scalable collective human cognition

what the world needs now

Think Your Way -- Together!

Nooron is a new way to think, work and code

It's a new medium for creating that evolves with us as we work. It's not just for facts but for opinions too; not just for public data but for our own; not just for writing and storing but for showing, sharing, deciding, tracking, planning, collaborating, visualizing and programming; not just alone or with our team or family but for all of us together.

Nooron Logo - Collaborative Software
Nooron - Collaborative Software
Nooron organizes your documents

Much Too Much

Many hands make light work, but many minds make confusion.

We are drowning in our own productivity. Our data is all over the place -- in space, shape and quality. Databases deal with structured info and the software that goes with it while social networks let us tag, recommend and rate. It's hard work to bring it all together to get an overview; to think about our options; to simply make good decisions. Making good decisions is hard enough, but when we try to think together, it is nearly impossible.

What we lack is a tool for people to manage data, concepts, opinions and software in a way that supports all the kinds of thinking, showing, working, trading and sharing we need to do.

What If We Could...

  • What if we could express into a system what we know, think and want in a way that it could understand?
  • What if it could make pages, tables, pictures and presentations so we could show others what we mean or let us explore what others think and study why they do?
  • What if we could communicate our thoughts and link them up with the thinking of others, preserving all the connections, evidence and history?
  • What if the web could show us all those facts, ideas and opinions in all the different ways that made sense?
Nooron Logo - Collaborative Software
  • What if we could work directly with ideas not just bare words, numbers and pictures?
  • What if our data could have public data merged into it?
  • What if I could make my own choices about which of my data to share with whom or to make public?
  • What if we could join the simple facts with our impressions, opinions and evidence so we could form stronger pictures of our choices, so we could make better decisions?
  • What if we write our own filters and share them with others? What if inspiring perspectives could go viral -- rather than confining perspectives trap us in filter bubbles?
Nooron Callaboratory Inc. logo

Nooron: A Simple Seed

Nooron makes a place where we can all work on what matters to us and have that blend with the work of others

It starts with what we've already put in spreadsheets, databases, wikipedia and web services. It swallows the documents and keeps talking to the services. Moving forward, it let's us express new and fancier things in ways that are easier for computers to understand and work with. It even lets us build software together which works with all this data, old or new. These apps grow out of our best efforts to make software together.

Introducing a Nooron Component: HuViz (Humanities Visualizer for linked data)

Presentation of HuViz at Digital Humanities Conference 2019 in Utrecht, Netherlands

Semantic Visualization

Display RDF/OWL, SPARQL sources, TTL, Jsonld,...

Data Exploration

Convergent information seeking, highlighting adjacencies, contextualization of information.

Elements of Interaction

Script actions for playback, editing, communication

E-mail Nooron

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What do you mean by "knowledge"?
  • Machine understandable knowledge representation is a way to organize information in a computer so it remains linked to the things and concepts which which give it meaning. Nooron is compatible with web standards such as OWL and RDF.
  • Can it turn any kind of text into pictures?
  • The more structured the data, the more that can be done with it. It's hard for computers to find the ideas in word processing documents but Nooron can help you say what you want to in a way it can understand. The better Nooron understands what you've told it, the better it can display what you mean in interactive infographics, forms and tables.
  • What is structured data?
  • Things like ontologies, databases, XML, JSON, spreadsheets and CSV files have fields in them that Nooron can read, or be taught to understand. Word processing documents have nearly no structure so are harder for computers to understand right now.
  • Where do we get this structured data?
  • You can enter data in forms Nooron makes (or you design) or you can feed it structured files and databases or link it to web services that produce clean data.
  • Can I use my own data?
  • You can import or enter on your own data and share it or secure it as you wish.
  • Can I control who sees what?
  • You can set precise permissions on who can see what, using rules simple or complex. Why won't this turn into a big mess? Nooron uses strong rules for important things and more flexible rules for most things so we can learn together with it what works and what doesn't.
  • How can this help my business be more productive?
  • It acts as an institutional memory which your organization can use to capture data, knowledge, opinion, visualizations, workflows and algorithms to make them accessible within and between teams. Common solutions can be shared openly between organizations or commissioned for creation.
  • Do I need to be tech savvy to use this?
  • No! It is meant to be as easy to use as office software you probably already know and will only get easier to use as we users teach it how to be better.
  • I *am* tech savvy! Is this for me?
  • Yes! It is like a vast swiss army knife for doing mashups and building, customizing and hosting solutions.
  • Is this just for businesses and groups or can individuals use it too?
  • This is for everybody. It's like a vast soup of spreadsheets and apps that work together so you can keep your collections and projects organized in standard ways or tweaked the way you like them. You can use it to keep track of stuff and make tough decisions. You can use it to learn, research things or meet people interested in the things you care about.