I got the idea from the link. Concept maps are diagrams that connect ideas through various relationships. Right now they are primarily text-based. This makes sense because ideas have names and those names are words, words being text. But the words are hindrances more than helps. For one, they are language-specific. Even if we could translate 'Bird' into spanish or french or korean a mixed group of people looking at the same diagram wouldn't all be able to understand it at once. But. Ideas don't need to be connected to words. Let's connect them to something (mostly) culture-neutral like graphical symbols. "Who determines what the symbolss are?" you ask. My answer, anyone. There should be an online registry of memes. Including abstract memes like 'bravery', 'home' or 'honor', more specific ones like 'the star wars kid' or 'nobel peace prize' and more general ones like 'garbage', 'bird', 'house' etc. The registry specifies a symbol for each meme. The symbol should probably be some kind of vector line graphic. Most symbols should be independent of color and script (letters). The symbol itself is not really an image/icon, there can be many renderings of a meme symbol, in different colors, on different backgrounds etc. People can upload any number of images of the meme symbols, but the symbols themselves would be voted on in the meme symbol directory and only one symbol would be allowed per-meme at a time. If the symbol were changed for some reason (i think you would need a very high percentage vote to change an existing symbol) all the stored images of the previous meme symbol would be invalidated.
Anyways, the end result is: we could move towards a pictogram-based online language which could speed the transmission of conceptual information and make concept-maps (cmaps) much more meaningful. I guess i should illustrate an example if i get a chance.
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