---
tags: dexdex, semi-permeable-nodes
---

# semi-permeable nodes

Repo: https://github.com/Connoropolous/cassini-oval-nodes

I imagine a more fluid sensemaking environment than we've seen before...

words are more liquid... where some start and others end is less clear.

Things are easy split apart, merged together, down to the letters, and words.

Slice and dice words. Experimenting with inputs.

Connected or disconnected?

Resizing, bigger or smaller...

linked or unlinked.

what is the link? how is the link part of the things itself?

non-linear.

workflowy is really quite good at this. It's still a hierarchy though. Although it's also non-linear I think.
Nodes can transcend and appear in multiple parents I think.

Somewhere between structured and unstructured.

You could start with a paragraph and then slice and dice it into a deconstructed meaning map.

The smallest useful unit is a word.

The biggest useful unit is a paragraph.

When does a word become a paragraph? When do words become a sentence?

the idea here is of multiple layers of modularity/membranes existing simultaneously. There is a membrane around each word, each sentence, and each paragraph. Any thing which has a membrane around it is itself select-able, draggable/orderable, deletable, etc.

Related to these layers of text, and inspecting text for salient meaning, there is this!
http://acawriter-demo.utscic.edu.au/demo
From [Simon BS](https://www.uts.edu.au/staff/simon.buckinghamshum)

This UI would be a lot like drawing and writing... but converting into structured knowledge

Key actions could be defined...

It would be more powerful than on paper, because you could edit, undo, push, shove, resize, cut, merge

Start with one longer thought. THen break that thought into parts.

Multiplayer. Must be Multiplayer.

**The canvas makes room for the content.**

It can be in a state anywhere between radically unstructured, to radicaly structured. It covers the spectrum.

What data schema could cover the spectrum?

This liminal space between unstructured and structured is the key to facilitating sensemaking, since it's what we do in our brains.

Giving form to something without form.

Expression should be in colors, shapes, and words should be drawable.
Organic font.

You should be able to draw circles around things and have those circles create groups/clusters.

If you could use hands, on a touch screen, of course it'd be super natural.

Without having two points though, there is no counterpoint, and it makes classic gestures, like separating things by pulling them apart
less intuitive.

Unless a node was 'stuck' to the place it was located, and clicking on a word and pulling would stretch it,
then separate.
The 'cassini ovals' effect.