theBrain mind mapping software.

From: Max Comess (mcomess@ucla.edu)
Date: Mon May 06 2002 - 15:43:59 MDT


Have you used theBrain? If you want to have any idea of the power of these mind mapping systems, you must experience them. You absolutely must download this killer app, there is no way I can describe it that would give you the same understanding. Downloading this app will is a simple and direct action that YOU can take which will almost certainly reduce the time to singularity. Please, lets stop writing email messages and papers and start writing neural maps. It's so much cooler. Just try it!

Just as a simple example of basic IA empowerment. Imagine if SL4 were on a website that used an interface like theBrain. That is, people would post to a bulletin board, but it would not be in the standard bbs hierarchy, it would be a plex that people could post to. There should be the ability to have multiple user defined classes of thoughts, like XML tags. THESE SHOULD BE DISPLAYED WITH THE THOUGHT, e.g. when you roll the cursor over it, or could be represented as shapes or colors or...? Initially classes may have to be defined by the user, but as the system grows it will be able to assign them automatically. It should also take time into account, perhaps by incorporating a third dimension into the GUI, so that things that have been posted further back in time will appear further back in space. In fact, when I saw SpiderMan today and I saw the cool opening intro, the one with all the 3d webs, I said to myself, "That's what it should look like." But I don't see any reason why every piece of information that we exchange with ANY computer could not be able to be incorporated into a plex like that, it seems like the next logical extension of XML.

My ideas aren't so much about creating a way for the computer to interact with this information. It's about creating a better way for US to interact with the information.

And the whole deal with altnet was this: Either there will be a website with a really cool GUI, or a website with a really cool GUI that's managed by a PFlop computer using IA.

The whole point of the IA and the PFlops is that it should be able to sort through and analyze all this massive amounts of data, then link them together in a 3d plex. Data could be papers, emails, websites, audio, video, chat, or anything that can be analyzed by the various IA's. My idea was that when the IA systems are powerful and sophisticated enough that one will be able to just drop something into the plex and it will be linked to automatically.

            Maybe this could be accomplished initially by using XML tags or the like. Maybe natural language software could analyze the data and link it based on similarities. Who knows what might be possible? If, as this net grows, we find a way to use it in helping to develop AI, that's great. But I was never proposing that we should try to wake up the plex as an AI. The plex is just a knowledge database, but one which is dynamic and which could be managed by IA in order to help us use the information better.

I just want to try and point out the possibilities and potential of some of the amazing software that's already available. Since it's available, it makes me very frustrated that people aren't using it. That's what I hope to change.



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