Submitted directional proposal Exploratory IrDAKiss.
Our director, Andrius Kulikauskas, has submitted to the Infrared Data
Association, IrDA, www.irda.org , a directional proposal for the
"Exploratory IrDAKiss" This proposed standard will facilitate
experimentation with the transfer of structured collections of notes
and
other expressions of thoughts. Currently, authors suffer whenever
the
software they use gets discontinued and they are forced to abandon
the
thoughts they have tended. Our standard will allow authors to choose
from a variety of software tools to accumulate, organize, and reflect
on
their own thoughts. More generally, this will foster the bundling
together of experiences, in the form of images, text, voice, cash,
applets, and so on. The exchange of such experience packages
will be
especially meaningful across Infrared connections, arguably the most
personal way of exchanging electronic information. Infrared is
the
wireless technology by which individuals beam information, for example,
from one handheld device to another. This social act may be thought
of
as a kiss, an "irdakiss".
The Board of the Infrared Data Association at its April 12 meeting did
not approve the directional proposal submitted by Minciu Sodas for
an
"Exploratory IrDAKiss" standard. More Board members voted in
favor than
against, but the proposal did not pass because too many Board members
voted to abstain. At the IrDA meeting we made progress in asserting
that the Infrared universe is a natural context for our proposed
import/export standard for tools for organizing thoughts.
we displayed our members' products, including TheBrain,
www.thebrain.com, MindManager, www.mindmanager.com, and Thoughtstream,
http://thoughtstream.org At our table we will demonstrate what
conversion of information between these various products might look
like. We want to attract the interest of makers of user interfaces
for
cellular phones, such as Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, and handheld
devices, such as Palm and Hewlett-Packard.
Theoretical results
Why do you think thoughts should be written down?
What kind of obstacles or problems do you come up against in writing
down and organizing thoughts, as well as creating new ones?
What kind of help or tools would you like for helping organize thoughts
and creating new ones?
Answers are at:
http://www.ms.lt/ms/projects/structureuses/index.html
I've started organizing these answers, placing them on a sheet, with
related concepts next to each other.
http://www.ms.lt/wishfulthinking.html
Features of Structures for Thinking will consider the effects of structure on thinking, and what these effects determine about a general format for information. For example, organizing ideas in a sequence distinguishes the strong ideas and the weak ideas, organizing ideas in a tree - the broad ideas and the narrow ideas, and organizing ideas in a network distinguishes the vague ideas and the clear ideas. This is the key project for defining a standard because we need to define sequences, hierarchies, and networks in the way that is most appropriate for humans.
Structures for Thinking considers ways of structuring information,
and the associated organizing principles. We are using this project
to determine the appropriate scope for the standard. Andrius Kulikauskas,
Ph.D. and Saulius Maskeliunas, Ph.D. discuss the results they have collected
so far in their paper Organizing Thoughts into Sequences, Hierarchies,
and Networks for the Workshop on Evaluation of Modeling Methods in Systems
Analysis and Design (EMMSAD'99). The paper distinguishes between
internal and external structurings, and shows that sequences, hierarchies,
and networks are the basic external structurings, in that restructuring
them accounts for the various ways of visualizing information.
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Our Proposal
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The purpose of a directional proposal is to declare the scope of our
proposed standard and how it will relate to existing standards,
especially IrDA standards. If you are a member of Minciu Sodas
or any
other IrDA member, then write to ms@ms.lt to ask for the complete
proposal.
The IrFLOW SIG, the Architectural Council, and the Technical Committee
all voted to recommend approval of our proposal. IrFLOW, Flow
of
Experiences, is the IrDA Special Interest Group which Minciu Sodas
worked to establish, with a charter "to create an infrastructure to
accumulate, heighten, reflect on and respond to experiences."
A
thoughtful format may expand the flow of ideas and experiences across
Infrared connections in the way that HTML has expanded the movement
of
documents across the Internet.
The January meeting of IrFLOW was attended primarily by makers of
infrared tranceivers, who are concerned for the success of the entire
Infrared universe. Our April meeting had a much broader attendance,
including makers of cellular phones and pagers. Anna Herbert
of
TheBrain, www.thebrain.com, aherbert@thebrain.com, demonstrated a
prototype of TheBrain for the Palm OS for handheld devices. Andrius
Kulikauskas briefly demonstrated the open source Thoughtstream for
Palm
OS, http://thoughtstream.org, lead by Ben Darnell,
bgdarnel@unity.ncsu.edu. These demonstrations by our members
generated
interest and made our endeavor more concrete.