-
a [[conference]].
- [[2022-08-16]]
- #event https://www.eventbrite.com/e/render-tools-for-thinking-tickets-387188961607
- #go https://www.betaworks.com/event/render-tools-for-thinking#livestream-section
- organized by [[betaworks]]
-
I'll be [[scribing]] live, let's see how it goes :)
- If you're viewing this on anagora.org, you can join in and take notes in the public document ("stoa") below.
- I'll use one section below per session; I'll probably only do one or two live though.
- [[plexus]] will be used here (hadn't heard of it)
- [[render]]
- see also [[tools for thought]] (a different group/term, but with some overlapping members)
[[How Do We Define Tools for Thinking and Why Do They Matter?]]
- [[john borthwick]] [[jerry michalski]]
-
[[john borthwick]]
- How can a [[computer]] be a better [[tool for thinking]]?
- The word information -> better forming our minds.
- How to take all the [[ideas]] of a flow of information and analyzing them as they influence the world.
- What can we do with well tuned datasets??
- [[open protocols]]
- all the data could be owned by people contributing it, against the recent trend towards [[silos]]
-
[[Associative thinking]]; [[scaffolding]] them together; let them simmer in our brains.
- Taking a walk, going to sleep.
- Scaffold, then [[sleep]].
-
[[jerry michalski]]
- was introduced to his now wife as the [[biggest brain]] on the internet, high expectations :)
-
[[protocol]]
- [[jazz hands]] means agreement
- [[downward jazz]] means disagreement
-
#push [[thebrain]] ~ [[the brain]]
-
#push [[jerry's brain]]
- one [[mindmap]] since [[1997]], this dec will be [[25]] years
- #go https://jerrysbrain.com
- [[one million]] thoughts
- [[dioramas]] out of [[toothpicks]]
- [[opinions]]
-
[[hypercard]] could have been the future (might be still!)
- [[bubble charter]]
- long standing addiction to the tool
- [[demo]]
- [[team mode]] is not what he'd like
- how to allow different people to use different tools, yet still create an aggregated insight
-
#push [[jerry's brain]]
-
we're dumber than we normally would be
- [[kardashians]] family details vs [[politics]], how we focus our attention
- building a [[shared memory]] is a piece in the puzzle we need to solve to make society better
- [[better recall]] leads to [[reinforcement]]
-
two more points
- [[zettelkasten]]
- [[roam cult]] ~ [[the cult of roam]]
-
[[civilizational]] aspect to this
- [[open access]] influencing research, journalism, politics and governance
- #push [[agora]]
-
first thing recorded was [[theatre]]
- put the camera on a [[dolly]] and you get the vocabulary of cinema (pans, β¦)
- [[internet]] is stuck in v1
- we have not levelled up because of [[drm]] and other constraints
- we need to liberate it and instrument it or make it [[executable]]
[[Inflection Points for Tools for Thinking]]
-
[[john borthwick]]
- introduces [[daniel doyon]] [[tristan homsi]]
-
#push [[readwise]]
- [[daniel doyon]] [[tristan homsi]]
- [[superhuman]]
- passion for: [[reading]] and [[spaced repetition]]
- how to improve [[reading]] the same way computers improved [[writing]]
- tool to [[resurface]] (-> [[reinforce]])
- started with [[zapier]]
-
[[john borthwick]] where do you see us by the end of the decade?
- belief that there will be a lot of change in this space
- when they started, [[evernote]] was the most popular request -- that's changed a lot since then
-
on a macro level
- (missed one beat here I think)
-
paradigm shift with #push [[notion]] (2017-2020), block based architecture
- other innovation: [[multiplayer]]
-
then #push [[roam]] (blew up in 2021), first somewhat mainstream [[graph database]]
- [[backlinks]] and [[transclusion]]
- [[daily notes]] page
-
then many tools coming online, but no clear next item of big innovation
-
#push [[agora]]
- waiting for the next [[inflection point]]
-
#push [[agora]]
-
why did [[evernote]] get stuck?
-
they nailed the [[consumer]] use case, never were able to do [[enterprise]] like [[notion]] did
- that held them back relative to notion
- they got very distracted in the middle of the growth, they were developing a [[recipe app]]
- they fumbled their way
-
they nailed the [[consumer]] use case, never were able to do [[enterprise]] like [[notion]] did
-
one of the promises of the internet:
- you can just build anything, no need to ask for permission (if you have the basic resources, etc.)
- [[notion]] raised VC, a million or two before going mainstream
- [[roam]] raised very little before really growing
-
#push [[readwise]] didn't want to raise any money, unsure of the venture scale
- started charging a monthly fee for a consumer product (shock! :)), now can support a small team
- [[bootstrapped]]
- if you don't have the enterprise use case and are consumer based instead, it's unclear how sustainable you can be a priori (-> in the current landscape; but that might be ripe for a change, enough people want a way out of walled gardens, want a choice.)
