DynamicIdeography

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Idea, from PierreLevy, of a language which includes symbols which are

dynamic / kinetic

interactive

autonomous decision makers

to take advantage of the computer as medium.

Thoughts : Not entirely convinced. Yes to good use of diagrams and animation. Yes to the value of agents to do stuff like searching, sorting and crunching data. Yes to HyperText (and wiki!). Yes to AlanKay's notion of computer as meta-medium, and attempts to use computer models in education.

But what does it mean to give these elements to language rather than documents? That the symbols of the language have these features? The whole point of language is that it consists of trivially simple symbols which can be composed into complex discourses. If the complexity migrates into the symbols, aren't you going to require people to learn to use an underlying implementation language to implement new symbols when they want to express something new? Could end up with the same problem as written chinese (but worse) of needing to learn hundreds (or thousands) of symbols.

Seems like Kay's SqueakLanguage project has many of the same ideas without this confusion. Though having said that, many ObjectOriented frameworks do have a problem of the explossion of number of objects and APIs which need to be learned.

Compare :

(WarpLink) TweenSpeak,

LittleLanguages

BillSeitz:TechnoGraphy though looks like it could deteriorate into PowerPoint

Contrast :

DynamicIdiocracy