This is more than "explorable explanations". There's no reason why the whole concept of user facing application couldn't disappear on behalf of this style of interaction, where commentary is interleaved with active documents.

The first generation of software for non-scientists was based on a metaphor of office paperwork, where information workers created static collections of data ("files"). But computers now are powerful enough to support dynamic content deployed through the web on the fly ("web apps"), without requiring a long previous installation of supporting software , and there are much better compatibility standards than in the 60s, so the original constraints on software distribution no longer apply.

System-level software benefits from a traditional write-compile-execute cycle, where the result is a monolithic binary distribution that is then run over different data sets. But this model is not necessarily the best or the only valid one for user-facing software. Business workflows often work best by combining several small tools, à la Unix pipes.

A platform like the one described by Bret Victor which allowed end users to build active documents without requiring programming knowledge, using PowerPoint-like composition tools, could easily replace many pre-built generic applications, in the same way that Excel is used in offices around the world to replace small "database&CRUD front-end" combinations for small, specific, non generalizable workflows.

The article presents some great 'explorable explanations' by (or inspired by) Bret Victor.

This really does seem like the future of communicating hard concepts.

At high school I would often write BBC Basic simulations of the dull problems we had been given as homework. I was so much more passionate when I was exploring and learning myself.

There was another concept back in early 2000s called "interactive journalism" and "interactive visual explainer":

http://www.elearningpost.com/articles/archives/interactive_v...

http://visualoop.com/blog/29513/cool-interactive-visual-expl...

Here's the progress of educational tools:

  - Lectures  
  - Textbooks  
  - Lecture videos   
  - Interactive tutorials

It would be great to move beyond videos and build courses around 'explorable explanations' and other interactive tutorials.

(I'm looking for such tutorials on my site https://www.learneroo.com/ . Email me at ak[at]learneroo.com if you're interested in collaborating)

This includes a lot of visualizations that I had never considered for interrelationships.