-
[[q&a]]
-
[[anki]] for writing?
- have been exploring something, dogfood
- [[theme reviews]]
-
some people do this:
- [[word vomit]] the start of an essay
-
delineate [[fragments]], do theme reviews (on key terms?) over weeks
- -> [[wikilinks]]?
- then [[sequence]]]
-
[[repeat]]
- you can get to 80% of the work fast this way
-
how does this compare to [[gpt-3]] generation? asker feels that AI based suggestions aren't really that great
- can't speak about better/worse, but for some people this might feel easier
-
[[anki]] for writing?
-
[[core thesis for ai]]
- the AI can't be the product
-
you won't print an essay ghost written by [[gpt-3]]
- -> yet? what about the recent paper that was written by [[gpt-3]], and for which they got first [[authorship]]?
-
[[john borthwick]] many silos enforcing separation between ideas; also a risk of being fascinated by the technology or the tool
- [[jerry michalski]] is a good example of focusing on the thoughts, on the information, going beyond the [[tool]]
-
it feels like the space has gone [[mainstream]] now
- but we're really still in the [[early adopter]] phase
- [[audio]]?
-
[[uncanny valley]]
- [[transcripts]] almost at human level but not quite
- but it seems like [[text to speech]] and [[speech to text]] can be assumed to be coming, you can probably assume that transcripts for everything will be available
-
#push [[amazon]]
- one company is controlling ebooks and is making it hard to innovate (if I got that right?)
- bet: innovation more likely either on [[podcast]] side or [[text to speech]]
- [[john borthwick]] the downsides of [[silos]]
-
#q over the last n years the [[tools for thought]] space has been changing; how has usage of your tool changed with that?
- started with [[srs]]
- started with [[kindle]] highlights, disentangling and making useful
-
there was a period when people thought they would do anything in a particular tool, like [[roam]]
- people were trying to get everything into [[roam]]: putting documents in blocks there to be able to annotate them.
- that has [[cooled down]]
-
at some point they asked: what's the number one feature we need to implement to actually make money, charge for it?
- [[evernote]] was the first big one, that would not be the case before
-
[[tweet threads]]
- the user of [[twitter]] has helped advance the space
-
#q if you did [[enterprise]], what would you do?
-
[[consumer vs enterprise]]
-
vs
- [[single player]] vs [[multiplayer]]
-
vs
- enterprise is in the back of their minds, but it's not currently core
- enterprise saas is a great business model though, but there's not as clear an enterprise vision for now
-
[[consumer vs enterprise]]
-
#q on [[information density]] are people reading slower? it takes twice as long to listen than to read
- attention is more often split when listening
- less information absorbed when people are listening
- are you able to unplug and read for, say, 20 minutes?
-
"throw all your technology away, go into a cottage and read paper"
- the problem can probably be solved this way, but that's not feasible actually
- "fight technology with technology"
- maybe it's good to be able to read on your smartphone, how do you accomplish that?
- [[emergent reading]] (?)
-
#q it seems you're in the position of [[owning the plumbing]]: can you lean into that, are you blocked by the players in this space?
- it would be great to have an [[open standard]]
-
[[annotations]] [[hypothesis]]
- [[chrome]] has started to add a little bit to it
- but it's very [[web focused]]
- (the stream glitched for me here, lost about a minute)
-
[[john borthwick]] on the [[knowledge blob]]: it should be transportable
- they had to come up with their own core abstractions when developing their reading app.
- why don't we build on top of a [[block]] architecture]]?
-
"like it was the fashion at the time" :)
- metaphor from user feedback: no, it doesn't really work, it's too soupy (?)
- it felt "too liquid"
- how to turn [[fluid thoughts]] into [[coherent text]]
- [[document]] ~ [[doc]]
-
meaning exchange for [[knowledge blobs]]
- annotation
- highlight
- notes that you take while reading
- when you want to read a 120 tweet thread, you actually want to see that as a [[document]] that you can [[annotate]] as a whole
-
#q on the toolchain aspect of the [[plumbing]]: love how you can jump from tool to tool. How much effort do you put into customizing the ingestion engines? On the Enterprise side: would love [[readwise]] for [[slack]] :)
-
hacked into something like the latter :)
- -> I think bots like [[agora bot]] are sufficient?
-
[[jinja]] seemed to solve all problems for customization cross tool
- [[low floor, high ceiling approach]]
- -> interesting, [[agora protocol]] seems related
-
hacked into something like the latter :)
-
#q Use cases in education; have you been thought about getting involved with schools? Have you thought about the impact of adoption by students who could be forced to use it? :)
-
Education just hasn't been something they've been successful at, haven't found a way to penetrate that field.
