Developing an approach to writing for the development of this FMC wiki site

From Free Man Creator

A personal perspective ..

This to share some thoughts on intentions and motivation for the development of this site.

Background and initial thoughts

Over the years I developed a systematic study system of structured repository files. As well as some 'trial' writings, essays in which I tried to cover a topic and convey - via some storyline - some insights and things I had found. .

The amount of materials produced, the breadth and depth of the work over these years has created a huge gap. This gap represents a challenge towards communication. Because the ultimate purpose is that this site is useful for others. And the problem was that I had gone a long journey, but had no way to convey it to others, I was facing this huge gap.

And I also contemplated my fellow students and predecessors who had used .. the essay format (eg Rebholz, Vreede), the small booklets (Kurten, Selg), or the rigourous study volumes (Hagemann, Grether), to share the fruits of their study.

Furthermore, being in 2020, I am aware the world has changed a lot in the last decades, not just with the advent of computing and internet, but especially the impact these have on society and the new generation(s).

If I wanted to make something useful, it should be innovative and have some appeal, talk today's language, be tuned in to the zeitgeist. One can end up in 'analysis paralysis', but after a while one just has to try and do something, and that 'do something practical' was the idea for this site and an experiment to do some prototyping.

Now the question is: how do you bring the essence, the pyramidion, the key message?

Maybe the Feynman technique can inspire. It's a simple technique to study complex subject matter, retrain knowledge, gain insight, study more efficiently. The principle: "you must not fool yourself (and you are the easiest person to fool)". So it has to do with intellectual honesty and objectivity. The technique consists in, when you think you understand something, to rephrase and explain it and see where you doubt or miss out, go back to look into these points, and re-iterate the process by always trying to bring the essence more simply. One can view it as a PDCA (plan do check act) cyle: try to explain it as simply as if it was to a child, then review - including the gaps in knowledge, then organize and simplify in another iteration, and so on. Optionally try and convey this 'for real' to a test person and learn from that.

And why? why all this? Because it doesn't exist in the world!

Let there be fire, liveliness of the soul about these topics, flowing through the contents, not to forget our childhood 'awe'. Deeply personal for me.

2020-04-13 - Reflection after about 100 pages

The process of starting to develop this site interestingly brought the following realization:

For years my personal study and work process consisted ao in researching lectures for the relevant extracts. First getting the lectures in english digital version in my own repository files, then parsing the lectures (in depth reading/study and creating outline structure and annotations). Then also collating the extracts and trying to summarize, to get to a synthesis of aspects and perspectives on a topic. The schemas, both tabular as drawings, are illustrations and also fruits of this process.

The reality is that, although the system is well structured, the output grew over the years .. making smooth useage more difficult and complex as the number of files and the sheer volume grew. I used large documents but still used a file system and no database or content management system. So one really needed to know where things were, and how all topics that are so interrelated are coupled across thematic topics and files.

So what were consequences of this approach using traditional sequential means and digital files.

  • First: the volumes, sheer number of files and schemas in the FMC repository system. The Excel trackers for overview of the various aspects on topics such as 'reincarnation or 'the Christ' have over 300 lines, and this is just the structured outline. The Word file for both these topics are about 2300 pages each, supplemented with slide decks over 300 slides each. The slide deck for 'evolution' is over 1250 slides. These repository files constitute a structured knowledge base foundation built over the last seven years.
  • Secondly, the complete set of materials is one whole, as a consistent and integrated system it is very rich, but it is also personal. I was the only person who had captured and catalogued everything in the many files and therefore knows where to find everything and use this system. From the start I reflected on this: "how to make this useable for others?" Hence, I had consciously felt the gap growing between the journey I had travelled, and people around me with whom I wished to enter in dialogue. The water became ever deeper, or the river became wider, with no bridge in sight.

A few more words about the process. Consider 5000 lectures available with say 5 or 10 topics covered in each, that's say 25.000 to 50.000 'items' across say approx. 100.000 pages. One feels like someone searching for gold in the river with a sift, digging for small pieces of stone, an archeologer with a brush. It can be compared to first having to find the puzzle pieces before even being able to try and lay the puzzle, this mosaic consisting of the many small stones, and get rewarded by the process to see a picture emerge. The imaginative pictures appearing in our soul.

