Liquid People

 

No single tool or software system, nor any single designer or team can deliver on the dream. It is therefore necessary to build interoperable systems to give the user a rich choice of tools so that the tool systems can to compete to provide ever richer opportunities and for the user to developer a deeper literacy in how they use the tools. Feel free to watch the Full Systems Demo.  The aim is to enable building of ever more powerful interactive text interactions to enable a deeper literacy.

 

We urge you to look at other independent software developers of text-tools, including Scholarcy for advanced document analysis and word processors such as ByWord, iA Writer, Gingko, Scrivener, Ulysses, WriteRoom, and LiquidText (by Craig Tashman, no direct relation with our own Liquid products), as well as to read about the work of Ted Nelson, who is helping us see the world of literature in new ways and of course, Doug Engelbart.

 

Frode Hegland

 

Liquid Information was founded by Frode Hegland, Teacher of the Year at London College of Communication 2014, co-host of the annual Future of Text Symposium with Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, and influenced greatly by his late friend and mentor Doug Engelbart, inventor of modern personal computing, including the mouse, word processing, and more, whom he worked with particularly on intellectual augmentation through interactive text. A perspective on how Author supports curiosity and deeper literature is available.

His passion is to augment our ability to interact with text, because much of our communication is with and through text, so the richer our interaction with text will be, the richer our understanding and communication will be.

 

 

Inspiration

 

Doug Engelbart

 

Doug invented much of modern interactive computing as we know it, including the mouse, word processing and hypertext. Doug will forever remain my spiritual guiding light.

 

“I honestly think that you are the first person I know that is expressing the kind of appreciation for the special role which IT can (no, will) play in reshaping the way we can symbolize basic concepts to elevate further the power that conditioned humans can derive from their genetic sensory, perceptual and cognitive capabilities.”

Doug Engelbart in personal email to Frode Hegland September 2003

 

 

Advisors

 

Vint Cerf

 

Vint is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol, the communications protocol that gave birth to the Internet and which is commonly used today. Vint on the Liquid Information Project: “This project is born out of a realisation that the increased digitization of our world offers both an opportunity and a challenge. As all media enter into the Internet and World Wide Web environments, we need vastly improved infrastructure to manage, link, search, extract, and understand the Niagara of information pouring into the net. The hyperword concept offers an opportunity to harness the information inherent in the net in a far more automatic fashion. Not requiring that links be solely generated by manual effort, hyperwords (Liquid Information) can automatically stitch meaning into any and all documents. This is still very much an experimental idea. Ambiguity will be a major challenge to overcome, for example. Nonetheless, I think this out of the box concept is well worth exploring and strongly endorse the efforts put forward in this proposal to do just that.”

 

 

Ted Nelson

 

Theodor invented the term "hypertext" in 1965, and is a pioneer of information technology. He also coined the words transclusion and intertwingularity. Ted on the Liquid Information Project: "...it breaks the iron prison of the web browser.”

 

 

Bruce Horn

 

Bruce Horn was responsible for a number of the key aspects of the original Macintosh, most notably he was responsible for the design and implementation of the Finder, the type/creator metadata mechanism for files and applications, and the Resource Manager. The Dialog Manager and the multi-type aspect of the clipboard also appeared thanks to Bruce.

 

 

Sarah Walton

 

Sarah has worked with Frode since the very early days of liquid information. Sarah co-founded the original The Liquid Information Company and co-developed the philosophy with Frode. Sarah has conceived and implemented successful strategies for clients in media, finance, retail, telecoms, health, education, and entertainment sectors, as well as being active in UK government. Start ups, SMEs as well as large, complex organisations have achieved their business objectives as a result of strategic and realistic roadmaps – including business expansion, innovation and sales and market adoption strategies. Sarah currently works with the UK government.

 

 

Paul Presley

 

Paul has been involved in the journalism, magazine and marketing industries for over thirty years, primarily in the area of magazine and web publishing, but also at general purpose publishing, marketing and design agencies. He has worked at almost every stage of publishing throughout his career, from advertising production, through complete section editing and production/subbing roles, to full Editorship for several magazine titles. Today, he is the Editor for Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, a title that has been published monthly since 1935.

 

Douglas Rushkoff

 

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it. His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award.

 

 

Houria Iderkou

 

Houria has been working with Frode for over a decade and represents Liquid in Silicon Valley.

 

 

 

Development

 

active

 

Author macOS

Started by Pekka K in Finland followed by Ilya M and Alexandr A, in Russia. Further work by Doroschuk Dmitri also in Russia.

Re-started and completed by Jacob Hazelgrove.

 

Liquid

Daoxin Z in China did the original work and he was followed by Konstantin R (TIANI Studio) in Poland and Zuzex llc in Russia.

 

 

projects / upcoming

 

Liquid | Space / weblau

Developed by Christopher Gutteridge : https://jrnl.global/2018/11/26/this-weeks-liquid-space-updates/

 

 

archived

 

[archived project]   Liquid Browser add-on Firefox, Chrome, Safari

Mikhail S and Alex V Russia and Tobias H Germany.

 

[archived project]   Liquid Server

Mikhail S Russia, Tobias H Germany and Simon W UK.

 

LiSA macOS

Mikhail S Russia, Illia B Ukraine and Daoxin Z China. Ivan Faiustov completed the Mavericks update.

 

Interatlas iOS

Steve G USA, Marius S Romania, Viorel C Romania, Catalin B Romania, Gabriel B Romania, Andrei E Romania, Alex S Romania and Manuel P USA. Narek G second version.

 

[archived project]   Name The Face iOS

Zuzex llc in Russia.

 

[archived project]   3dpic iOS

Andrei N (Wecodia) in Romania and Maxim I in Russia.

 

[archived project]   f.moment & Flipic iOS

GongSan L in China, Lentil X, Milan S in and Neeraj R in India.

 

 

 

Corporate

 

The Liquid Information Company was a UK limited company dedicated to producing software products and education demonstrating the benefit of rich interaction. Company number 10053794. It has changed the name to The Augmented Text Company LTD: https://www.augmentedtext.info