orientation” to get things r olling."
May 31 11:24:45 jeffarch http://24weeks.collectivex.com/discussion/topic/show/13718
May 31 11:27:04 jeffarch hmmm...crit.org isn't what it used to be
May 31 11:27:17 sbp ah, that must've been what I read, just didn't sink in as much as it should
May 31 11:27:21 sbp yeah, shame about crit.org
May 31 11:27:24 sbp lovely idea...
May 31 11:27:25 jeffarch uded to be a decent example
May 31 11:27:59 jeffarch s/uded/used
May 31 11:28:16 jeffarch alebit on a superficial level
May 31 11:29:26 jeffarch another interesting bit is the concept of the shared development of tags, grouping them into sets, sharing them between teams...
May 31 11:30:45 jeffarch also, one fact/concept/idea can be used in more than one project/situation without having to repeated ad nauseum, and it'd be intere sting to see how the same idea is used in different contexts
May 31 11:42:52 * sbp returns from other work distractions, argh
May 31 11:43:00 sbp did I ever show you my conversation with tav about tags?
May 31 11:43:11 sbp I could've sworn I put it online, but I can't bleedin' find it
May 31 11:43:11 jeffarch I don't think so
May 31 11:43:23 sbp hmm, that's a bugger. I'll search again then
May 31 11:44:39 jeffarch ah...tav speaketh
May 31 11:44:44 jeffarch that'd be great
May 31 11:45:23 jeffarch I want tags with their own metadata
May 31 11:45:44 * sbp just tried a spotlight search for "metatags", but no dice... argh!
May 31 11:45:55 jeffarch I don't want tags to 'belong' to their source documents
May 31 11:46:54 sbp have you ever seen the photo editing software Aperture?
May 31 11:47:00 jeffarch what medium did this conversation happen in?
May 31 11:47:06 jeffarch nope
May 31 11:47:07 sbp I'm thinking about getting it... it'll be the first non-OS code I've ever bought, I think
May 31 11:47:12 sbp it has tag hierarchies, anyway
May 31 11:47:19 jeffarch oh?
May 31 11:47:23 sbp medium: irc in privmsg, I think, but I don't seem to have private logs for it either
May 31 11:47:33 jeffarch awh
May 31 11:48:11 sbp yeah. so you can search for "beach" and it'll find all photos tagged with "sandcastle" if sandcastle is a subtag of beach. I think you can h ave tags be subtags of multiple other tags, too
May 31 11:49:38 jeffarch cool!