According to the Amazon page for Maps of the Mind, the first book customers also bought was Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language. Intriguing. Alexander’s website says, “A Pattern Language, a seminal work first published in 1977, was perhaps the first complete book ever written in hyperlink format.” Indeed. Just as a dictionary has countless internal cross-references, Alexander’s book constantly directs readers to related discussions on other pages. And a subsequent book of his, The Timeless Way of Building, frequently references sections of A Pattern Language. (For that matter, Maps of the Mind is also incredibly self-referential.)
When I read these two Alexander books a few years ago, I noted to myself, “It suits me perfectly to flip between Timeless and APL, following a train of thought (his or mine), just as I love to do as I sort out all the ramifications of kanji origins and uses.”
What’s my point? I suppose there isn’t one (sorry!), except that everything suddenly seems connected: kanji, Maps of the Mind, and Alexander’s books. The commonality? Trains of thought. The way in which I happened upon this commonality? Trains of thought, both electronic (i.e., Amazon) and neural.
And oh my goodness, look what an Amazon reader-reviewer said about Maps of the Mind: “The leitmotif of the volume is the idea of connectedness.”
