(2020-06-30) Addressable Ideas The Connective Tissue Of The Web

Addressable ideas & the connective tissue of the web

Text Fragments is essentially The NyTimes’s Emphasis but for the whole web: link to and highlight specific text on a web page. Google developed a version of this concept for linking directly to text in search results, and has just released a Chrome extension to help readers easily link to Text Fragments.

Adding on collaboration gives us new possibilities, using spatial rather than semantic linking to facilitate remix and discussion. MakeSpace is still under development but promises to combine video collaboration with live snippets of websites, allowing participants to embed themselves in the space of ideas for real-time ideation, and the ability to link ideas to the spaces around them. Preserving those interactions as visual-spatial artifacts also facilitates recall, and maps to how our brains make associations.