However now followed a new realization from quite practical experience. It was not new, in that I knew it from previous exercises, but still. When one really masters a subject, it ought to be possible to explain it in a comprehensive way that offers transparancy.

So the point of experience that came is that actually, once one has done all the above, things can be represented a whole lot simpler. It is possible to rephrase the essential lines much more comprehensively and condensed. This was indeed always the intention, but it came as a surprise again in the real practical experience.

The goal of this site is not to prove something or try to convince anyone, nor to be an encyclopedia of quotes by Rudolf Steiner and/or others. The volume of text required becomes immense, and that experience I have had before (with the repository files). Therefore, as this can not be the 'design choice' or 'intention' for this site, I had to step aside from the habit of trying to paint a picture built from the snippets of info and quotes I had gathered, because they had the status of 'a literal quote by Rudolf Steiner'. The respect for the original literal quote is a not unimportant hurdle we all face.

At a certain point one has to trust one's understanding and do the 'shortened without content change' (SWCC) editing, and also and especially the rephrasing in one's own words. Of course I had also studied about this particular point, including what Steiner said about it, (add separate page), but it still remains an important and difficult step to take personally. Just like Rittelmeyer I have always been quite skeptical when reading and studying, to check the tone how someone makes a statement or claim, on what it is founded, etc. Is this not personal interpretation, just a thought form but without any clairvoyant backing or double checking? This also relates to the importance of 'conscientiousness' as one can reads with W.J. Stein.

And so I have come to the realization that in 2020, a new clean, consistent and densely phrased and modern packaged version or presentation of this knowledge of spiritual science is probably desired or required.

See the 'philosophy' section on the 'About this site' page. The wiki format makes things navigate-able so much more effectively than the GA volumes with scattered topics and lectures, and the whole idea is to lower the threshold, to make this knowledge more approacheable. And, to not require every individual person to go through the searches to find or not find the relevant pieces of info. So many anthroposophists have done this before, why should we not build on that? The GA remains the base source of knowledge and in-depth study, but purely didactically the first entry and study support system, the front end, can be quite different.

Note I am quite aware of the value of searching, the soul work involved, living with questions, developing one's own understanding, etc. See Notes on the study process. But I do not believe that we should keep things difficult, if they can be facilitated and supported.

So what I wanted to capture here is, that in the repository files, things are available in an integrated way, but it is huge and monolithic, still quite complex with lots of materials to weed through to get fully into a subject matter. The wiki gives the ability, or forces one, to keep things granular and simple, and reduce the complexity into linked topic pages. Not that things become simple, or oversimplified, that is a very different matter.

A nice difference for me personally, versus doing this for years before, is the following. Every table or illustration that I upload as a schema (see FMC study schemas and FMC schemas) is immediately accessible worldwide, and I will be able to use it anywhere with anyone to the rest of my life. It is no longer hidden in my private file system, because whatever worthwhile links or treasures it may contain, it was not useable .. and now it will be. The contents still needs to be written, but we are confident here, given enough time.

One challenge or point 'to watch' is the choice of RSL references and quotes to use. They should not make up the contents of this site, and though we could be doing this, the goal is not to be complete and exhaustive in providing all relevant quotes. The quotes should be the most succint and essential points .. phrases instead of long sections of text. For anything long we will refer via the RSL reference to the lecture itself. [Note: whilst developing pages therefore longer extracts are still copied from the repository files, in order to be cut down to the essential sections]

So bottom line .. enthusiasm and hope as we start this work. Indeed,

  • this is a lot of work, one invests tremendous amounts of time and ..
  • it will probably take many years to build something (that has sufficient breadth and depth coverage, is clean and proofread). Yes ..
  • today the pages are not rich with contents as they could be, looking at all that is available in my 'structured repository system', neither is any page anywhere near complete or even proofread (I know there are typos but don't proofread currently, as I'm just creating pages and links)

