Sense Atlas Rationale

A

Accurate time estimates for software development are notoriously difficult to achieve, especially if there is no precedent for the software being written.

Other: Create a better way to do time estimates.; Estimates derived by adding up individual tasks from zero will almost always underestimate.; I want to be able to manage resources on software (or any complex) projects in a manner that accounts for reality.

All that matters is that the value of the result is greater than the cost of achieving it.

Has Narrower: The net value of the result of a given endeavour should be greater than known alternative endeavours (i.e., what you could have done instead of what you did).
Other: I want to be able to manage resources on software (or any complex) projects in a manner that accounts for reality.; What about opportunity cost?

Assign every resource a canonical identifier which is durable and globally unique, and that never changes once minted.

Has Narrower: Overlay human-friendly addresses to resources that resolve to the durable identifiers.
Other: How do we create documentation within an organization that people actually use?; What about Zooko's Triangle?

Avoid making duplicate copies of content, other than for technical purposes (e.g. backups/redundancy, derived representations, caching).

Other: How do we create documentation within an organization that people actually use?

C

Conventional ways of addressing within a document (page numbers, chapter/section/paragraph numbers) are brittle and will break with changes to a document's content—or even its formatting.

Has Broader: Documents have poor internal addressing.
Other: Digital document formats tend to have stable identifiers for addressable elements (at least scoped to the document itself), but they tend not to expose these.; While tables of contents, bibliographies, and indices can be reliably generated, moving content around breaks all but coarsest-grained references from other information resources.

Create a better way to do time estimates.

Other: Accurate time estimates for software development are notoriously difficult to achieve, especially if there is no precedent for the software being written.; I want to be able to manage resources on software (or any complex) projects in a manner that accounts for reality.

Create a capability to recall past assignments of addresses and redirect requests from the old address to the new one.

Has Broader: Overlay human-friendly addresses to resources that resolve to the durable identifiers.
Other: What if it is necessary (or advantageous) to change an address?

D

Digital document formats tend to have stable identifiers for addressable elements (at least scoped to the document itself), but they tend not to expose these.

Other: Conventional ways of addressing within a document (page numbers, chapter/section/paragraph numbers) are brittle and will break with changes to a document's content—or even its formatting.; Or, if the document format does expose its internal addressing mechanism (such as with HTML and PDF), it's up to the author to manage the sub-addresses.

Document formats lack data semantics for a number of historical—and ultimately political—reasons.

Other: Document formats tend to lack serviceable data semantics, which is burdensome when we want to use their contents to compute with.

Document formats tend to lack serviceable data semantics, which is burdensome when we want to use their contents to compute with.

Has Broader: One can often do very little with a document besides read it.
Other: Document formats lack data semantics for a number of historical—and ultimately political—reasons.

Documentation within an organization tends to go unused.

Other: Documents get misplaced.; Documents go stale.; Documents require a lot of extraneous scanning over irrelevant content when searching for specific information.; How do we create documentation within an organization that people actually use?; One can often do very little with a document besides read it.

Documents get misplaced because there are lots of places to stash them, and the paths to the stashes are brittle and limited in number.

Other: Documents get misplaced.

Documents get misplaced.

Has Broader: Documents make lousy documentation.
Other: Documentation within an organization tends to go unused.; Documents get misplaced because there are lots of places to stash them, and the paths to the stashes are brittle and limited in number.

Documents go stale because their contents are copied rather than referenced, and there is no mechanism for pushing updates to the copies.

Other: Documents go stale.

Documents go stale.

Has Broader: Documents make lousy documentation.
Other: Documentation within an organization tends to go unused.; Documents go stale because their contents are copied rather than referenced, and there is no mechanism for pushing updates to the copies.

Documents have poor internal addressing.

Has Broader: Documents make lousy documentation.
Has Narrower: Conventional ways of addressing within a document (page numbers, chapter/section/paragraph numbers) are brittle and will break with changes to a document's content—or even its formatting.; Documents require a lot of extraneous scanning over irrelevant content when searching for specific information.

Documents make lousy documentation.

