Items keep belonging to several categories at once, and no single hierarchy fits. Folders force one master axis; tags can't show two at once. A cube can: each piece sits at a position defined by several dimensions at the same time.
Three ideas carry everything else:
- Sameness first. Looking at two pieces and seeing they are the same finds a dimension. Seeing the same two also differ finds its options.
- No base case. A piece seen from far is a cube seen close. The floor is wherever attention stops — "the base case is what we are at this moment."
- The cube is the viewfinder, not the data. A look shows at most three dimensions; the data may have any number. What cannot be drawn is the whole; what can be drawn is each look.
The subject was never the point. The way of looking was. That is why the same design works for apps (Mosaic), knowledge (Cubes) and what is in the heart (Anlat).
To be rewritten in selim's own voice.