The responsibility for imagining and building what the future of text should be rests with all of us, though there are specific actions which only companies are able to take. I am available to consult on these issues and beyond. Please feel free to contact me. Specifically what I can help companies which produce software tools deliver includes:
Where I can help
1) Improve interactions
Help organisations focus on the power of text and how to extend it in their own software, not as just input or output for AI generated text or as a poor cousin to ‘rich information’, but as a powerful mental augmentation.
As a counterpoint to Artificial Intelligence text, my software comes from the perspective of Doug Engelbart’s notion of Intelligence Augmentation. You can see examples of this with my macOS software Author & Reader.
I have also written up a brief list of specific Text Thinking examples.
2) Improve infrastructures
Help develop new infrastructures for more powerful text interactions which are flexible, open and robust.
I have developed an approach to metadata which entails writing in an appendix what the document is, in a standardised and open format, allowing for rich metadata to be added to any document in a low cost way, robustly.
I call this Visual-Meta and has been written about by Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet and is being trialled by the ACM. In order to upgrade what the future of text can be, we need to upgrade the infrastructures of our text systems. I believe adding metadata to enable rich interactions is crucial. I’d love to show you how easy it is.
3) Improve questioning of what ‘text’ can be
Foster dialog with as varied as possible participants to build a well thought through, inclusive future of text, including users, developers, educational institutions and other stakeholders.
The Future of Text Symposium has been delivering on this for the last decade and the Publishing of the results has produced three volumes so far.
Help focus on text in XR environments as new opportunities to extend text in new dimensions, both visually and through new interactions.
We work on XR in the Lab. The Lab conducts weekly discussions on the future of text in XR with published results in the third volume of The Future of Text. This is a crucial area for research at this pivotal time in history before using headsets for knowledge work become commonplace.
Why me
Please feel free to look at who the contributors to the published work are, the quality of my software–as well as its reception–and the symposium I have been hosting to see if you feel I would be the right person to help you with looking at how you can go further with how you develop text interaction tools and systems.
I can give you a different perspective, a text-focused perspective, outside of what you might have in your organisation.
Why now
The world is becoming every more complex and we are moving into a whole new environment of potential knowledge work–working in Extended Reality environments.
These new work environments need to be imagined and built to the best of our abilities, while also not ignoring the potential of traditional digital environments.
We must move beyond basic word processors, websites and social media. We must look at how technologies available to us can augment text and thus augment us.