If I had more time I would write a better comment, apologies.

- - - -

I doubt it requires big research to make good tools. Inventing "zero"
wasn't done by committee. In any event, the research has been done. It
is steadfastly ignored. E.g. something as simple and straightforward as
Jef Raskin's "Humane Interface" applied uncreatively would measurably
improve the majority of user interfaces out there. There's a near total
disconnect between good UI design and what gets inflicted on IRL users.
Evidence: every change ever made to every app or web app that made the
users scream. Heck, "Google backtracks on search results design
(techcrunch.com)" is on HN front page as I type this. At best people
are fucking UI/UX to make a buck, but most of them do it because they
suck at their jobs.

This isn't limited to UI design. E.g. MLs have had type algebra for
decades and yet it's only just barely gaining traction among
"professional" programmers today in A.D. 2020. Instead of flying cars we
have Rube Goldberg machines made out of other Rube Goldberg machines.

That's why "When small groups of motivated people [try] they make rapid
progress." Because what we're using now is refried merde.

It doesn't scale either because people are stubborn about giving up crap[1]
-or- it just hasn't been let.

Canon killed the Cat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat

Dynamicland may be fantastic but you can't buy it for money.

([1] This might be the real problem: People just don't give a fuck.
Thinking takes energy- calories -and so, as an evolved animal, if you
can get by w/o it, you will. "The Internet is for porn.")

I've known what I wanted to make ever since reading Ted Nelson's "Dream
Machines" and that was twenty-odd years ago (it was published way
earlier, that's just when I got ahold of it.) Engelbart's "Mother of All
Demos" was even earlier.

(I've been playing with a very simple UI demo that incorporates elements
from Raskin and from Wirth's Oberon OS. Its backing store is a git repo
and all changes are autosaved. It's dreamy. Raskin warns that excellent
UIs are addictive in the sense that once you get used to them it's like
withdrawal if you have to go back, and he's right. Mac, Windows, X et.
al., it's all so painful and clunky now.)

So yeah, with a little work, and standing on the shoulders of giants and
not on their toes, you can make something fantastically better than
current tools/OSs. It's not hard.

It might even make money in the marketplace, eh?

- - - -

> What's needed is the development of a powerful praxis, a set of core
ideas which are explicit and powerful enough that new people can rapidly
assimilate them, and begin to develop their own practice. We're not yet
at that stage with tools for thought.

Speak for yourselves, eh?

Here's where I think they fall into the same trap as so many people do
(philosophers, psychologists, designers-of-tools-for-thought, etc.) when
talking about thought: They do not define the term.

What is thought?

(As an aside the only place I've seen that can begin to claim to have a
concrete mathematical theory of intelligence amplification is
"Introduction to Cybernetics" by Ashby.)

Anyhow, the folks who have the goods on the structure of subjective
experience work under the rubric of "Neurolinguistic Programming" (the
other NLP). Unfortunately the school of thought is still seen as
pseudoscience! Oh well, what a world...

Anyway, the "machine code" of thought is called "submodalities" in NLP
jargon, an (outmoded) model of "microcode" is called "strategies" but
that's deprecated (I don't know how to succinctly describe the replacement
models, and many of them don't have names), etc. Using the patterns and
algorithms discovered or reified by the NLP folks you can rapidly and
easily reprogram your mind. [2] At that point you don't really need
external "tools of thought" but if that's your thing you're in a much
better place to make them. (I.e. if you want to make mind-machine
interfaces and such like, or design audio/visual/kinesthetic UIs and UX
flows.) Here you're going to want to pick up a copy of Scott McCloud's
"Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" to get a handle on the finer
points of cognition and storytelling. See also Brenda Laurel's
"Computers as Theatre".

[2] For example there's a spelling "strategy" that involve using visual
memory to recall the word (as a picture) and a kinethestic check for
correctness. In other words, remember the word, feel that it's right,
then read it off from the picture in your mind. Most good spellers use
that strategy, most bad spellers do something else. You can take someone
who is bad at spelling, teach them to use the proper "strategy", and
suddenly they are good spellers. It's analogous to replacing a buggy
spellcheck subroutine with a correct one. Spelling isn't hard, we have
just been teaching badly. We are in a transition time in psychology
similar to when alchemy became chemistry.