However, the nice thing is that

  • one can link anything with anything, and that is a huge advantage over sequential media.
    • I am pleased with the 'Aspects' section to offer perspectives. This allows to make topic pages for spiritual scientific key concepts that require a base understanding, but are linked with so many other aspects. And only by seeing the whole holistically, and how it all hangs together, does one gather an understanding of what this is truly about. Ihave not yet seen this anywhere else, and it seems to me that this is a good approach that could work to support a didactic study process.
    • And finally: this also allows to 'step over' .. the struggle of the dispersion of the thousands of lectures over hundreds of GA volumes. The RSL references should just be that: references, in support of an integrated knowledge system .. this is a front end with ideally, one day, 'click-through' to the lecture extracts or secondary literature. And the fact ..
  • it is web-enabled, is another advantage over printed books. Every page is available everywhere across the world from the moment it is saved. Not that a soul is watching today :) but even for myself it is handy because I use the search and navigate power of the wiki.

In conclusion, as I do not know of any other web-enabled database-based Content Management System (CMS) for spiritual science, I really hope that the choice for Mediawiki will turn out to be a good decision, and that this site will develop into something of value and be used by earnest students. .

2020-04 - On scoping choices: balancing contents and nature of site

One quickly gets confronted with the choice where to put the cursor in the use of original source texts to support but also construct the main contents and storylines of the site. The idea is not that the site becomes an alternative 'integrated GA' (though the FMC repository can be thought of in this way), rather it is a support tool for students.

One leading thought is: no spoon feeding, soul work is key. Therefore the ingoing position was and is to limit lecture extracts to the most relevant key phrases in support, and not the way around .. have pages full of long lecture extracts. That balance is however a difficult one certainly in the early stages when initializing pages and collating fragments from the FMC repository files. The goal is to edit the quotes and shorten them without contents changes (SWCC) and trim them to the essentials to support the topic page and its contents, and entice towards or trigger further research.

Furthermore: the position taken is that the student can use this site for pointers, as a support tool, but has to do own research. The assumption is that if there is any point of interest, the interested person can google and get more info from what is available on the internet and in libraries. There is little or no value in doing that to create contents to fill pages.

A second related point is scoping and the design choice 'when to make a page topic'. For example: no page was made for certain topics because there is little or not enough information available, other than some excerpts from Rudolf Steiner lectures. But that - relevance-wise - does not contribute to more or a better understanding. The focus of our site should be to develop insights and imaginations, and the contents focused on supporting that.

2020-05

Two considerations :

1/ The schemas are reference pointers, setting up a sort of logical picket or flag, also a 'sigil' to condense and represent certain meaning that can be contemplated and that way referenced. The schemas come from spreadsheet tables, digital drawings combined with imagery, and also pencil drawings. The goal was and is not to make fancy illustrations, focus is on the contents. The schemas need to be 'fit for purpose' and clean, but not a piece of art. An important benefit is that they can be iteratively updated and enriched (or corrected if errors would have slipped in). Each schema has its FMC00.000 index number that corresponds to a certain logical scope. The variants and supplements have the same index number, supplemented with a suffix character A, B, C. It is my hope that the system that is build up this way can live and be improved over time, also through contributions of others.

2/ Once more about the point already touched on before. The scope of spiritual science is so vast that one can make many thousands of pages. The German anthrowiki site has over 13.000 pages developed over some 14 years (with a group of contributors). One can make a page for a GA volume, for example, or for the main personalities that appear in the GA or Karmic Relationship lectures. Or make topic pages for the sake of completeness, because the topic belongs in the content scope, even though the topic may not necessarily be important. So much digital information already exists that a bit of searching allows to copy or create enough content for such topic page. All that is most definitely not the purpose of this site. The goal is to develop a logical structure with rich content, guided study pathways, references to insights, to elucidate dependencies. As opposed to being 'a lot of "flat" information'. This implies making choices on not making topic pages for many things we would well be able to.

