How can the idea of 'chaos' be beneficial to computers and writing instruction?

Chaos is at the heart of writing. We can see that in attention paid to invention work and research, where writers are encouraged to become comfortable with an overwhelming number of potential options. Brainstorming and concept mapping, for example, are ways to help writers work within chaos. But the recent evolution of interfaces, I think, has made many of us eager to downplay the role of chaos and contingency in writing. The interface, for most users, is still a somewhat daunting space. Writing is seen primarily as the process of bringing order to chaos. Which is a valid way of looking at it, as far as it goes. My concern is that disorder is seen as primarily negative, and that writing is constructed as a linear, one-way process: Start with chaos, end with order. In that articulation, the best texts are the most orderly and highly structured; contingent and fluid texts possess less inherent value. That's obviously part of what still threatens people about hypertext: authors tend to lose their ability to bring order to the reading experience. This remains true even in the age of the web: Most web texts downplaying substantive links, using the technology as a way to make footnotes or citations (explicit or implicit) more efficiently.

How do tackle 'chaos' in your own writing? (I get the feeling you embrace it.)

Yeah. I can't remember if I put this in Datacloud (I can't bring myself to look at it; I'm like that about all my publications; I refuse to read them after they're published), but here's a picture of my OFFICE at home:

This started on the whiteboard on the right, but I ran out of room. (Out of the frame in this shot is also writing on the ceiling.) I take massive notes about everything, constantly; I tag books with hundreds of post-its; I have a database of web pages, text fragments, and ideas in Storyspace, Tinderbox, and DevonThink; I have handwritten notes in journals going back to the 1980s; I have a small Moleskin notebook I carry with me constantly so I can write ideas down; I have stacks of videotapes of interviews, and observations; I have sheets and sheets of enormous (three or four square feet) Post-Its that I cover walls with (especially if I'm not in my home office...).