Notational Intelligence | thesephist.com

I spent the last month wondering and investigating how we might design better workflows for creative work that meld the best of human intuition and machine intelligence.

Notation, like its conceptual cousin language, is difficult to define precisely because it covers such a wide range of ideas. But as a starting point, let’s constrain notation to be some arrangement of symbols or images that we use to record and communicate ideas, and the way we interact with those symbols in our thinking process.

I think a promising path is in the design of notation. More explicitly, I believe inventing better notations can contribute far more than automated tools to our effective intelligence in understanding ourselves, the world, and our place in it.