- -> [[hypothes.is]] collaboration?
-
Education just hasn't been something they've been successful at, haven't found a way to penetrate that field.
[[Demo: Protocol Design for Tools for Thinking]]
-
[[gordon brander]] on [[subconscious]]
- (87 people watching at this point in time)
- actually talking about something on a larger scale than [[subconscious]]
- the internet is already a tool for thought
- we've gone through [[sense making crises]] several times on a historical level
-
we're going through another and we'll need to get through it
-
[[planet scale challenges]]
- [[climate crisis]]
- [[kardashev]] [[type 3 civilizations]]
-
#push [[protopoi]]
- space of [[possible futures]]
- outcome is a function of how we learn to [[think together]]
- thinking together as a [[whole planet]]
- -> [[gordon brander]] is [[building an Agora]]!
-
#push [[flanbook]]
- [[apps]] trap [[thoughts]] in [[saas silos]]
- no way to think as a species
- #push [[agora protocol]]
- some of the [[old dreams]]:
- took some time off here to post about this to social networks: [[gordon brander]] is building an [[agora]]! they don't call it that, but that doesn't matter. It looks technically advanced too.
-
[[memos]] are a really flexible data structure
- (super-thoughts? preceded them?)
- very generic content: they are essentially [[envelopes]] that can carry anything
-
[[envelope]] has:
- [[header metadata]]
- a pointer to some content on [[ipfs]]
- a pointer to the previous version on [[ipfs]]
- things just don't disappear anymore
-
[[ucan]] authorizes apps to manage data on your behalf
- can allow us to build a [[self sovereign]] security model
- you own your keys, you put them in a [[wallet]]
- fits [[passwordless sign on]] ~ [[passkeys]]
- you [[own your identity]], very important to them
- leverages [[did]] and such
-
[[sphere servers]] are [[superpeers]]. personal [[ipfs gateways]].
- [[gossip network]]
-
[[planet scale challenges]]
[[The History and Future of Software as Tools for Thinking]]
- (missed the first minute)
-
[[jerry michalski]] with [[howard rheingold]]
- how do communities work? how do we get smarter humans?
- pass the floor
- (split screen with [[jerry's brain]])
-
[[howard rheingold]]
- [[palo alto research center]]
-
went there for [[alan kay]]'s article for [[scientific american]]
- [[microelectronics in the personal computer]]
- if you weren't in [[xerox parc]] you just didn't have what he showed on screen
-
then [[time magazine]] making the [[personal computer]] [[person of the year]]
- the [[steves]] standing on the shoulders of giants
- it didn't come from defense contractors, it didn't come from corporations, it cames from [[individuals]] who used what institutions provided to build tools for thinking
- [[engelbart]]
- (missed one name here or two, check recording)
- [[von neumann]]
- [[alan turing]]
- [[boole]]
- [[lovelace]]
- [[babbage]]
- led him to create.
-
[[jerry michalski]]
- [[vannevar bush]] [[memex]]
-
[[howard rheingold]] on [[licklider]] [[1960]]
- -> shame I can't read Jerry's brain here, I didn't know this name at first clearly :)
- (echo/[[feedback issues]])
- [[article]]
-
[[J.C.R. Licklider]] got a position (which one?), had read [[Douglas Engelbart]].
- [[licklider]] funded (sp?) [[engelbart]]
- led to [[mother of all demos]]
- [[integrated systems of humans]] using [[language]], [[artifacts]], [[methodology]], [[training]]
-
[[licklider]] has a [[psychologist]] on staff
- later involved in [[microdosing]] experiments?
-
#q [[jerry michalski]] what from the original vision has worked (and maybe we take for granted) and what hasn't (yet)?
-
materialized:
- pointing and clicking
- multimedia
- shared notebook for people working on projects was part of the original demo
- tried going with [[organizations]] where these tools didn't work out, but the vision was as follows
- #push [[works]]
- vision was an [[integrated toolkit]]
-
note taking apps, rapid learning apps
- we need to integrate these things as a [[toolkit]], integrate [[thinking environments]]
-
there are [[relationships]] that really need to be made more clear
- [[knowledge tools]], [[learning tools]], [[thinking tools]]
- there are ways of using visualizations of what we know to think
-
materialized:
-
#q [[howard rheingold]] do you think of the brain as a way to think or a tool? (check?)
- Jerry thinks of it as [[photoshop]] for ideas
- (Demo bridging several nodes to [[cholera]].)
- Putting all nodes side by side in a single tool (interface) is instrumental.
- thebrain's flexibility is one of the most attractive factors.
