TECH Signal 401
Forum post proposes "idea processor" as the use case motivating malleable software research
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A Malleable Systems Forum user articulated a long-sought use case they call an "idea processor", software that would help work with formative ideas the way spreadsheets help analyze numerical parameters.
This names a specific, persistent goal for malleable software that has gone unmet for 40 years, suggesting existing tools address document organization rather than the earlier stage of thinking where ideas are still forming.
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The term "idea processor" comes from a January 1984 Byte Magazine article about Thinktank by Living Videotext, a product that became what is now called an outliner.
The concept targets the formative stage of ideas where concepts are "inchoate" and interrelationships are "dimly understood," analogous to how spreadsheets let users watch changes ripple through numerical models.
The author has been searching for this tool for 40 years and acknowledges difficulty translating the feeling into "a list of desirable qualities," which is precisely the problem an idea processor would need to solve.
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