2020-12

As year end is a point to reflect on the past year, the site that I started in the 'corona break' between mid March to mid May now has some 330 content pages and as many images. With allmost 5000 edits the database size is now some 172 MB.

As was to be expected, the close interrelation between topics caused the creation of many required pages for the base concepts of spiritual science. But so much remains not covered yet, and to bring all the breadth and depth of what is available in the repository files to the wiki site will take many, many years.

As a disclaimer: the current topic pages are only to be seen as a first step, an initialization, as many hardly contain anything of the available info or insights. The first step is to create the page with the headers, to integrate it into the site so it can be used for reference, and maybe add a key schema. To work each topic page to full completion would be a huge work, time that is currently not available to me. The idea is that the contents will be improved iteratively and gradually over time, like building a wall brick per brick.

2021-04

This site initiative is now one year old. People typically leave the fruits of the study in the form of books. See schemas O'Neill, or essays by Rebholz.

After many years of study I now post online into a structured framework with a certain systematic approach. This will develop over time.

This just should exist on the web internet: a decent readable english reference page on spiritual scientific topics. At least as a start.

I publish, for people to be able to use and connect to: web and wiki are the language of the youthful generation(s) and current times, with much shortened attention spans.

2021-10

Someone asked: What was the incentive to create this site?

The answer is: Because this is needed in the world.

Why? Let me just give three reasons (there is a lot more)

1 - The current world of information sharing is predominantly internet, digital, english. The current (and future) generation(s) have shortened attention spans. We are no longer in the early 20th century, current generations have a different astralis (they come born with an easier understanding) , the world has moved on. Though there are the 100.000 foundational pages of Rudolf Steiner's GA, people today expect a different 'access layer' to browse, search, navigate. The essence of a topic, with its various perspectives, is like the result of refining and distilling what is in the GA and existing sources, including the multifold relationships. Plus, see points 2 and 3. So it just could not be that in 2020 there is no simple and comprehensive wiki page for each of the so many spiritual scientific topics, that is (hopefully) 'understandeable' and 'approachable'.

2 - furthermore in the last century, a huge community of different generations has contributed in the Michaelic stream to the foundational work of Blavatsky, Steiner and others. Many thousands of souls have deepened spiritual science and shared the fruits of their insights and life's work. It is our responsibility to integrate this and build together as a community 'standing on the shoulders of giants'. Hence the importance of secondary literature. But where do you find an overview on this, with comments, on any given topic? Nothing exists? It is important to not lose/forget work by previous generations of (well, often/mostly german) anthroposophists (their books are generally unknown and can sometimes hardly be found anymore), and also link in modern contributions from people all over the world who have valuable perspectives to add. I could give many examples.

3 - Steiner himself gave the challenge to work in earnest all he lectured upon, making schemes, collecting and integrating the various perspectives, etc. Let me refer to this specific quote (the page contains more, and there are more such pages on the site):

This is a' tip of the iceberg' response, so feel free to ask if you have further questions.

Maybe to conclude, let me add from a personal perspective, that with the years of study work on spiritual science, one realizes that a gap builds and the chasm deepens, that there is so much that one knows, has read, seen, realized .. and that a bridge is needed to convey, and/or provide common language. My personal work has been quite systematic (what you see on the site is only a very, very small fragment), but whereas thousands of tables, schemas, and thousands of pages, sitting on a computer .. may contain stuff of value, they are of no use to the world.

What is important, and also my personal goal and intention here, is to offer something that is "useful" for other fellow students. Genuinely of use, of help, offering assistance on a personal journey.

2025-04 - a reflection on process

This note comes from an exchange with an advanced reader who has been using the FMC wiki site and providing feedback for several years.

My technical person tells me, and logs show, that so many people using the site for many many hours and coming back dozens and hundreds of times. However very few people actually interact via mail. Through this feedback I can make improvements to Schema descriptions, create additions, add useful references that were implicit, not obvious, or missing.

So it's worthwhile to reflect .. if only more people would engage in a type of forum way though. Because it is a strange thing, this gap of anonymous giving and receiving without any direct human link. There is no such thing as a 'user community'.

