Fixed relationships between categories. ie. Berlin is in East Germany v. Not trying to model relationships between categories at all. And use a ground-up way to point out that 2 categories are related, by virtue of a common item.

Relationships between categories are induced from the data rather than deduced.

In this way, can we allow users to interact with their data in various ways and then induce "more-than-just-the-data" from the user's interactions?

There needs to be a separation in UI from:

Entering data, assigning meta-data and then viewing the results of the meta-data.

Right now, everything is the same. A table to enter meta-data and then a table to view the results of the meta-data.

Also users need different UIs to enter different kinds of meta-data. And then all of the different kinds of meta-data can be aggregated to spit back to the user something they couldn't have figured out top-down.

For example, rather than asking users to assign priority, isntead provide separate UIs for assigning urgency and importance and then let the system infer priority based on the user's assignations of urgency and importance.

Another example, rather than asking users to deduce an hierarchical ontology of projects, infer one instead. If the user always tags items that are Sub-Foo as Foo, then the fact that Sub-Foo is generally inside of Foo can be inferred, because the set of things in Sub-Foo are always in Foo, but the set of things in Foo, can sometimes venture out of Sub-Foo.

But because the relationship between Sub-Foo and Foo isn't fixed, the user can still assign the odd item to Sub-Foo and not Foo if they want to.

Semi-lattices aren't more like the way humans think and trees aren't anathema to the way humans thing. Humans think in trees as well. Especially when we try to "organize" things. Because it chunks information down into a manageable number of units. It's just not the only way in which we think.

Table view is good for entering items.

People need a separate view for organizing items.

• Define x and y axes and then move items around accordingly
• This is sort of like clicking on a column in Outlook to group or section by that attribute. But imagine being able to do it along 2 axes.

And then yet another view for organizing their organization.

• Define what attributes you want to see and view their relationships via venn diagrams
• Plot venn diagrams along specific axes
• Projects: Reds and Timeframes: Blues
• x-axis is time
• y-axis is how closely related something is