I often think back to this brilliantly simple definition of computers by @DavidDeutschOxf: In Popperian terms of World 1 (physical, material —particles, fields & forces), World 2 (sensations & feelings) & World 3 (abstractions, ideas):

Computers are ways of connecting World 3 with World 1, of making it come alive, instantiating it. 🤯

The main shapes of our digital conversations: sequence, tree, feed, graph & thread.

What I'm fascinated lately is how transclusion lets you play with these shapes. It's an easy way to tame complexity by linearizing, going back to the time sequence. The reply feature in most modern chats is already a kind of transclusion, a way to linearize the tree by adding to replies a (click-to-jump-back-to) snippet of context.

It's similar to the quote-replying with > that you do manually in email.

100 days since @balajis published his first book at TheNetworkState.com

I'm fascinated by the idea of a network state. Technology will eventually remake politics, this is one picture of what it may look like.

Some diagrams exploring the concept. First, as general sentence: A more complex, more opinionated definition, fleshing out each previous phrase with Balaji's specific vision.

These 2 passes are taken literally from the book's first chapter: thenetworkstate.com/the-network-st…

“We want to go graph to graph instead of graph to stream to graph,” said @Conaw to @justinkan in a recent interview:

I want to elaborate on this dream, contrasting examples from @RoamResearch, @jack's @Twitter & @ivanzhao's @NotionHQ to ground ourselves. Wait, this is the web, we have links, isn’t it a graph already? Yes, but a painfully limited one.

Here are 3 directions to realize the potential of graphs:
#1 Make links ⇄ 2-way (←backlinks!).
#2 Break down ↓ pages into smaller pieces.
#3 Glue up ↑ those pieces in new ways.

A thread on 2-way links! I want to use them to interpret & contextualize what @Conaw, the Roam team & the #roamcult are building at @RoamResearch.

This is a tentative, personal take. I'll first compare Roam to other hypertext landmarks, then imagine why it could get very visual. Let's start here: a visual link between 2 things ALWAYS goes both ways! ⇄

I mean it in the deep & natural sense that your 👁️ eye can go→ from one thing to the other, then ←back again.

A 1-way link is pretty abstract! To represent it I'll use arrowheads & comic panels.

I want to manipulate equations on screen better than on paper.

Digitizing math script is so tiring, we usually just jump to automatic solvers after. But math is more than statements & solutions, it’s about the fun of *engaging* abstractions.

Algebra needs new interfaces!🧃 Operations are how you kick around abstractions. The = sign is the net, demanding ⚖️balance of you.

I fell in love with math when I found this kind of thinking on paper as a kid.

If we automate away the drudgery & the blunders, equations will be fast puzzles, Rubik cubes!

What is to reading what a word processor is to writing?

Here's a quick demo of a syntax exploder in honor of Doug Engelbart, father of 🐉 demos, who called similar dreams “parsing processors”.

The text is the first paragraph of Doug’s 1962 framework dougengelbart.org/content/view/1… This diagram dates back 15 years, to 2006: elzr.com/blag/iibb-june…

In my mind's eye, it was always animated. I literally hand-waved demoing it.🤌🖐️

Only with the new crop of Intellect-Augmenting tools like @figmadesign & @principleapp was it easy enough to get out of my head.

Data is code, code is data. This reversible perception *is* computation.

Data is ultimately just a number, however vast. Code is just a weave of logic gates, however intricate.

Think of trees. See nouns in their leaves to get numbers. See verbs in their branching to get gates. Permutation trees are big bangs of pattern: ever-expanding structure out of (almost) nothing.

Digital computing is seeing the world as sequences of tree branches, framing them as paths of being (data) or becoming (code).

Our civilization now runs on this abstract perception.

1/6: Al 7 de abril, 2,785 casos confirmados de #coronavirus en 🇲🇽México según los #datosMalAbiertos de @SSalud_mx.

En 2 días que me tomó la actualización hay 642 casos nuevos.

En Covidatos.mx encuentras (pronto) este reporte y más. ¿Por qué la tardanza? Explico: 2/6: El 6 de abril muchos observamos que hubo una GRAN Discontinuidad No Explicada en las tablas de casos confirmados del Comunicado Técnico.

No ha habido explicación en documento o en conferencia por parte de @SSalud_mx, pero observo entre otras cosas que:

Consciousness is the internal user interface. (Who’s the user? The organism!)

It started with sensations, emotions & urges coloring bluntly memories, perception & imaginings.

We grew icons for others & since they gave one to us, we higher social animals needed one too: a self. Then came the freeing leap of using strings of sounds to stand for whatever, inside & between us.

We used these sonic pixels to digitize our memories, perceptions & imaginings —we chunked’em into reusable symbols, to communicate & think with them, to better keep abstracting on.