Casual communication is crucial for idea creation. But how could people who are not in the same room casually communicate visual ideas with each other, at the moment they create those ideas? The pen-based PDA and forthcoming tablet-based PCs have the potential to effect such a capability, but only if their mobility, ubiquity and stylus-based input are properly used. One key to effecting this may be in enabling networked mobile stylus-based devices to be used to allow people who are far apart to directly decribe "process over time." The result could lead to an expansion in the definition of, as well as the teaching of, literacy itself.