Stigmergy Across Media {Analysis}

There is nothing to do to think. One just has to be faced with a random of the countless problems we face daily and the brain does its thing, trying to solve it however it can. The process seems seemingly transparent, simple even because we just do it, constantly. Yet when one has to solve a complex problem, one that arguably does not "fit" in their head, thinking takes other forms than an invisible process going through a single head. Thinking extends itself through media, being through voices in a heated debate to paper on a poster in an academic conference to a research paper or in a computation notebook.

As we look at the extensions of thoughts, being a printed article, a data visualization, an audio recording of a debate, etc we often look at it as a record. That is only partly correct in the sense that yes it is a trace of the thought on a medium but it is most than that for the author at least. Beyond just a record or a trace, it is a vestige of past live thoughts in the making. What it means is that the very action of putting thoughts down on a medium, whichever it may be, does help the thinker to think further.

 Feynman reacted with unexpected sharpness: "I actually did the work on the paper," he said.
 "Well," Weiner said, "the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here."
 "No, it's not a record, not really. It's working. You have to work on paper and this is the paper, Okay?" from Gleick, 1993, p409

We must stop limited an artefact to just conveying meaning. We must stop limit the perception of an artefact as a way to solely convey meaning but rather always as an intellectual stepping stone as it lead to a genuinely new thought that was hitherto impossible until then.

Writing, sketching, programming or waving hands in VR, does not actually matters. It is not the prefered medium per se that makes a difference in order to reach furthest thoughts. What does matter is actively doing something about the problem on a medium, so stigmergy with one self and optionally others. This specific act is extremely powerful creates the potential for us individually and collectively to move forward, wherever we might decide to go.