September 12, 2004
MarkBernstein.org
 

Whiteboards

James Vornov finds the Tinderbox-as-Whiteboard idea has power far beyond ephemeral planning.

The reason the whiteboard seems to work is that I can see the titles of all of the components at once in a map view. Outline views, whether a conventional outline or a mapped outline don't easily allow me to look as broadly.

The power of the Map view -- the power of spatial hypertext -- is one of the most interesting facets of Tinderbox. Someone should study this systematically.

With all these fascinating research topics lying all over the lawn waiting for a scholar to wander by and gather them, we might perhaps indulge in a little less swordplay over controversies like the interdisciplinarity of ludology -- controversies with little operational consequence and less potential to influence the art and practice of software.