The Mentrix Method

Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t. — Ted Nelson

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30 years ago, we began building digital information systems. HTML pages that could be viewed without printing them have evolved into today’s ubiquitous digital information landscape.

Unfortunately, we didn’t build a system. We’ve built real estate, an ever-expanding, software sprawl of low-density digital properties we call websites. Each property publishes information like magazines, newspapers and encyclopedias did — attracting readers who pay for access to their product, their information space.

Maps of the digital world are made, predominantly, by a single map maker (Google). The tolls are paid, not by tossing coins into a toll booth, but by becoming known for the roads you travel. This knowing is, purposefully and accidentally, generating maps that take you to the properties trying to attract you, your money and your attention.

Rather than generating a world-wide knowledge system, where information is “intertwingled” (as the original designers intended) we now have an information system with no infrastructure. No interrelated systems, or spaces, where knowledge can interrelate, move, meet and flow to other parts of the digital world.

Organizations who have invested in generating trustworthy information are struggling to get it out, across the no man’s land between software-bounded “platforms”. Untrustworthy information is ravaging the countryside, like invasive weeds, unbounded by social systems that can discern digital community building from digital conquest.

We want what we can not, yet, have. Increasingly, we expect information to be available to us in any context. Rather than visit a digital property, we want relevant, timely information delivered to us, like digital snail mail, on whatever device we own. The right information at the right time in the right context.

We want that information to be meaningful … but “meaning” arises between the questions we ask (or don’t ask) and the possible answers we decide are most sound and appropriate. Meaning can’t be digitally delivered, it requires understanding … the human-contributed part of the process.

Ironically, this the thing AI can not do — replace inference. The type of reasoning that generates understanding and insight. It can certainly help us arrive there faster. And it can search out possible answers faster than, say, Google. But we must still do the work of discerning and deciding … the activities that architect information systems.

Knowledge systems are the integration of social systems and technology systems in ways that improve the quality of both. The Mentrix Method focuses on leverage the power of knowledge system design (in both people and software). Capturing, relating, and evolving ideas across media, minds, moments and contexts in order to generate the next generation of … the digital world.