🪴 Read Me

Authored By:: Rob Haisfield, Joel Chan, and Brendan Langen

Initially published - May 2022

Welcome to our living hypertext notebook. This notebook will continue to evolve going into the future and is by no means a finished product- as such, pages exist at varying stages of completion. Please leave comments to further the discussion and help direct its evolution.

All you need to do is click on what is interesting. This is a special trait of this website - 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. For more on what this is, see What is a hypertext notebook?

The goal of this research project is to find data structures and interfaces that support synthesis and innovation in a decentralized discourse graph. If you prefer videos over hypertext, see this video here (5:40):

Some suggested starting points:

• To jump straight into the ideas:
  • How do you scale and distribute synthesis
  • How might we navigate the structure now or later tradeoffs
  • Designing for ambient review is a rich opportunity space
  • A DSL for a discourse graph with information entry, visualization, and retrieval
  • Search as a primitive
• For broader context about what we are doing and why:
  • What is a decentralized discourse graph
  • Discourse graphs could significantly accelerate human synthesis work
  • Synthesis is hard to do with people who don’t share context with you
  • What are powerful interfaces for entering information into a discourse graph
  • Research Grant Application

Some specific how-tos:

• Pages have tags to indicate what type of node it is, which is also color coded. Hover preview or navigate to the page to learn its type.
• Builders: View this as a framework for navigating the idea maze, and form your own conclusions about the claims, questions, and trails between them.
• Hover your mouse over a link to see a preview of its content
• If a page is empty, look through its backlinks! If a page isn’t empty… you can still look through its backlinks! Those are all of the times where the ideas presented in the page were used in context.
• If a page is not yet created, the hyperlink will appear to be faded.
• When you see a faded hyperlink like @cataliniMicrogeographyDirectionInventive2017, note that it’s a Zotero citekey, and if you take the text, separate out the words, and search in Google Scholar, you will likely find the paper for more information if you are interested.
• Email hello@robhaisfield.com for personal inquiries or private questions, but please defer to public comments when possible, as other people may have the same question as you!