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MaxThink

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TomColvin:
Back in DOS days, I was devoted to MaxThink, at that a rather basic outliner.  When I switched over to Windows 95, I lost track of the program.

I've just come across it again, and it seems to have matured a great deal.  It seems now to be more than an outliner -- perhaps an "idea organizer" would best describe it.

I have not downloaded it yet, but have looked through all of the demo's.  Has anyone else worked with this software?

40hz:
I was a big fan of MaxThink way back when. I even went so far as to buy the rest of Neil Larson's apps: Transtext, Houdini, Hyplus, and HyperRez. I ponied up a whopping $156 US for them back in 1991 when that was no small change.

The thing that was really interesting about MaxThink was that it embraced a philosophy and suggested method of working that went beyond the outlining paradigm. It would probably sound "old hat" today, but back in the 90's a lot of what Larson was saying was way ahead of its time. I'm not aware of anything resembling the Hyplus system (other than Wiki) which was a program for developing hypertext knowledgebases.

I've been looking for something I felt qualified to write a review about. Looks like you found it for me. ;)

TomColvin:
40hz:  Thanks for yr reply.  Sounds like we got hooked on MaxThink at about the same time, tho I did not buy out the store the way you did.  Certainly, you are the one qualified to do a review.  I really look forward to reading it.

The current website, even with its "demos," just doesn't give much of an idea about what the software really does.  The demos point at theory, but do not show actual examples of the program at work.

40hz:
40hz:  Thanks for yr reply.  Sounds like we got hooked on MaxThink at about the same time, -TomColvin (July 31, 2008, 03:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

Yikes! You'll be giving away our age if you're not more careful. ;D

The current website, even with its "demos," just doesn't give much of an idea about what the software really does.  The demos point at theory, but do not show actual examples of the program at work.

--- End quote ---

Very true. The original came with a 100+ page book (and an optional audio tape tutorial) that got into a lot of the concepts behind the product. The book also included examples and exercises to try. You really did need to work through the entire book before you finally grokked what he was talking about. But once you got it nailed, it was like somebody handed you a set of wings. Or at least it was for me. I planned my first business using it. And I used it on almost every consulting project I worked on for about six years afterwards. Truly amazing when you consider it fit on one 5.25 floppy!

If you combined MaxThink with The New Universal Traveler book and Creative Whack Pack card deck, you had everything you needed to start your own personal think tank - 70's style!



BTW: Neil Larson's big thing was a concept called information annealing, which anticipated Wiki. He's mentioned in a Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_annealing

One thing I want to do is see if I can load up the original (I have a working 386-20 with 5" floppy drives! ) and briefly compare the two versions as well. Hopefully nothing was lost in the translation to Windows. This is of course assuming the 5.25's are still readable.

Shoot! Maybe I can just run the original in Linux using DOSBox. Yowza!!! - Now THAT  8) would be just too cool...

myersk:
I started using MaxThink on a Kaypro CPM machine.  (That makes me the oldest.)  I was still using the DOS version daily until about 2 years ago.  (That makes me the most insanely dedicated.)  I would still be using it, but I started working in offices that forbid me to install programs.  Many days it would be the only program I would use, other than email and browser.   I could always write much faster and much better with it, and there is nothing else like it.  It became very inconvenient not to be able to paste and run web links.  The first Windows version was unusable, and the current upgrade is much better and is usable, but because some crucial human factors could not be reproduced in Windows, I cannot make it an extension of my mind, with 'automoticity'.  MaxThink was a seamless extension of the QWERTY keyboard for me, with every letter or command using the same keys, all with instant and predictable response.  That is a proper role for a tool, offering huge advantages.   The same point was often made about WordStar.  If you mastered it, it vastly outperformed other word processors.  (But it was still a word processor.)  Nobody paid attention, and we are loaded down with junky programs and no options. 
Now, MaxThink truly did help me think and write.  I am writing a book right now and I am very unhappy I don't have it because I am wasting a lot of time scanning over things I don't need to look at and also not getting new materials jammed in the right places and stitched in.  This is really primitive.   Of course, others may think differently and not benefit as much as I do.  Ideas tend to occur to me out of order.  I know where they go and want to get there.  When I am reminded of what I have, something else occurs that extends and completes the set.  It all piles up at a great rate.  Other people, I believe, don't think this way.  They go one time through and are close to finished, with just editing left.   My first version isn't terrible, but I'll often skip things so that I can keep going to get the full sweep of the argument done.  It all comes in a rush.
These thoughts about thinking are important, and Neil Larson is the only software designer who ever seemed to care.  I learned a great deal from him.  I also checked out all his other stuff and made myself apply it, to see where it went.  I actually set up, pre-Windows and pre-Internet, what you would instantly recognize today as a Wiki.  I had people post collaborative notes about marketing leads.  At the time the process was really shocking, and not at all delightful to people who didn't have any habits of sharing and collaboration, and huge fear of showing their ignorance and lack of basic computer, typing, and writing skills.  Things really have changed, at least for some.
It was sometimes difficult to have a conversation with Neil Larson, but once you understood what he was doing, you could get synchronized.  Many techies are difficult to talk to, but this was special.  He essentially spoke hypertext.  He would always speak a paragraph at a time, very meaningful and complete.  But then he would speak another paragraph that had absolutely no connection to what you thought you were talking about.  Conversation has linear expectations, but his mind was multi-threaded, and he was essentially sustaining several conversations at the same time, and they all insected.  As long as you were paying attention and had a good memory and ability to see relationships quickly (which not everybody can do) it didn't matter what order thoughts were presented.

The reason I stumbled across this board is that I was looking for comments on Larson's Houdini program.  It turns out that there is nothing like that either.  Houdini was a truly mind-bending program, but nobody seemed to have found a good use for it.  I couldn't, at the time, but times are changing. People in my company who work in intelligence have some special needs and special cognitive abilities to comprehend linkage networks.
   

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