-
[[howard rheingold]] it externalizes your memory
- [[the magic number 7]]
- offloading leading going to higher levels of abstraction
- thinking visually w.r.t. the network of connections leads to a new framework of thought that would be otherwise difficult to hold in our minds at once
-
-> Howard wrote books before some of these tools; his office was plastered with papers and notes
- Stacks of notes that could be moved around.
- Ability to externalize was there; the ability to think with symbolic items.
-
[[jerry michalski]]
- [[expressive capacity]]
- different tools have different expressive capacity
- when [[cad]] was new, it lacked a lot of the features it has now
- when [[shopping for a tool]], it's hard to figure out which features we need a priori
-
some tools are very workflow opinionated, very rigid
- e.g. tools that enforce color coding
-
#q [[jerry michalski]] you set out to explore these tools and report back; what did you learn from your journeys?
- [[howard rheingold]] throughout history, we see that people who use tools find things to do with them
-
the [[internet]] is a good example: there is a myth that it was created as a bomb proof communication medium.
- actually [[packet switching]] was created for that purpose
- which was then adopted for the internet
- people like [[licklider]] knew of the need to network to exchange information
- [[researchers]] started using the network to talk about things like [[science fiction]]
-
[[bob taylor]]: lesser known but very important character
- check out the video with [[john m.]] from [[university of texas]] at austin
- researchers supported the emerging community
-
[[intergalactic network]]
- [[1968]] [[computer as a communication device]]
- the users were the ones who turned the internet into a communication medium
- [[stackexchange]]
- the model of an expert who broadcasts knowledge isn't as useful as a group or community of people who are [[learning together]] ~ [[colearning]]
-
#q [[jerry michalski]] on the problem of assigning truth values (paraphrasing, check)
- daughter started using search engines to do homework
-
had to explain that up until now when teachers assigned a book, there were a number of authorities participating in that assignment (and could potentially act as gatekeepers)
- it's up to you to determine if it is [[good]] information, [[bad]] information, [[misinformation]].
-
technology is advancing so fast that [[fake info]] risks becoming uncontrollable
-
solution unknown but might require algorithmic filtering
- -> [[open source algorithms]] in the [[commons]] may be the solution IMHO
-
solution unknown but might require algorithmic filtering
- who do you [[trust]]? can you adopt their lists (adopt their trust)?
-
[[sift]] if you're trying to check the veracity of that webpage, get off that webpage
- search name of the author for example
- -> metadata overlay for the web? provided by [[hypothes.is]], [[noosphere]], [[agora]]
-
[[jerry michalski]]
-
#push [[fellowship of the link]]
- remembers asking questions on (forum name missing)
- a maybe nicer/simpler time, but points at potential
-
#push [[fellowship of the link]]
-
#q On [[misinformation]]/disinformation. Politically: what's your view on the human mind itself, thinking of it as self-reinforcing loops? if you have a personal belief and you may or may not reinforce it.
- [[confirmation bias]]: more attuned to evidence that supports what we already believe
- the role of emotion and [[attachment]]
- don't know the answer to how to solve these tensions
- how to pull in the right people into the right discussions/contexts
-
human prejudices which keep us from learning things that we have not been yet trained to learn
- doesn't mean we won't discover ways to work around that
- we have to think of the strong connections between artifacts, language, metodology, training as they enable us to understand the psychology of the individual and the group
- [[experts on the well]] (sp?) is still around
-
#push [[agora]]
- [[social capital]], [[knowledge capital]], [[community]] are all key
- [[jerry michalski]]
-
#q is there a place for [[authority figures]] without going back to [[gatekeeping]]
- [[howard rheingold]] [[authority figure]] can be a loaded term
- [[authority of the text]]: how much you can trust the text, and the person
- teaching experience: [[social media]]
-
there's a place for [[authority]] and for [[questioning authority]]
- questioning is even more important now that we have fewer [[gatekeepers]]
-
[[jerry michalski]] [[the great transformation]]
- "don't ever read this book"
- critique of [[polanyi]]
- how do we steer away from radicalization as it's endorsed/enabled by corporate platforms?
-
#q (missed the gist of question about tools for thought, check)
- [[howard rheingold]] standard psychological tests with people and substituted a computer or cartoon rendition of a person or a computer voice: people attribute human qualities to things that computers do
- we have not evolved to make a distinction between synthetic and organic voices
- understanding our limitations can lead to working around them
-
one problem with teaching critical thinking:
-
if you teach questioning authority, they will question:
- teachers
- family
- schools
- governments
- ...and they tend not to like that :)
- when do you teach it? is elementary school too early?
-
if you teach questioning authority, they will question:
-
#q [[michael]] thank you for your book. Two pieces to the description earlier of analog thinking extension: (...). How do those map, or not, to digital tools?
