5. Ideas flow in networks

Ideas flow in idea-tree networks

A thinker's ideas move inside idea-tree networks, which can be understood as a continuous spectrum of thinking activity.

Or in the terminology of educational semiotics: learning is the continuously dynamic process of creating and interpreting signs.

Each single unit of sign-creating or sign-interpreting process is like a mini-function.

If we can identify some mini-functions, in the format of SIF
If we can figure out some patterns of combining these mini-functions  

we can design a tool for Learning-Design.

For a thinker's 'IDEAs' as moving objects/organisms, I adopt a fantasy projecting: to be in the shoes of an IDEA, an IDEA has the personalities of a human-being.

For visualizing how foods move and change inside a body, we might 'turn ourselves into' a food, and do a fantasy journey: to see what happens in the eyes/shoes of foods.

In a TED talk 'Animates a cell', a cell 'becomes' a city, molecular 'becomes' machine working inside the cell-city. We visualize what happens inside the cell-city, like in the eyes of a molecular.

So, in order to understand how ideas form/flow/change, an interesting way might be projecting 'IDEAS' to 'ORGANISMS', which are visible, touchable, & capable of thinking and talking like a human.

In this way, we might visualize how ideas form, flow, & transform, within the framework of a thinker or a group of thinkers.

A thinker is a human-being or an artifact with some-degree-human-like intelligence. We are interested in seeing what happens when the framework of 'thinkers' take the diverse combinations of human-beings and artifacts.

I think that this is a key issue in HCI and AI, and in Learning-Design (and in many other same/similiar fields: educational technology, instructional design, and human performance technology)

I try my best to integrate learning theories into this fantasy projecting, so that users can visualize some patterns of learning.