Make the invisible visible

Systems mapping is a GPS for the implicit—show people where they stand and what happens downstream when they act.

The tool I keep sketching is a kind of GPS for the things you can't see. Take a system nobody can picture and make the implicit explicit, the invisible visible.

What a good map gives you is a "you are here." Show a person exactly where they stand inside the whole, and what happens downstream when they move a piece, and suddenly they can navigate something they used to just stumble through. That's the whole aim—turn the invisible into a place you can find yourself on.

3 strokes · first noted june 2026 · lives in on making
see — cartography—make the tacit legible · rendering is the missing piece

a thought from the margin · 3 returns · back to the room