-
experiments with new interfaces
- move blocks around and change the computer landscape
-
book: [[the extended mind]]
- there's a lot of research that shows that teachers who use gestures are more effective teachers
- our bodies and how we manipulate forms in space communicate a way of thinking
-
[[jerry michalski]] sometimes a computer can slow you down and ask: how are you feeling right now? there's many processes (e.g. somatic) ongoing; slowing down and becoming mindful can help you become aware of them.
- physiological responses to new information.
- can we find that moment and call it out? offer a chance to slow down then, going deeper?
-
[[jerry michalski]] there are people who are aware of their heartbeat and people who aren't
- stock brokers: people who are aware of their heartbeat make better financial decisions (I think; the stream cut out for 10s)
-
experiments with new interfaces
-
#q what's the more psychoactive experience you've had with a computer?
-
[[howard rheingold]] talked way into [[xerox parc]], got access to an [[alto]] computer with a [[5mb]] hard disk
- being able to move a paragraph around without retyping a page (!)
- "it was [[blissful]]" :D
- "it was not just a way to manipulate information, I could think better with it"
- computer programming does this with abstraction
-
what people did early online, late 1980s, people took psychedelics and chatted online
- [[lerl]] (sp?)
- took [[lsd]] again at some point, put on [[google earth]] and had a realization that what [[google]] was doing was building an [[ai]]
-
[[howard rheingold]] talked way into [[xerox parc]], got access to an [[alto]] computer with a [[5mb]] hard disk
-
#q what do you think about [[tools for thought]] for modeling, simulations
- (had to context switch but this sounded interesting)
- [[betterverse]]
[[Q&A]]
- Have to drop out for the day by now to prep dinner and start winding down for the night :)
[[Tools for Thinking Product Demos]]
- TBD.
[[Leveraging AI and ML in Building New Tools for Thinking]]
- TBD.
[[Idea Dimensionality and Representing Semantic Meaning]]
- TBD.
Tools for Thinking
[[Defining Tools for Thinking]] is important.
So is mapping the territory. Jerry has created one map in his Brain.
Mathew's notes on Revive conference: Gordon Brander demos Subconscious
Context
- see RENDER: Tools For Thinking conference
- I'm using different note-taking tools to scribe different conference sessions - this Hedgedoc was automatically created by [[flancian]]'s [[an agora]] page for the conference
- The idea we have in the [[Fellowship of the Link]] is that all the notes by all the scribes are somehow interlinked in a shared second brain, hence the wikilinks in these notes
- I've been enjoying [[Gordon Brander]]'s enewsletter for a while, so I'm really looking forward to his demo. I'm way behind properly processing his content, tho - everything I LikeThinkDo tagged [[Gordon Brander]]: https://myhub.ai/@mathewlowry/?tags=gordon+brander
- I'm looking to riff off this in search of insights meaningful to me as I explore this space, write a chapter in [[Ivo Velithckov]]'s book on Personal Knowledge Graphs, and develop my ideas for myhub.ai
Noosphere: worldwide PKG
What would it take to make the internet a useful thinking tool?
Sensemaking crisis during planetwide crisis. We didnt get a global brain from the internet because "apps trap thoughts" - caused by fundamental internet architectural idea: "same origin security model": each app its own Universe. Needed: protocol for thoughts.
what is Noosphere:
- Open source project, cofunded by mozilla and ipfs.
- Ambition: create low-level p2p infrastructure, like http
- decentralised over [[ifps]]
- priotises user ownership, yet multiplayer
- belongs to everyone: you can do whatever you want
what does it do
- local first file sync
- change hilstory a la git
- cross-app transclusions & backlinks
- user-owned data backpack - take your data with you
- self-soverign social graph - you own what you put into it
- lots of copies to keep stuff safe (content addressing)
Layering onto [[ipfs]]:
- human friendly names for ipfs hashtags:
- versioning
- signing with UCAN-authorized key
@sphere/path:
- @sphere is your username, derefernces into a public key
-
paths point to memos:
- generic protocol
- ipfs meta envelope: header + body (pointer to a ipfs file) + parent (pointer to previous version, hence version control)
- any filetype
-
[[UCAN]] signed: cryptographic protocol
- authorises data management
-
self-sovereign security model: you own your keys, your identity, take it with you
- works with wallets and passkey paradigm
Sphere servers
- personal ipfs gateway
- bridges to web
- synch with personal devides
Myhub and Noosphere?
Hugely interesting. Possibly too ambitious for me. Out of the box he's including following, so content published by people you follow comes to you. But instead of the link to content published at a URL, it's the content itself which comes to you as content is "gossipped around the web".
