Chapter 1: Language, maps, communication and memory.
Chapter 1: Language, maps, communication and memory.
“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never, never forget!” “You will, though,” the Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.”
Lewis Carroll ( 1832-98 ) - Through the looking glass (1872)
To exchange thoughts is a fundamental need of every human being. No person sharing an environment with others can hope to fulfil their ambitions without the co-operation and consideration of those around them. Only by communicating can we allow ourselves to be heard and therefore it makes sense to become good at communicating, and to get our point across in a timely and efficient manner.
For most people, language forms the basis for all communication. It has developed from our natural ability to emit and comprehend sounds and has been refined to allow us to represent concepts as words and sentences in both verbal and written forms. Language is not, however, the only means by which we can communicate, nor is it always the most appropriate. Language has certain disadvantages, for example when reading text, concentrated study is required in order to elicit that which is important to the reader. People rarely have the time to listen to a whole detailed story and a summary is often all that is required.
The process of revision recreates the ideas in the reader’s mind and hence reinforces a pathway of memory associations. The more often that these pathways are used, the better the chance that the mind will remember the subject matter. A key issue addressed in this thesis is that the reader seldom has time to continually review notes made on a piece of literature previously covered, and that this reviewing can often be a tedious process, and as such, non-constructive. This thesis examines some reasons behind this phenomenon and goes on to investigate why certain experiences are instantly memorable.
Also examined is the idea of maps being used exclusively as an alternative to using language. The justification for this is that diagrams can give instant gestalt feeling as to a subject matter, and further they appear to exploit our mind’s natural capability to recognise pictures as a unit of comprehension, and also plays on our natural fascination and memory for pictures.
Psychologists have done much research into “cognitive mapping”; this is examined with a study of some popular techniques of note-taking and note-making. In particular, a technique called ‘Mind Mapping’ is based around the notion of drawing diagrams as an aid to creativity and memory.
This project investigates the nature of concepts. It discusses forms of their representation and of the relationships and structure between them. It looks at the mediums that we use to exchange thoughts and the way that these mediums affect the content of the message.
Graphical forms of representing concepts have long been proposed as more immediately accessible than textual. Methodologies that endorse this view include Mind Mapping and Concept Mapping, and these are described in Chapter 2. As part of this project these two methodologies are compared, and the advantages and disadvantages of each are highlighted. Computerised Mind Mapping has been implemented by others and some such implementations are investigated.
In Chapter 3, a look is made as to how the best features of the two techniques can be combined to produce a piece of software named ThinkMap. Decisions are made that shape the overall look and feel of this product and a design document is presented. In essence, ThinkMap allows Concept Maps to be displayed over the World Wide Web.
Chapter 4 discusses the implementation of ThinkMap; its structure and the internal communications techniques employed. It goes on to describe some of the lessons learnt and discusses the viewers built for viewing the concept representation from different software platforms.
Chapter 5 shows a possible extension to ThinkMap to allow it to have a live connection to Web Browsers and then shows ThinkMap’s relevance in the context of semiotic theory.
Chapter 6 draws some conclusions and proposes some future possible uses of the framework that has been produced.
