Design aspects of software: maps as "thinking tools"
I don't talk about it as often as, say, small-plane aviation or, recently, Chinese education, or my doomed quest in Asia for good beer. But for many many years I have been fascinated by the relationship between "pure" acts of thinking - logic, memory, argument, expression, the process of making connections and finding distinctions; all of which rely fundamentally on words - and the various tools, cues, shortcuts, and stimuli other than words that can play an important part in what we think of as thought.
I'm not talking about entirely separate realms of expression - like music, which obviously conveys meaning beyond words, or the emotional or imaginative power of artwork, photography, illustrations, and other visual representations. Rather I mean systems specifically designed to help the plain old reasoning parts of the brain do their job better, by shoring up common weak spots or by giving more or better material for the "real" brain to work on. For an Atlantic article on this topic from 2007, go here. Things have changed since then, mainly for the better, in ways I'll go into in coming days.
Today's design theme: the potential of argument maps. These are something like sentence diagrams, without the drudge-work overtone. I was introduced to them through two programs from the Austhink company of Melbourne, Australia: bCisive, whose name is I think a pun on "decisive" and is a tool for decision-making, and Rationale, which is supposed to help students improve the logic of their presentations. Tim van Gelder, who teaches philosophy at the U of Melbourne and founded Austhink, weighed in here yesterday on the Chinese education, defending the proposition that critical thinking can be taught.
Another kind of map, from the online site Debategraph.org. When you click on any part of it, subsidiary arguments pro and con pop up. This site is a very interesting crowd-sourced effort to refine the arguments on a variety of big global issues.
Are these "maps" just a gimmick? That was my initial reaction. But I've changed my mind as time has gone on and have begun to use them not so much to lay out things I write (for that I use normal outlining) but to think about big choices.
The best article I have read on the subject is "Enhancing our Grasp of Complex Arguments," by Monk and van Gelder, presented as a speech five years ago. They make a powerful point: if we recognize the need for graphic aids to help us keep track of mundane matters like street directions, might they not also be useful in keeping track of the much more consequential and complex arguments that go into major public and personal choices? This paper is very much worth considering by anyone interested in human intelligence, machine intelligence, public decision-making, and the potential and limits of public discourse. Seriously, I have thought about this paper often since reading it.
Also worth reading: this paper by Charles Twardy, plus many links at the Austhink and Debategraph sites. And "What is Argument Mapping," by van Gelder.
Bonus illustration: A nice excerpt from the van Gelder/Monk paper about the interaction between verbal and visual reasoning:
"Here is a prose description of an area of London.
"Pentonville Road runs from east to west, then turns into City Road, which comes to a T-junction where East Road meet Moorgate City Road. Running roughly south from Pentonville Road is first Gray's Inn Road and then King's Cross Road, which turns into Farringdon Road after the intersection with Clerkenwell Road. Where Pentonville Road turns into City Road, St. John's Street runs south. As you go along City Road, you come to Goswell Road (which turns into Aldersgate Street) and Bunhill Row running south. As you go down Gray's Inn Road, the first intersection is with Guildford Street, which continues to a T-junction with King's Cross Road. The next intersection, as you continue down Gray's Inn Road, is with Theobald's Rd, which at that point turns into Clerkenwell Road, though you could veer of NE along Rosebery Avenue which crosses King's Cross Road before it joins St. John's Street near the junction of Pentonville Road and City road. Gray's Inn Road terminates at High Holborn, a major E-W road which, as you go east, turns into Newgate Street and then Cheapside. St. Paul's Cathedral is between Newgate Street and Fleet Street, which runs roughly parallel to Newgate. Southhampton Row goes south intersecting with Guildford Street, Theobald's Road and High Holborn, where it becomes Kingsway, which continues south to a T-junction with the curve of Aldwych, which begins and ends on Fleet Street. From Roseberry Road you can head east along Lever Street, which crosses St. John's Street and Goswell Road before finishing at Bunhill Row where it meets City Road. Heading south down St. John's Road, you cross Lever Street and then Clerkenwell Road. Goswell Road also crosses Lever Street and Clerkenwell Road (which at that point becomes Old Street). Goswell Road becomes Aldersgate Street. Hatton Garden goes between Clerkenwell Road and High Holborn. Streets running south from High Holborn are Kingsway, Chancery Lane and Farringdon Road. Chancery Lane is a short street finishing at Fleet Street. Fleet Street ends at a large intersection just east of St. Paul's. Aldersgate Street continues past London Museum (which is at the corner of Alsdersgate and London Wall) down to Newgate Street. Beech Street runs E from Aldersgate, turning into Chiswell Street before it meets City Road. East Road runs south, past the intersection of City Road, over Old Street and London Wall, where it becomes Moorgate Street."Now, please tell me, based on the information provided here: How does one get from St Paul's Cathedral to London Museum? The information is all there. What makes it difficult to answer the question? You could figure it out, given enough time, but you are, surely, both a little frustrated at the unexpected difficulty of the task and puzzled at why I would present the information to you in this form.
"Why not in this form?
More to come.