So this was a document that I started at Astral Ship a couple of years ago. I have some notes, and audio in other media to explore on the topic, but essentially this was the beginning of my journey to integrate the way we write in wiki completely into the application - that is both the process of making a software application and of what the application looks like and how it behaves.
This journey was provoked by thinking about how the emergence of generative ai is going to change the way we work and think. In some ways it is also going back to my second introduction to computers - see HyperCard in Wiki where design, text adn code were intertwingled.
# Ward
Ward makes distinction between Model and Document. His reflections are philisophical, and deserve further thought, but my first impression is that I agree, but seek a different track. This different track for me revolves around an understanding of Document as Poetry.
# Poetry For me the power of "documents' in this future, is not to be expressed by imagining the substance and interface of the printed word - but rather to understand the perfomative aspect of a speech act and how now it may be recorded or "documented".
In this understanding - for something to be document driven we are imagining a form of recording that is: - Poetic not Literal - Alive not Static And closer to how we: - Speak Together
It is in this sense that the document I imagine is not a model, that is it's geometry and logic are complicated - rather it is a poem that is perhaps best expressed as a new and formal way to capture the later Witgenstinian idea of a: - Family Resemblance
# Living Document Together, these elements point to the direction of a new type of document - built on ideas that are familiar in the history of computer science and human culture, but when integrated formally create a new form of documentation primitive. Let's call this primitive a: - Living Document
# See