Extended trinity

Here we tweak the 'trinity/stack/specials' frame. On one hand, things have evolved since that frame was assembled (2019). On the other, some of the 'more specialised' tools seem to warrant being promoted to the top level of 'basic' tools. > There's an extended version of the 'learning space' slide deck, covering this page and the 'extended trinity', here pdf

First, text-chat continues to be in the mix, but video rooms have become an everyday ‘chat’ expectation. So they join text-chat, in an extended trinity.

>The library/repo function in the original trinity (eg a wiki, a web portal, a shared list of links) might also be fulfilled tacitly by disciplined use of ‘cloud’ options in the extended trinity: ie authorship-sharing (eg HackMD), cloud-store file-sharing (eg NextCloud). It doesn't have to be a dedicated repo-tool like wiki or git.

Second, shared-simultaneous authoring of documents and a shared cloud store of documents, which were originally in the Stack, warrant being promoted to the extended trinity, as basic means of collaborating. The usage and availability of both kinds of tools has deepened since the trinity was first proposed.

Third, some more specialised or rare functions that originally were 'specials' seem now to warrant being promoted to the extended trinity - even if the availability of good tools isn't so widespread yet, or the skills required to use them fluently are not so widespread either.

- **Mapping** - Means of applying a user-specific custom mapping layer to any field of content - eg tagging, and tag-cloud maps. >This is ‘the world as I/we, specifically, need to engage with it’

- **Analytics or ‘mirrors’** - Means of identifying emergent pattern in a big, undisciplined field of ‘scraped’ data, or a complex, distributed, unclearly bounded network. *These need to be channelled to the participant-contributors in that field, rather than syphoned off as ‘intelligence’, by some digital landlord, as tacit rent or taxation on the use of some superficially ‘free’ digital space (eg social media).* And . . we don't mean 'trending' and other 'follow-me' clickbait. We mean tuneable, like a radar scan or a survey. >This is ‘the world that is evolving, beyond my/our immediate perception, where I am tacitly an actor’

- **‘News from elsewhere’** - Means of publishing, broadcasting, narrowcasting. Means also, of hearing from and tuning-into other locations - in place, in time, in culture. *News, journalism, alerts. History, legacy, origins. Accounts of life being lived across fields of very uneven development. Includes ‘free speech’.* Grounded in the free-web principle of **federating**. >This is ‘the world that I/we intend to affiliate with, or resonate with’

The elements in this 'mapping and navigating trio' are **affordances** rather than stand-alone apps. They're essential for systemic engagement in a real-world external environment - and in that sense remain similar to the tools that remain in the 'specials’ category.

While the other tools in the extended trinity are *means of coordination*, this trio are **means of engagement & perception**.

They may not be implemented well in a given app or platform or protocol, and they may call for unusual skill, and meta-vision, to use them well. As so often, this is as much a matter of **culture** - eg work organisation, common genres and social protocols, vision & intuition - as of tooling. Let's not get too techie about this 🙃