Statement on Collaboration

Hi,

I wrote this as a statement of what I do and why, as well as how I collaborate, to make things clear.

My purpose, at top level, is to augment our interactions with text. Specifically I am interested in improving our interactions with documents. I feel that networks are important but at some point it is crucial to linearise an argument in a coherent frame. The model user is a student writing a paper to a teacher, which is a model I think can be extended to other document based interactions.

This is because I believe firmly that we must improve our interaction with text. Otherwise we will not be as close to our knowledge, each other or ourselves as we can.

My scope is that I am simply not interested in doing anything on the web since I am a performance snob and like native applications. I also am a design snob who love the macOS platform (though Microsoft is doing interesting things now, that’s for sure).

I am an artist designer and the software look and interactions is something I take responsibility for. It is my art. If you don’t like Author or Reader that is fine, but if you have suggestions for how to change the work, I’d love to hear from you.

Where I want to collaborate is around what I call Visual-Meta, in document form or in copy and paste.

I am also interested in collaborating in dialog with other thinkers and designers in general dialog or on specific work they are doing, but I am not a programmer nor do I have funds to invest. I am not in a position to be an active part of a new design. This is why I have hosted The Future of Text Symposium for a decade with my collaborator Vint Cerf and why I edited and published the book The Future of Text. These efforts have a home on the web so please feel free to join our community.

I am also very interested in collaboration on using and even co-designing the future of Visual-Meta which I think is a very simple but potentially powerful way to augment our text.

Thank you for having a look at this, we can only move forward together, and it’s good to know how we each can engage with each other.

Frode Alexander Hegland
London 2021

Please contact me should you have any questions.