I wanted to add to this page that my inspiration for this FMC wiki site and 'what to do' also came from Sugata Mitra and his 2007 TEDx talk on 'the hole in the wall'. This influenced me when I saw this TEDx talk and related movies around 2010 (during my sabbatical) when looking into 'education' (for grown-ups throughout life. (PS: see also his 2013 follow up 'Build a school in the cloud'). The movie(s) are worthwhile watching.

This topic of study and interaction came back in later discussions with several people in context of Free Man Creator schooling. As part of this process, the ideas of the FMC wiki being a one way gateway like a 'hole in the wall', kind of a 'pass-through hatch' .. to assist and offer the student on the path some information, knowledge, guidance .. clicked or resonated with what I have called on this site the 'Parsifal-attitude', the fact that in current times Man has to ask questions and use the consciousness soul, actively use and train the virtue of discernment, do active soul work of meditation and contemplation .. in other words: that it is a personal process. Not an outside-in but an inside-out (Schema FMC00.380).

2025-11 - the FMC initiative and technology: an outlook

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The Free Man Creator uses Mediawiki and the internet, but neither of those existed 'not so long ago', relatively speaking, say in the 1980s.

This note is about looking back ... and looking forward ... to what the future could bring, say the next 30 years.

Introduction

This month I wrote two related notes (whilst also working and enhancing some of the contents contained in these notes):

and alongside adapted: Stages of clairvoyance#imagination (and other related pages).

This constitutes the third and final note in a trilogy, so to speak, together with 'language frames' and 'great goodbye'. It therefore helps to read these first. This is about a vision to use technology in the future for doing better what the FMC wiki set out do, so we can at least 'dream a little dream' (re song).

Zoom out to position technology waves

For positioning the use of technology, it's interesting to put some perspective with milestones of what technologies the Free Man Creator wiki builds on, zooming out to contemplate a timeline of decades, or a century.

Note: for a more high level picture and what preceded in terms of enabling hardware infrastructure, see Mineral plant like spiders#2.2 - Changing world: 1970 to 2020 - fifty years in hindsight. This includes the development of the PC (1970-1990) and networking (fast modems, wifi, 3G/4G) (1990-2010) which caused the PC boom and internet adoption, and more (mobile devices, social media, now AI).

The below went in parallel and built on that.

  • World Wide Web
    • 1989-1991: invention of the web, first CERN web server and browser, editor .. the Web becomes publicly accessible on the Internet.
    • 1993-1998: the web goes public and explodes: browsers Mosaic and Netscape, search engines WebCrawler Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, Excite, technology Java/Javascript/PHP and HTML4/CSS, commercial Amazon and eBay
    • 1999-2008: Google Pagerank revolutionizes search, blogs and social media with wordpress, myspace, linkedin, facebook, youtube mainstream video sharing, HTML5, web shifts to mobile after 2007 iPhone
    • 2020: COVID-19 accelerates video conferencing, remote work, cloud scaling.
    • 2025: AI-assisted search and content generation reshape the Web (e.g., LLM-integrated search).
  • Mediawiki
    • 2001-2004: launch and growth of wikipedia (from a simple wiki scaled into a massive collaborative project)
    • 2003-2013: incremental development and maturing of Mediawiki as a software (after three phased major rewrite to mysql, php - creating the enabling technology as scaling and performance became issues). The VisualEditor in 2013 was especially symbolic: making editing more accessible for non-technical users. Semantic Mediawiki (SMW) initial development 2005-2008
    • 2015-2020/25 brought
      • further maturing with a.o. multi-data center architecture for scalability and reliability, and with Mediawiki 1.35 LTS (2020), 1.39 LTS (2022) and 1.43 LTS (2024) and Semantic Mediawiki 3.X (2018), 4.X (2022) and 5.X and 6.X (2025)
      • adoption figures range from 25.000 to over 120.000 independent wikis; also in some 4.500 companies and mediawiki farms, and some 1500 public active wikis using the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) extension
      • note: modest but steady development of XOWA initial development 2009-13 and development through to 2021 through history; still small and immature versus MW and SMW supported by hundreds of developers

So since 1990, the 35 year evolution was from HTML hypertext → to graphical Web → to interactive Web; and from static web pages → dynamic apps (driven by database and application server) → cloud-native platforms. Additionally from desktop-first → mobile-first → multi-device ecosystems. And, most recently: from human-driven search & content → to AI-augmented Web.

