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Many "tools for thought" and "digital gardens[1]" are built on a model of nodes and links between nodes. Any one node can be associated through a bi-directional link to any other node. This creates a kind of network of nodes and their connections.
I've found that writing in this sort of manner is incredibly natural and fluid, it just sort of works. It's how this site is organized[2].
The key challenge is how to visualize these connections in a way that mirrors the way the connections exist in our minds[3]. Often the default is to visualize the network as a classic graph, an approach taken by most software in this domain such as obsidian[4] (I also tried it with 1D too[5].) The problem is that these graphs quickly loose their value once the number of connections increases. The position of each outgoing connection in 2D space is arbitrary, so you have to scan around and get a sense for how the node is connected. But this scanning sort of behavior feels pretty unnatural; it doesn't feel like the software is working as a manifestation of your mind. There's a clear difference between you reading the content of the node and visualizing the connected ideas internally, and the way that it's presented visually.
A new method of visualization is needed, I think.
Last updated Sat Apr 09 2022 in Berkeley, CA
1: /thought/digital-gardens.gmi
5: /thought/one-dimension-network.gmi