In How can we develop transformative tools for thought, we suggest that “good tools for thought arise mostly as a byproduct of doing original work on serious problems.” We also suggest that powerful tools for thought often depend on deep domain-level insights, which drive the insight-through-making loop.
This helps explain why Logo isn’t a great tool for thinking about differential geometry. Papert wasn’t deeply involved in that subject, so we wouldn’t expect him to develop the kinds of powerful ideas about differential geometry that would be necessary to invent a new tool for thought in that field. In fact, he probably wasn’t even expert enough to evaluate the tool’s power relative to that field.
What does this mean for developing the mnemonic medium? If we want to write about solving problems in climate change, must we become world experts in climate change?
If you’re developing an interface that gets its power by reifying deep ideas about a medium (like Logo), you need deep expertise in that medium to reify the right ideas. Papert didn’t have that. By contrast, the mnemonic medium primarily reifies ideas about memory, theory of knowledge, habits, etc—not ideas about quantum computing. QCVC does explore a serious question in quantum computing (“what kinds of computers would aliens have?”). That was essential to our (hence readers’) investment in the piece. We also need moderate expertise to write good questions and to evaluate the impact of our work (Tools for thought should be evaluated in the context of intrinsically meaningful purposes).
But the criticism of Logo, analogized to the mnemonic medium, doesn’t demand frontier-level expertise in the topics of the mnemonic texts. A hobbyist in quantum computing probably could have made Quantum Country.
That said, domain-level expertise is likely a force multiplier: Question-writing in the mnemonic medium may help the writer think about their topic, which will in turn help them push on the medium in more interesting ways.
If we wanted to focus on creating powerful new Executable books so that we could solve problems in climate models (and more incidentally to communicate), the Papert argument would apply much more directly, and we’d need much more expertise in climate science.
Matuschak, A., & Nielsen, M. (2019). How can we develop transformative tools for thought? Retrieved December 2, 2019, from https://numinous.productions/ttft
Conversation with Michael Nielsen, 2019-12-03