The web took some 30 years from inception (1990) to pervasive omnipresence (2020) due to the related evolution of technology infrastructure and its adoption (computer, network, smartphones).

Future of information sharing

In the past information was in physical form, first written, than printed in huge volumes available worldwide in libraries. With the internet/web, this has been replaced: information is in digital form, and available and distributed across information repositories worldwide.

Current published visions [*] about a next generation web aim to replace the current individual user's search for information by an added AI layer that would/will be the default interface to access information. In order to function, that AI layer will use a copy of all information gathered from the current huge network of independent sites on the web, and by extension all information that is available in digital information.

  • [*] whereas there isn’t one single official roadmap for a future where all content is served by centralized AI platforms instead of independent websites, there are many signals, analyses, and white-papers from academia, think tanks, companies, and regulators that discuss this possibility, the risks, and what governance and architecture might look like.

The common elements in such vision of the future or next generation web is that it is dominated by large AI platforms that ingest, summarize, and re-serve most information. Components would be

  • AI powered answering engines (replacing manual search and click through to various original websites, so eliminating human exploration and navigation, human discernment and selection - hence filtering and limiting freedom of choice .. so a kind of blinders)
  • retrieval agents or AI bots that continuously crawl or ingest web content in real time
  • an AI agent network that coordinates and centralizes content

Hence the question is whether the web of the future will still be the current network of independent sites, or that contents will need to be 'fed' to the large system or machine through an agent gateway (like a pass through, serving hatch between walls for serving meal plates).

Needless to say such visions trigger many concerns regarding independence of content, control, and diversity. Debates include governance of centralized information control, regulation and transparency of algorithmic decision making and shaping of information flows, antitrust and ethical concerns by publishers. The risks and warning signs are clear: opaque algorithms, censorship/control over narratives, concentration of power, loss of web diversity, etc.

As a result, decentralized alternatives of AI infrastructure are being proposed based on distributed computing, blockchain and privacy techniques; and/or by democratizing the technology so it's not only for 'big tech' companies to train and run models.

In any case, in conclusion one has to envision that an access and delivery layer will be added between contents and user, based on an AI-driven Q&A interaction instead of the current search or direct access methods.

Small note: mail from a user 2025-11

For me, one of the biggest AI threats for learning is how hard AI makes it to find any good and humanly thought-out content. I've noticed that, since the end of 2023, nearly all or most search results are either totally AI-made websites, or human-made websites with AI-generated content, or human-made websites focused on SEO optimization and not soulful substance. Nowadays therefore for research I mostly rely on old-style webrings and recommendations rather than search engines.

Looking forward
Considerations
  • For context, we can look back in time and connect historical dots of how students studied .. first with a few esoteric books available (eg 18th-19th century), then working with larger volumes of physical information (books and magazines) that became available more broadly (eg 20th century), and - how people study today - with real-time full digital access to an unprecedented quantity of available source materials.
  • The period of the last 30-35 years (that was sketched above) can be neatly positioned on a generational impulse timeline such as for anthroposophical spiritual science. See above right on Schema FMC00.640, also showing the pivotal Gen Z generation for whom this represents an attack on the natural development of the threefold soul, and especially the consciousness soul (pushing to the side and away much chance for natural emergence from the spiritual influx into the soul). From that point of view the AI-revolution can be seen as just a next step, attacking the intellectual soul and autonomous independent rational thinking. The image used in the previous phrasing is that of osmosis and the semipermeable membrane, see text to Schema FMC00.431.
  • A vantage point for the future is given by Rudolf Steiner in a few exceptional esoteric lessons, see Future of humanity. The key point or image is that people will become (ever-more) 'automatons' in physical life. But, that they can and will be 'influenced', 'worked' and 'awakened' by non-incarnated souls the other side of the threshold. Like people in a boat reaching out with a long stick to try and pull people ('up') from the water. We can already see the automaton-effect with the effect of social media and games on the youngest Gen Z generation, and for the next few generations this will only get worse. In not so long, the generations who have known another reality before the year 2000 will no longer be there. So one might say that we have already arrived in this 'automaton' period, and this is not something for the far future any more, even though it will get ever more intense as a societal trend.
Design goal for a next step

