TiddlyWiki as universal software?

#1

Over here (below) I made mention of an Idea I am toying with “Software democracy” however I am not sure it is the best wording for the concept I am trying to promote.

However many of you here know how TiddlyWiki empowers you to make use of software to develop your own solutions, own your data, personal or community solutions and algorithms.

Ideas such as “digital sovereignty” or “userware” seem compelling so I though I would start a discussion to seek your views, on what you think TiddlyWiki is, as an enabler, its scope and power.

I think TiddlyWiki could be part of a wider movement to empower peoples use of computers, software and development.

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#2

Just a quick reaction here.

I wholeheartedly agree with your idea.
There has been a recent interest in teaching basic “coding” skills but this generally occurs in sand-boxed environments, away from any real-life scenarios, which is detrimental to users realizing the impact of such skills. The latter realization is not helped by the fact that the user/programmer distinction is still very common albeit quite dangerous.

About using standards such as HTML, CSS and JS, I’m not sure anymore because well… they are such messes (especially CSS and JS).
Recently, I discovered the Decker platform and I really feels that it is the kind of direction we could take in order to provide anyone with a “computing environment” which is minimal enough to be grasped by non-specialists yet flexible enough for everyday problems.

Also, I would say the term platform is perfectly appropriate, even though the issues related to platformization are quite a different topic on their own.

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#3

Agreed. Or at least the basis of it.

I’m reminded of an effort under the name “future of the book” - which seems to have disappeared - but I think it gave birth to the Zotero tagging service - which, unfortunately, is not completely available (the server-side stuff is not).

TiddlyWiki - as an editable book, with commenting features - seems like a great basis for “living documents” - particularly if coupled with a publish-subscribe style versioning and commenting system.

Funny thing… I’ve been looking at Tiddly as the basis for just that, for some work I’ve been doing.

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#4

Digital Sovereignty, privacy, owning your data, are concepts we are losing more and more every day, and it worries me. Especially in these “uncertain” times when old allies may at a whim shut us off from services we rely too much on every day.

The motto “You will own nothing and you’ll be happy”, is ever more relevant. Everything is a service these days, you need a subscription, install app, create an account, upload your data, stream some content. Nothing is yours anymore and there are prying eyes at every corner of your digital existence coveting your data.

It seems newer generations aren’t even aware anymore it doesn’t have to be so, because they were born into it, and are actively being indoctrinated into this new model.

TiddlyWiki is part of a (sadly) dying breed of software that still enables you to have full functionality independently, more than accessing data, it allows action over that data on its own.

Cultivating investing on technology you have total power over is in my eyes a very important and overlooked goal, especially for essential infrastructure. We hand away way too much to web services from commercial giants.

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#5

Thanks for the replies so far. A few notes; please continue to contribute;

  • The truth is TiddlyWiki is extremely extensible and making use of it to support people learning coding a great idea, however it is important to keep the posibility of no code or low code use by users.
  • The capacity for tiddlywiki to expand to address many different solutions is both wonderful and makes promoting its use quite complex. By trying to describe/define it well, is to help others understand it.
  • The audience is multiple generations and each generation can have different perspectives.
#6

My key point here is this is what TiddlyWiki is built on, and these technologies are pervasive on the internet. If we have critisisums of these tecnologies then we are in a position to make them more accessible, practical and supported and they have a vast set of resources on the internet.

#7

If we do have userware or universal software, running in the universal client (the browser) it must be admited that the universe is big. With this in mind perhaps we need our framing of tiddlywiki as having multiple paths into its use. For example as a gamer or author we may travel different paths into tiddlywiki but from there go to other places.

  • Perhaps we can extend the metaphor of “Universal” to encompase TiddlyWiki’s broad posibilities. That is make use of astronomical or cosmological representations to reflect TiddlyWiki. For example TiddlyWiki on the Authors planet, or Gamer Galaxy.