Has Narrower: Documents get misplaced.; Documents go stale.; Documents have poor internal addressing.; One can often do very little with a document besides read it.

Documents require a lot of extraneous scanning over irrelevant content when searching for specific information.

Has Broader: Documents have poor internal addressing.
Other: Documentation within an organization tends to go unused.; Don't make people read any more than they absolutely have to.

Don't make people read any more than they absolutely have to.

Other: Documents require a lot of extraneous scanning over irrelevant content when searching for specific information.; How do we create documentation within an organization that people actually use?

E

Estimates derived by adding up individual tasks from zero will almost always underestimate.

Other: Accurate time estimates for software development are notoriously difficult to achieve, especially if there is no precedent for the software being written.

H

How do we create documentation within an organization that people actually use?

Other: Assign every resource a canonical identifier which is durable and globally unique, and that never changes once minted.; Avoid making duplicate copies of content, other than for technical purposes (e.g. backups/redundancy, derived representations, caching).; Documentation within an organization tends to go unused.; Don't make people read any more than they absolutely have to.; Make documentation easy to find and hard to lose.

I

I want to be able to manage resources on software (or any complex) projects in a manner that accounts for reality.

Other: Accurate time estimates for software development are notoriously difficult to achieve, especially if there is no precedent for the software being written.; All that matters is that the value of the result is greater than the cost of achieving it.; Create a better way to do time estimates.

M

Make documentation easy to find and hard to lose.

Has Narrower: Make the documentation network-addressable: specifically, put it on the Web.
Other: How do we create documentation within an organization that people actually use?

Make the documentation network-addressable: specifically, put it on the Web.

Has Broader: Make documentation easy to find and hard to lose.

N

The net value of the result of a given endeavour should be greater than known alternative endeavours (i.e., what you could have done instead of what you did).

Has Broader: All that matters is that the value of the result is greater than the cost of achieving it.
Other: What about opportunity cost?

O

One can often do very little with a document besides read it.

Has Broader: Documents make lousy documentation.
Has Narrower: Document formats tend to lack serviceable data semantics, which is burdensome when we want to use their contents to compute with.
Other: Documentation within an organization tends to go unused.

Or, if the document format does expose its internal addressing mechanism (such as with HTML and PDF), it's up to the author to manage the sub-addresses.

Other: Digital document formats tend to have stable identifiers for addressable elements (at least scoped to the document itself), but they tend not to expose these.

Overlay human-friendly addresses to resources that resolve to the durable identifiers.

Has Broader: Assign every resource a canonical identifier which is durable and globally unique, and that never changes once minted.
Has Narrower: Create a capability to recall past assignments of addresses and redirect requests from the old address to the new one.
Other: What about Zooko's Triangle?; What if it is necessary (or advantageous) to change an address?

P

Post-industrial projects tend to be "wicked problems", characterized by pervasive ambiguity, diverse (and divergent) stakeholders, and trade-offs.

Other: A significant part of post-industrial projects is determining precisely how—or even whether—to intervene.

Projects tend to concentrate a large amount of reference information that is often difficult to repurpose for new projects and practices.

S

A significant part of post-industrial projects is determining precisely how—or even whether—to intervene.

Other: Post-industrial projects tend to be "wicked problems", characterized by pervasive ambiguity, diverse (and divergent) stakeholders, and trade-offs.

W

What about opportunity cost?

Other: All that matters is that the value of the result is greater than the cost of achieving it.; The net value of the result of a given endeavour should be greater than known alternative endeavours (i.e., what you could have done instead of what you did).

What about Zooko's Triangle?

Other: Assign every resource a canonical identifier which is durable and globally unique, and that never changes once minted.; Overlay human-friendly addresses to resources that resolve to the durable identifiers.
See Also

What if it is necessary (or advantageous) to change an address?

Other

While tables of contents, bibliographies, and indices can be reliably generated, moving content around breaks all but coarsest-grained references from other information resources.

Other: Conventional ways of addressing within a document (page numbers, chapter/section/paragraph numbers) are brittle and will break with changes to a document's content—or even its formatting.