When imaging a vision of a next-generation 'Free Man Creator site' to use technology, the proposed 'design goal' would be to provide effective learning towards developing imaginative cognition.

  • This is much more important to what one could aim for with more efficient learning. Efficiency is about higher speed and lower cost, more ease, etc, but this is not a race, not a factory process performance or money-making economics.

This goal is to effectively support a person in study as a preparatory process leading to contemplation and meditation, and feed into this. It could be called a staging area to feed the student with materials for this 'mental trampoline', trying to jump higher than intellectual thinking, to reach to higher imaginative cognition.

It should be clear: this capability can only be developed with the human mind through individual soul work ... by, through, in the human being. But how can this be better supported?

Reconnecting with other elements

This section (finally! :)) list various ideas that could be accommodated with technology and use what exists in the FMC wiki as a foundational basis. Together these ideas can be seen to constitute a vision of a future platform using the advanced contemporary technology to enable the student of anthroposophy. These technologies exist and are available, they have just never been used for spiritual science, but mainly for commercial purposes (gaming, entertainment, shopping).

Below follow two trains of thought, the first A is more technology and user interface/experience related, the second B more content related.

Idea A

After the introductory Terminology#Note 1 - Language frames, the second note Current Postatlantean epoch#Note 4 - About 'the great goodbye' concludes with a postscriptum and a vision about algorithms that might support the earnest student of spiritual science. The below goes into this; so these two Notes provide the thought basis and ideally are 'required' preliminary reading.

This 'Idea A' consists of three inter-related ideas, meaning they belong together in a way, or could be implemented as one project.

  • 1) The first idea is to develop the lessons/narratives as movies consisting of the illustrating Schemas and additional visuals and animations.
    • this idea has been around and been played with for about ten years (eg with camera, Camtasia voice over etc)
  • 2) The second idea (sketched here at the level of a vision) is to foresee (some technical way to implement and) visualize the 'turret' on Schema FMC00.703 for the user/student, so the student is conscious of the 'language frame' that is in use, and is also offered a 'switch' in the user interface (corresponding to the turret) to change to another language frame.
    • this is a bit like the outline mode or 'Prezi' idea, to offer a level up overview and flexible navigation (hierarchical or network)
  • 3) The third idea relates to the two above, and is to provide the student a way to be 'at the steering wheel', just as he/she is today free to click hypertext links anywhere on the website (so in the MediaWiki database). But now with a navigation system, and also for movie materials instead of a website. This requires two things:
    • a) first: develop a system to encode/log a narrative as a sequence of logical nodes (contents in the hypertext network).
      • Today the FMC Schemas are stored in SemanticWiki, the same could be done for the topic pages and subsections that are today Mediawiki links, maybe not ideal but one advantage might be to have a native approach technology-wise (SemanticWiki and MediaWiki are closely integrated). The new functionality is thus about recording sequences, like GPS routes for a certain pathway.
    • b) the second element is to go further and make this user driven. Like the old concept of CD-i.
      • In the 1990s, 'interactive mode' was a CD-ROM based technology that enabled the user to choose at a prompt so as to direct the further playing, and this way break out of the purely linear-sequential playback flow and branch into a more user-driven one. Various technology standards between 1988 and 2000 were: CD-i (CD Interactive), Video CD with PBC (Playback Control), Enhanced CD/CD-Plus/CD-Extra (Blue Book), DVD-Video. All these are obsolete now as CD delivery was superseded by broadband internet and streaming.
      • in the contemporary (2025) version of this technology-wise, the core concept of user-driven, non-linear video with branching paths and interactive prompts has evolved into 'interactive video' powered by web/cloud tech, HTML5, and AI (and AR/VR). This technology support unlimited branching, real-time personalization, and multi-device playback and allows "choose-your-own-adventure" experiences without physical media, so accessible via browsers, apps, or social platforms. The technology is used commercially eg clickable overlays on reels like 'but now' buttons. Some platforms are: Stornaway, Clixie.ai (Mindstamp, Verse). Note: technology evolution includes immersive extensions XR (VR/AR) and Low-Latency Streaming LL-HLS

