Knovigator: 2 Dimensional Writing

metamitya
metamitya
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read
http://thecitizeninsane.com/post/64142711212

I’m finally dedicating myself to my perpetual side project Knovigator.

It’s a brand new way of #writing so I’m still figuring out the best way to talk about it, but here is an example where I inveigh against the death penalty in this country: https://knovigator.com/…/american-justice-death-penalty-778…

The idea is that you can write out a thread of posts similar to a tweet storm, and then branch off another thread off of any post to expand on it, clarify your thoughts, or to add research to buttress your point (you can see the branching thread indicator on the first post in the above link).

The way I think of this is like two-dimensional or multi-dimensional writing. Or writing with (computer science) trees.

So in the linked thread I’ve branched off of the first post to give an example of an execution being carried out in Ohio today despite the fact that the drugs being used cause severe pain: https://knovigator.com/…/ohio-execution-sotomayor-dissent-7…

Lower down in that second thread it branches again to summarize Justice Sotomayor’s argument against going forward with it: https://knovigator.com/quests/key/sotomayor--argument-77895

This branching style lets me write without being too organized about my thoughts and just expanding them as I go.

Also, everything I write is indexed and searchable so I can re-use it and even connect branches in future threads.

The thread and the research supporting it become my personal knowledge base, or digital memory, and outlines my beliefs.

Soon I’ll be able to automatically combine the thread into a single post to publish on any of my social networks, or keep it separated to publish it as a tweet storm.

Eventually my hope is that as other people start to use the platform the writing and research can become collaborative, and people can build on or dispute each other’s writing to try and get closer to a better understanding of a topic.

In this case my writing is political, but a similar style can be used to write fiction, or tutorials for learning, or whatever. The branching nature, and tweet-like posts make things easy to consume, or to branch off to a more interesting exploration.

I’m even considering mapping out my #bjj game on this platform.

This is still very much a prototype, and I’ll be posting regular updates as I build it out.

Thanks for reading.

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