Beta of TheBrain 7.0 released

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 4, 2011 at 01:27 PM

One more comment on TheBrain. The developer refers to the individual nodes as “thoughts.” I think this belies the actual functionality of the application (as expressed in my previous comment), because it gives the impression that you should use nodes for single notes. Thought = note. I think the term “idea” would be more accurate, especially if one thinks of “idea” in the Platonic way. Idea = concept/perfect form. An idea seems more like a cradle for information relating to the concept expressed in the idea.

For example: If I have a heading called “The Right Stuff” in an outliner, I might have a bunch of notes relating to the book of that title by Tom Wolfe. These notes could be written in the note pane for the main heading, or broken down as separate notes as sub-topics of “The Right Stuff.”

Whereas, a “thought” in TheBrain called “The Right Stuff” could have parent items for “Mercury Space Program” and “Tom Wolfe.” It could have child items for “Gus Grisson,” “Alan Shepard,” and “John Glenn.” It could have a jump thought to the movie of the same name. Attached to the “thought” could be a link to the wikipedia entry on the book, and a PDF of a review. A picture of the Mercury Seven astronauts could be used as the thought icon.

So, in TheBrain “The Right Stuff” is not simply a thought. It’s the center of a mini-solar system of data relating to the idea of “The Right Stuff.”

(Yes, I do know that in an application like UR you can achieve the same functionality using links and clones, etc… To me, the visual approach to this of TheBrain is more effective.)

Anyway, just a little more fodder for the discussion of TheBrain.

Steve Z.