Group Notes
Orginaally from https://etherpad.indieweb.org/ToolsForThinking
Please note that all contributions to this pad and other IndieWebCamp documents are considered to be released under the public domain according to CC0.
RENDER();Tools For Thinking How New Technologies are Changing How We Create, Share, and Build Knowledge Session: #ToolsForThinking https://betaworkss-fabulous-project.webflow.io/event/render-tools-for-thinking [[2022-08-16]] video: https://player.vimeo.com/video/739652984?h=ecdefd58ba
Speakers
- Neel Baronia (Introduction)
- John Borthwick
- Jerry Michalski
- [[Daniel Doyon]] & [[Tristan Homsi]] ([[Readwise]])
- Gordon Brander
Participants
- [[Chris Aldrich]]
- Natasha Mott
- {{capjamesg}}
- {{kevinmarks}}
- {{campegg}}
Notes
[[Kevin Marks]] live notes: https://www.kevinmarks.com/toolsforthinking.html
- via noterlive.com
- Twitter Thread starts here: https://twitter.com/kevinmarks/status/1559567010287206400
Noted times are being changed to actual as the day progresses.
How Do We Define Tools for Thinking and Why Do They Matter?
- 12:10 PM β 12:20 PM
Join [[Jerry Michalski]] and [[John Borthwick]] as they talk about their interest in tools for thinking, and what excites them the most about the future of the category.
- Jerry demos [[The Brain]] he's been using since December 1997 (25 years this year) ** Hit the half million mark this year for ideas
Inflection Points for Tools for Thinking
- 12:23 PM β 1:04 PM
What are the key inflection points that will supercharge Tools for Thinking in the near future? How will new technologies, user metaphors, and funding models change how people build these tools? John Borthwick will be discussing how the landscape is changing with the co-founders of [[Readwise]], [[Daniel Doyon]] & [[Tristan Homsi]].
-
Readwise is a tool to help you read better and remember what you've read.
-
@deadly_onion : we then got asked to bring the notes inot other tools, so we're like the Zapier of annotation
-
12:30 AM Funding models for these tools for thought
-
User-based subscription models vs. venture capital
-
Borthwick: SaaS services tend to silo information and data
Q+A
- 12:30 PM β 1:03 PM Q: Is there an inverse of [[spaced repetition]] for Readwise: Example: Could one use Anki for writing? A: People putting their writing into their Readwise review where they improve each "highlight"/paragraph and work on it in a spaced repetition manner. After refining they then put a full essay together from their building blocks.
Q: How do you not get stuck on the system, but manage to create rather than optimizing the process?
CJA: Spaced repetition on hightlights is useful, but it's only a small part of a successful practice.
"The pattern we see is people optimizing the tool and optimizing the process (rather than writing)" β @homsiT NM: ^^this seems apparent given how many novel notetaking apps I'm learning about right now. I've spent 15 minutes trying to figure out where to put my thoughts instead of actually putting them somewhere.
Q: Borthwick: Rise of audio: How does one move audio into the tools for thought space? A: Airr and Snipt both do audio to text in this space as early attempts. AI transcripts can be annoying and a little off, but speech to text is improving. Audiobooks space is a closed format that's dominated by one player (Amazon).
Borthwick: It's silos all the way up and down.
Q: How has Readwise changed in respect to TfT changes over the past few years? A: Daniel: Pulled into TfT because of note taking apps. People wanted to do everything in their note taking apps. This is starting to cool down and people are taking a "portfolio" approach to their apps and functionalities.
Consumer SaaS is hard and has a high support need. Corporate SaaS is an easier model for many reasons.
Q: Are people reading slower because they're taking more time to ingest?
A: Immersion reading (visual reading and audio at the same time).
Daniel: "It's kind for like a sensory deprivation tank for reading."
Tristan: Venkatesh (Rao?) has defined "Walden-ponding" - throw away technology and reclaim your attention
Tristan: There is no spec out there that's flexible enough for web, devices, podcasts/audio. Readwise would love for that to exist.
Q: Borthwick: There's a need for portable "knowledge blobs"... Daniel: Readwise looked at turning everything into blocks and do a block-based architecture John Borichevsky - documents inside of Roam was tough They developed a phase change metaphor for guiding their design. How to turn knowledge blobs into coherent texts for sharing. Blocks vs. Docs. Take solids (documents) and turn them into fluid blocks (blobs of knowledge). Using a solid/liquid/gas framing here.
Roam Research users spurred them into using Jinja formatting to allow for customization
Readwise for discord is coming in beta...
Q: Thoughts on moving Readwise into the educational sphere? A: They've never had success in the eduction envrionment. Their users are more auto-didacts. They'd love to do more of it.
