This is, in part, why the tools for thought space should be looking at intellectual history to see how people have worked in the past.

Rather than looking at how writers have previously worked and building something specific that supports those methods, they've taken a tool designed for something else and just thrown it into the mix. Perhaps useful creativity stems from it in a new and unique way, but most likely writers are going to continue their old methods.

This truism is certainly much older than John Palmer, but an interesting quote none-the-less.

It could be useful to meditate on the ideas of "spatial interfaces" and "spatial software" as useful affordances within the application and design spaces.

Anderson, Ian, and Wendy Wood. ‘Habits and the Electronic Herd: The Psychology behind Social Media’s Successes and Failures’. PsyArXiv, 23 November 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/p2yb7.

Hmm. I'm not sure I agree with this thought/sentiment (though it's hard to tell since it's an incomplete sentence). I think visualizations and mind-mapping software might be an even better way to go, in terms of efficiency of editing (since they are specialized for the task), enjoyment of use, etc.

The main thing text files have going for them is flexibility, portability, client-neutrality, the ability to get started right now without researching and evaluating a zillion competing GUI app alternatives.

Speech, writing, math notation, various kinds of graphs, and musical notation are all examples of cognitive technologies. They are tools that help us think, and they can become part of the way we think -- and change the way we think.

Computer interfaces can be cognitive technologies. To whatever degree an interface reflects a set of ideas or methods of working, mastering the interface provides mastery of those ideas or methods.

Experts often have ways of thinking that they rarely share with others, for various reasons. Sometimes they aren't fully aware of their thought processes. The thoughts may be difficult to convey in speech or print. The thoughts may seem sloppy compared to traditional formal explanations.

These thought processes often involve:

• minimal canonical examples - simple models
• heuristics for rapid reasoning about what might work

Nielsen considers turning such thought processes into (computer) interfaces. "Every theorem of mathematics, every significant result of science, is a challenge to our imagination as interface designers. Can we find ways of expressing these principles in an interface? What new objects and operations does a principle suggest?"

Hotel shower and lighting controls should be easy to find and easy to use. Why are they so often not?

-- David Elsweller

-- Bonnie Stewart