About this Internet Web Site
The earliest version of this Internet Web Site would have existed in the Autumn of 2003.
The research leading up to that version began residually in the late 90's, but could be said to have started in earnest at some point in 2002.
Way back then, there were some wonderful, youthful, potentially naive visions — we recall finding things in our notebooks that said stuff like:
If we have all these great works by all these researchers and philosophers, could we not just jam them all together and find out the true reality of everything?!
How adorable!
There was a time where we were gearing things together to try to "find the truth" or "make a point", but now that we have become older and humbled, we realize that the best we can do is make some Maps we can refer to in order to try and just find our way through this whole thing.
Way back in 2003, we thought - through the power of the Internet and access to incredible public libraries — we could figure everything out and share it with the world in about 6 months. A year tops.
This turned out to be an under-estimation of large magnitude.
After some time it became clear that the Life Experience is a complicated thing to determine, and we found ourselves caught up in the gauntlet of doing things like earning our food, clothing, shelter, and so on. Life stuff, as it were.
We did keep chipping away at the research over the years, though.
Learning more about the world is pretty fun!
Eventually, around 2012, we found ourselves putting together little Maps and models that were helpful in areas like Communication and Product Development, and started formalizing things here and there.
One of the recurring experiences over the years was the feeling of having come across something genuinely new, only to discover there were entire fields of Academic Study already dedicated to these things. Around 2015, for instance, we had spent considerable time independently cobbling together a Communication Model before stumbling onto Information Theory — an established and rich discipline that had been quietly waiting for us the whole time!
On that note, you are not likely to find much that is truly "new" here. What you might find is familiar territory laid out in a particular visual way, with things sorta connected all together. The Triangulation approach may be a modest exception, but even there the sentiment is that anything that seems new is probably just a matter of not having asked the right question yet.
As of the current version (4.3.x), there is a fair amount of recency bias — explicit references to Christopher Alexander, John Boyd, and Herbert Simon, who were fairly recent discoveries along the research journey. Hopefully the site can be augmented with a more full set of references and resources as time goes on.
If there is any over-arching mission behind all this, on a long enough timeline, it would be great to help end all unnecessary suffering on the Earth.
As far as inspirations go, we always really appreciated the web site Fusion Anomaly. There is something charming and elegant about a sprawling reference that only becomes better and more enriched over time.
Right now, we find these maps generally useful — maybe they can help you also.
The 6 month project - still unfinished 23 years later...
With Love,
Northern Metaphysics