Demo: Protocol Design for Tools for Thinking
- 1:04 PM β 1:20 PM (5 minutes over)
[[Gordon Brander]] will be presenting a brief demo on [[Subconscious]] and the [[Noosphere]], products he and his team are working on to allow Tools for Thinking to become interoperable and better connected.
Subconscious - Social note taking tool The internet is already a tool for thought. It hasn't yet produced affordances for coping better. [[information overload]] We're facing a sense-making crisis. As a planet, we need to learn to think together.
CJA: This sort of dream also failed in the renaissance in a writing (offline only) setting. What can be learned from this prior art/effort? See [[Konrad Gessner]], et al.
Brandon: Maybe we need a protocol for thought?
CJA: maybe less protocol, but some loose standards. small pieces loosely joined, more web-by
CJA: Lots of references to Xanadu today, but nothing prior to that, sadly.
[[Noosphere]]: a worldwide knowledge graph. decentralized over IPFS, prioritizes user ownership, multiplayer, versioning, signing, self-sovreign social graph
[[Fission]] has been working on a protocol for the security part for a while [[Jess Martin]] et al. 1:17 PM [[UCAN]] model follower/following model built in They've got a Discord channel for Subconscious and Noosphere: https://discord.com/invite/wyHPzGraBh
Lunch and Networking
- 1:20 PM β 2:00 PM
The History and Future of Software as Tools for Thinking
- 2:00 PM β 3:00 PM
Some of the earliest examples of software explored by pioneers like Doug Engelbart, JCR Licklider, Alan Turing, and others were at their core technologies that help magnify, inspect, and spread our ideas. Jerry Michalski will be sitting down (virtually) with [[Howard Rheingold]], author of Tools for Thought, to explore the history and future of "mind-amplifying technology".
[[peeragogy]] - neologism created by Howard Rheingold
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definition tk
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Alan Kay "Microelectronics and the personal Computer" article
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1982/83 Person of the year: the personal computer
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Man from the Future (book) about John von Neumann
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James Fathomon (sp?) psychologist on thinking project
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tools for making tools
Jerry Michalski: One of this favorite affordances of The Brain is its ability to juxtapose ideas, something he wouldn't get out of a more database-like tool.
Rheingold did use 3x5" index cards for outlining and arranging ideas physically with respect to each other.
Arthur Brock - expressive capacity (see: Jerry's Brain) Early versions of AutoCad didn't have certain functionalities they did later, so architects and designers couldn't build or create certain sorts of structures.
Bob Taylor - video on early internet (see Jerry's brain for link)
Stack exchange version for the tools for thought community? Where is this? (HR) HLAMT part
The more responsibility you give to learners the more engaged they are. [[co-learning]]
5 literacies of social media article by Howard Rheingold (see Jerry's Brain)
Teaching people how to detect [[bullshit]] is a [[wicked problem]] It's up to the reader to determine [[authority]]. It's a problem that exists as a part of literacy.
CJA: Even major platforms like television and radio now don't serve as automatic authority the way they did two or more decades ago. The cheaper a medium is to operate in the more one must invest in determining authority and sifting out untruths.
How to create trusted social networks of information?
Mike Caulfield: SIFT acronym for information literacy: https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/ * Stop * Investigate the source * Find better coverage * Trace claims, quotes, and media back to the original context
[[The Well]] as an early bonfire for social knowledge on the internet. https://www.well.com/
(2:39 PM) Deliberative polling
Q+A
2:35 PM β 3:00 PM
Q: Why would strangers give knowledge away to others (for free)? (broadly unanswered)
- psychology, social capital, etc. CJA: How does this dovetail with respect for unsolicited information? (mansplaining, for example) How can we encourage one while discouraging the other.
Jerry reminiscence: Blair Newman's posts on The Well were deleted a week before he commited suicide. The community rebuilt his data after.
Q: Chip Kennedy: Is there a place for authority figures in the space without going back to "gate-keeping". A: Authority figure is a loaded term.
Q: our brains operate on emotion as well as reason - how do we use emotion in these second brains? A: @hrheingold: understanding some of our emotional biases is very important - the book The Media Equation is worth reading - they did psychological tests, but swapped in a computer or a cartoon instaed of a human, and people treat them as humans also referred to emotion as a "weakness"
Q: Spaciality and tactility with respect to analog note taking
A: [[Hiroshi Ishi]] - computational capabilities into physical objects (MIT MediaLab), https://www.media.mit.edu/people/ishii/overview/
HR recommends [[The Extended Mind]] by [[Annie Murphy Paul]]
(CJA) - I highly recommend this book too! Notes: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A37343666363464373933303538336161623732646237386463616662643365313266653032623035373331303031636338326237316361396637343432643431
Physical/emotional awareness can help us make better decisions - more experimentation needed in this area
Those with better awareness of their pulse have been shown to make better snap financial trading decisions.