From the above one can see that recorded voice-over lessons or narratives (1) could be offered as optional along a navigation path (3a) when developed as such; with like an on/off 'switch' integrated into the user interface (2).

Idea B

Today's process of study and processing information to acquire knowledge and building insights, is built on intellectual thinking and using a language of concepts and means that are very much physical. This was already covered in the note on language frames, but an opportunity is offered with graphical and multimedia technology to not only support metaphoric imagery in richer ways, but also get out of the strictly spatial dimension and enable the time dimension in the user/student experience. The links on Stages of clairvoyance#imagination point to the importance of the time dimension to 'get loose' from being too space-bound, too much locked up by thinking in physical and Euclidean space. Some ideas about how this could be accommodated on the site using technology:

  • 1) foresee time-lapse animations and movies for evolutionary and development patterns, where these are currently (by necessity) boxed into spatial 2D representations in the Schemas.
  • 2) foresee animations and movies to actively train and test-drive the student ability to let loose of Euclidean space and start picking up the framework for the etheric formative forces, e.g. by developing materials to 'bring to life' the imagery described in the excellent introductory lecture by George Adams. The immersive experience of virtual reality might offer especially suitable ways for this beyond 2D screen interfaces.
  • 3) another idea for using VR to 'increase bandwidth' is to present multiple schemas in animation of virtual reality (eg before, left, right, below) and ask the user to visualize them in the mind by closing the eyes after viewing them with VR glasses.
    • today the FMC wiki already uses 'meta-schemes' to combine interrelated schemas, but this is an extremely basic and inefficient way. With this idea the interrelated aspects could be offered and presented closer to the user and more dynamically. This idea is an extension of earlier thoughts but not yet documented (though related: D00.003 - Systemic aspects of the study process#Note 3 - FMC wiki's Schemas and Aspects and Study process and developing imaginations#on developing imaginations)
    • as a interim step, note today there are no established VR interfaces for MediaWiki; but the extension catalog includes tools for 3D content rendering (e.g., Extension:3D to display interactive 3D models) and multimedia viewers (e.g., Extension:MultimediaViewer for enhanced image/video handling). These are embed-able elements within standard web pages, not full VR environments.
  • 4) the last idea is in essence to develop support what is described in the text of Schema FMC00.585, in other words offer 'process support' to the steps of: 'learn the contents, look at the form, practice with the form, then meditate on the meaning, and apply'. The idea is to use the technology to support the mind in 'chewing' with mental techniques on the aspects of metamorphosis: rhythm, enhancement, polarity and inversion. There are today already working groups that work and train this technique (re Mark Riccio). Materials by Rudolf Steiner exist to introduce this with text fragments from e.g. Philosophy of Freedom and How to Know the Higher Worlds; but the approach should not be limited to this.
Wrap up conclusion

To stand any chance of realization for implementing such vision and developing these ideas would/will require a project with funding and a team. The question is whether it is feasible in today's world to find the necessary backing/support for this.

In first instance, a phased implementation approach could or ought to be conceived, to take steps in the direction of this vision whilst minimizing technology risk and budget required versus expected return or impact (and taking into account likely concerns such as e.g. user adoption of new technology).

At this stage the above formulation of ideas allows for an open discussion, brainstorming, maybe user feedback poll, etc. The ideas can be qualified along various dimensions of feasibility. For example A1 and B1 are well do-able today, whereas in contrast the thought of using VR is much less obvious and more demanding, and VR technology is actually not necessary for implementing some of these ideas.

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