Q: Has a computer interaction ever caused you to experience something like a psychedelic experience? A: No, but recalled a time when students were taking psychedelics and chatting online...
[[Mind Amplifier]] by Howard Rheingold
http://rheingold.com/texts/Mind_Amplifier.pdf
Tools for Thinking Product Demos
- 3:00 PM β 4:00 PM
Weβll hear from builders and thinkers deep in the space and get to take a look at what theyβre working on. Weβll be checking out Plexus, Re:Collect, Jerryβs Brain, Subconscious and more.
Plexus
3:00 - 3:14 pm Davey Morse, founder of [[Plexus]], went to Williams College Created note taking tool for himself @davey_morse
- Friend had health issues with mono-like symptons ** (this sounds like Tiago Forte's story about using note taking to self-diagnose)
https://render.plexus.earth/p/render @davey_morse: if you type a thought inot the box, it will give you the thought that matches it most closely
https://williamsrecord.com/168916/features/students-create-alternative-note-taking-app/
Re:Collect
3:14 - 3:26 PM AliceAlbrecht, Founder + CEO, re:collect academic, in cognitive neuroscience, machine learning @AliceAlbrecht AI powered creative assistant Being able to access your ideas when you need them. Breadcrumbs for our future selves. How to find your old material scrap heaps (though she didn't use the specific word) no explicit tagging or organizing past self / future self problems anxiety relating to your ideas (storing, finding) web app and web extension card-based infinite canvas
Jerryβs Brain
3:27 - 3:37 [[Jerry Michalski]], Founder [[Open Global Mind]] @jerrymichalski idea sex
Subconscious
3:38 - 12:48 PM LinusLee, Independent Researcher, @thesephist Sentence gradients
We can represent colors in numbers and then operate on them in a way we can't yet operate on words or sentences.
@linuslee : you can't operate on words like you can work on numbers, you need to rewrite rather than quantify
@linuslee: just as we can manipulate colours by converting them to RGB values, what fi we can convert word meanings to a space that we can manipulate?
Demo. Looks a bit like Robin Sloan's AI Writing experiments https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-with-the-machine/
@linuslee: we want to encapsulate ideas and be able to do algebra on ideas ^^ this sounds a lot like Leibnitz's idea for Universal Languages back in the day
Readwise
3:49 - 3:59 PM Superhuman email client Twitter threads have emerged as a new form of blogging. Attempting to create a reading app for power users Readwise allows one to highlight images, something not currently available in other tools Part way into their build of the product they realized they were building a web browser
Leveraging AI and ML in Building New Tools for Thinking
- 4:17 PM β 4:50PM
Alice Albrecht and Linus Lee will be sitting down with Chris Pedregal to discuss their work in leveraging AI and Machine Learning for creating new kinds of tools for thinking.
Q+A
4:50 PM β 5:03 PM
Idea Dimensionality and Representing Semantic Meaning
- 5:04 PM β 5:30 PM
How do ideas - and the human brains that make and hold them - interact? Get prepared for meta! Esther Dyson and Jerry Michalski, will discuss the idea of how people work together to shape, compare, intertwine and ultimately produce multi-faceted ideas and multi-dimensional idea spaces. As David Waltz (Thinking Machines) once said, βWords are not in themselves carriers of meaning, but merely pointers to shared understanding.β Watch and lob questions as the two of them try to build and share the idea of how better ideas can be developed through collaboration.
Q+A
- 5:30 PM β 5:50 PM
Jerry is a fan of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Monderman
Closing and Happy Hour
5:45 PM β 7:00 PM
See Also
- [[commonplace books]]
- [[digital gardens]]
- [[zettelkasten]]
- [[tools for thought]]
- [[flancian]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108833389641589109
- [[flancian]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108833396162127864
- [[flancian]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108833398150519077
- [[flancian]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108833496091387036
- [[flancian]] https://social.coop/@flancian/108833988806890589
- [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1559571330168651781
- [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1559577029418401793
- [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1559609361315528704
- [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1559573253080944640
- [[flancian]] https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1559570882447777792
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[[2022-08-16 17:54:03]] [[@flancian:matrix.org]] (link):
- I'm going to be [[live noding]] [[tools for thinking]] tonight; took half a day off work
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[[2022-08-16 19:30:17]] [[@flancian:matrix.org]] (link):
- yes, I'm much better :) yesterday I worked from home, today I went to the office although I worked half a day because I wanted to attend [[tools for thinking]]
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559575547533033473
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559583096047116294
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559577225464352771
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559601534425395200
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559614656376889345
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559628714748559363
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1559660047407501314
- [[ChrisAldrich]] https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1560385151640616960